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The most helpful favourable review
The most helpful critical review
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Read it!
This is a very, very, very good book. Get your hands on it as soon as you can and read it. For best effect, read its predecessors, "Quicksilver" and "The Confusion", first. It is the third and (apparently) final volume in a series - the Baroque Cycle - and the overall impact builds up steadily over the three books. The entire cycle (the author apparently doesn't like...
Published on 24 Jan 2005 by D. A. Harris
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9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Epic, yes. But well-written?
I can't quite join in the unadulterated praise for the Baroque Cycle - particularly by the time you get to the flabbiest instalment yet: the System of the World. What happened to the rip-roaring exploits of Jack and Eliza? Totally unplausible as they were - and I've got no problem with historical fiction being implausible - they at least provided some sparks...
Published on 17 Mar 2006 by neil_wotan
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Read it!, 24 Jan 2005
This is a very, very, very good book. Get your hands on it as soon as you can and read it. For best effect, read its predecessors, "Quicksilver" and "The Confusion", first. It is the third and (apparently) final volume in a series - the Baroque Cycle - and the overall impact builds up steadily over the three books.The entire cycle (the author apparently doesn't like the term "trilogy") is set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and views its characters though a number of themes - Natural Philosophy, war, money, commerce, alchemy, slavery, religion and many more. My impression was that in this volume, the themes go deeper, and Stephenson works harder on them, than in the preceding volumes. Despite this he succeeds in maintaining the pace, a trick which the earlier two (especially "Quicksilver") didn't always manage quite so well (though they were still excellent overall). It could be though that those earlier books did the hard work and set the scene. Anyway, "System of the World" brings things to a tidy(ish) conclusion. There are suprises. There is a detective sub plot (along the lines of Samuel Pepys meets John Rebus). There is minute detail on London. (Please, someone, organise a Baroque Cycle walking tour - I'm sure it would be more rewarding than for certain bestselling historical novels I could name). Actually this is the third in a series of four - the fourth, Cryptonomicon, which is set in the 20th century, was published first. The relationship with Cryptonomicon is loose - broadly the characters here are ancestors of those in the later (er, earlier) book and there is geekish fun to be had in watching Stephenson dispose everyone correctly by the end of "System". However many of the themes are the same, and in fact the ending of "Cryptonomicon", which I have seen some reviewers here criticise as just too implausible, fits better with the earlier volumes - where fortunes are gained and lost through treachery and chance - as background. I do hope that Stephenson will follow up this story, in some way - I think I see hints in the text that he might: at least one character remains a real mystery and some of the themes are left open. Perhaps, though, for reasons of symmetry, that would have to be set in the far future.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
A staggering achievement, 19 Jan 2006
I've almost finished this book, only a few precious pages remain. In truth I'm dreading the moment that I do. Stephenson's characters have lived in my mind for many a month now, since I first picked up Quicksilver in April last year, and I'll miss them terribly. During that time I've come to know the streets of London in the last part of the 17th century almost as well as I know the London of today, and I've travelled across Europe, the Middle East, India, and the American colonies. I have come to know Isaac Newton and Louis XIV as real people. I have been made to think, and to laugh out loud, and to cry. Stephenson's skill with language is such that one constantly notices the beauty, power, and skill of the writing, and yet it never draws attention away from what he is describing, which comes across in almost cinematically atmospheric scenes. If you liked the war scenes in Cryptonomicon the best, this is the book for you; only start with Quicksilver!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
a fine ending to the trilogy, 30 Oct 2004
Neal Stephenson has written a fine ending to his Baroque Cycle Trilogy. Despite being a little fragmented it held my attention and engrossed me right to the end (886 pages!)The stories all conclude in satisfying and appropriate ways. Nearly all my favourite characters were present to push their stories forward. Many loose ends were tied, some were only recognised as stray plots when the extra details arrived to tie the bow!
