The problem with a book of great length is that you’ve spent so much time with it, once it’s over, you miss the characters and want to know what happens next. I have just finished reading The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. I was a little unsure about Quicksilver, the first book in the trilogy: I was led to believe that this trilogy was to be about the feud over the invention of the calculus. I happen to find the history of mathematics very interesting on its own, so when I started Quicksilver that’s what I was expecting. And after Cryptonomicon I was expecting something in that vain, only with all the trappings of late seventeenth century. What I’m hinting at here is that I was a little disappointed with the first book.
Now that I have just finished The Confusion, I think I have to re-evaluate Quicksilver. I now see that Stephenson is writing about the Newton/Liebniz controversy, but that to write solely about it would be to ignore a much larger, and more interesting, tale, the Scientific Revolution. I have read all Stephenson’s major works, and I suppose I should have had more faith in his storytelling. The Confusion has all the stuff you’d expect from a Stephenson novel: great characters; a sprawling, ambitious plot that he patiently unfolds; and the always enjoyable diversions to explain whatever he wishes. Admittedly, the diversions in the first two-thirds of the Baroque cycle aren’t nearly as entertaining as in Cryptonomicon. Nevertheless, the exploits of Eliza and, of course, Jack Shaftoe have held my rapt attention for last few weeks.
If you have read any of Stephenson’s previous works, or are interested in the period (1660 – 1713), I recommend the Baroque cycle (of which, Quicksilver and The Confusion are the first two parts). If you are involved at all with computers, you have to read Cryptonomicon
Now I need only muster the patience for October and the final installment….