As usual, Stephenson has pushed the action into the entertaining and only just possible.The action is so gripping that it had me reading into the night. His grasp of period detail is such that it can be hard to realise that he didn't live in the period he is descibing. I found it hard to pick out his exaggerations and fabrications, so for me, the only jarring is his persistant use of american vocabulary. (Which I try to forgive as Daniel lived for so long near Boston!)
However, I'm not sure that a reader could enjoy to this book without reading the previous volumes (Quicksilver, The Confusion). There is too much assumed knowledge for the plot to be comprehensible at this stage of its development.
This trilogy is recommended reading for lovers of a good tale, enthusiasts of military, scientific, nautical, medical and social history,and everyone who enjoys an intelligent book with a fabulous plot. Read all three volumes!!!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
'Tis Pleasing to Enjoy Nearly 3000 Pages of Satisfaction, 4 Aug 2006
It's taken me roughly 6 months to read all three books of the `Baroque Cycle' and I have just finished the last one, 'The System of the World'. Neal's accomplishment (and by reading the acknowledgements (as if another couple of pages reading matters by this stage!) is by no means his alone; centuries of historical records have been Alchemically morphed into a work of fiction that binds commercial, social and technical markers in the West's trajectory, creating a glimpse of a world back then where and when it all happened, so that today we enjoy the fruits of change and progress. All in all, if you like a touch of romance, intrigue, technology and trade - this is a fine collection to devour over a long winter.
I could rave on for hours about the depiction of London - because I live and work there - and this in itself gave me much delight.
All in all, I feel I'm a better person for reading `Baroque Cycle', purely because it might have never come my way and it wasn't thrust down my throat by some advertising blitz. I chanced upon the first book in my local library, and like all good treasures, it took a hold of me. I'd read `SnowCrash', so new of Mr Stephenson's work, and also new that as a writer it would be a gamble for him to write so intensely of a past period, and thankfully he took up that gamble because it's a great read.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
The last in a magnificent trilogy, 10 Dec 2004
Neal Stephenson has done it again: just under 1,000 pages of dense, dark, glittering prose. If you've read the preceding two novels - Qucksilver and The Confusion - you'll be hard pressed to resist The System of the World. Why it lurks in the sci-fi sections of bookshops is a total mystery. More than just the last in his saga of science, politics and money in the 18th century - The System of the World is also a novel of ideas, a thriller and a slice of vividly imagined history in its own right. It's great to have the hugely entertaining Jack Shaftoe back and soaring over the heads of the London "mobile" scattering cash, the sinister Edouard de Gex, beautiful Eliza and the priapic Ravenscar. Daniel Waterhouse developes, too, and the Club he sets up to discover who's got it in for the Royal Society is a comic masterpiece - sort of geriatric, argumentative Bow St Runners. It's just as well the Baroque Cycle is titanically long, though. So few other writers comes close to equalling Stephenson in breath and range, that everything after this seems rather unexciting. Thankfully Luther Blisset (Q) and Patricia Finney (The Firedrake's Eye) can take up the slack.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
Lord! I wish'd it had not been so long!, 28 Oct 2006
Any Man, when he shall have completed a Task, be it one which he has assigned to Himself, or an Imposition from some external Party, may experience a certain Euphoria. I write here of two such Tasks which have been completed, videlicet, primo, the Exertions of Master STEPHENSON in writing the Series of Romances, commencing with Cryptonomicon and continued in Quicksilver, The Confusion, and the Volume here under Consideration; and secundo, my own Expenditure of Time, Money, Energy and Lost Sleep in reading them.
I am a Swift Reader. It is my Wont or Habit to complete the Perusal of a Volume, whose Pages may number Ten-Score or thereabouts, in two Nights of Reading in my Bed; or if it be Saturday or the Lord's Day, to read two or three such over the Week-End. Completing my Study of The System of the World has required near a Fort'night.
Even the Sympathetic Reader of Master STEPHENSON's works must surely wish that some-body in the Publishing-House, responsible for the Preparation of his Novels, might have urged him to distil the Text to a more concentrated Quality. The Story is an Engaging Tale: the Culmination of the Journeys through Life of the three chief Personæ of previous Volumes, videlicet, Dr DANIEL WATERHOUSE, the Rogue JACK SHAFTOE, and the Duchess ELIZA of ARCACHON-QWLGHM. The Situation of these three, and many Others, is in the Year of Grace 1714, and encompasses the Passing of Her Late Majesty, Queen ANNE, and the Accession to the Throne of Great-Britain and Ireland of the Electoral Prince GEORGE of Hanover.
The Chief Strand of the Narrative concerns the Integrity of the Currency of England, as administered by the Master of the Royal Mint, Sir ISAAC NEWTON; we see much of him, and of other Personalities, including Baron VON LEIBNITZ, with whom NEWTON engages in lengthy and unexciting Philosophick Debate, and (more briefly) the Musician Mr HANDEL, who assists in the Slaughter of a Rogue, by Use of a Violon-Cello as Fatal Instrument, in a Thrilling Passage. The Atmosphere of London, Hanover, and other Locations of the Era is conveyed to the Reader with Conviction. But I wished it had not been so long.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Next time cut it short, Neal..., 17 Sep 2006
It takes weeks to read "Quicksilver", "The Confusion" and "The System of the World". Is it worth it? Definitely yes. Whatever it is you seek in a book, you are going to find plenty of it here. A great story that will bring you from Boston to London, from Versailles to Amsterdam, from Africa to Asia and through more adventures than any Indiana Jones film. A fantastic cast of characters, real ones and fantastic fictional creations like Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe, the ultimate adventurer despite a certain anatomic shortage, and Eliza de la Zeur, virgin odalisque, financial genius and all-around epitome of feminine brilliance and determination. And masterful writing that manages to unravel a magnificent yarn of love, hate, revenge, betrayal, political intrigue, scientific discoveries and financial speculation borrowing styles from Defoe, Choderlos de Laclos, Stevenson and John Ford with a welcome touch of humor in the direst situations. And while you're having great fun reading, you are going to absorb along the way also plenty of interesting information about a momentous passage of age happened 300 years ago, and reminiscent of a similar phenomenon that may be happening nowadays. Is the Baroque Cycle perfect? No, sometimes it really is too long-winded, and probably the almost homonymous Robert Louis Stevenson could have told the same story in half the words. But this is really the only thing in which Neal Stephenson can get any better: the Philosopher Stone of his narrative would be more synthesis. Next time cut it short, Neal... that didn't make a lesser man of Jack Shaftoe, nor will it lessen your novels if not in size.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Absolutely brilliant!, 7 April 2005
Having just finished this last volume in an absolutely magnificent trilogy, I have to say that these are the best three books I've read for a very long time. Absolutely fascinating, witty, well plotted, thoroughly engaging, full of historical and fictional detail though not at the expense of wonderful characters and unparalleled storytelling.I might just go back to the libary tomorrow and borrow the first two to read again!
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9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Epic, yes. But well-written?, 17 Mar 2006
I can't quite join in the unadulterated praise for the Baroque Cycle - particularly by the time you get to the flabbiest instalment yet: the System of the World. What happened to the rip-roaring exploits of Jack and Eliza? Totally unplausible as they were - and I've got no problem with historical fiction being implausible - they at least provided some sparks of genuine fun and colour in Stephenson's dry arrangment of nerdish factoids. By the time we get to this book, his style is more ponderous than ever: whole passages seem redundant to narrative, simply existing to demonstrate knowledge. It's still a fascinating era in British history to pick up on, but it's a hard, hard slog to get through it all. For devoted fans of an egotistical author.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
If you've read the other two, you're going to read this..., 8 April 2005
.... pretty much whatever I say. Don't worry though, you wont be dissapointed!
If you haven't read Quicksilver, go and get it!
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