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Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle (Baroque Cycle 1) Paperback – 7 Oct 2004

by Neal Stephenson (Author)

91 customer reviews

Book 1 of 8 in the Baroque Cycle (3 volume) Series

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As extraordinary an achievement as Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver is Neal Stephenson's first novel in his acclaimed Baroque Cycle.

Neal Stephenson follows his international bestseller, the WWII thriller Cryptonomicon, with a novel set in the 16th and 17th centuries, in a world of war, scientific, religious and political turmoil.

With a cast of characters that includes Newton, Leibniz, Christopher Wren, Charles II, Cromwell and the young Benjamin Franklin, Stephenson again shows his extraordinary ability to get inside a place and time; as he did for the futures of his science fiction (Snowcrash,The Diamond Age) and for WWII (Cryptonomicon), here he does for the England of the Civil War and the Europe of the Wars of Religion and the Scientific Revolution. Quicksilver is yet another tour-de-force from a writer who is simply unique.

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Product details

Paperback: 944 pages
Publisher: Arrow; New Ed edition (7 Oct. 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099410680
ISBN-13: 978-0099410683
Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 4.9 x 19.8 cm
Average Customer Review: 91 customer reviews
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 20,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2090 in Books > Fiction > Adventure Stories & Action
- #3043 in Books > Fiction > Historical

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Review

"[A] massive tour-de-force- Dense, witty, erudite, packed with fascinating characters, and gripping despite a distended length, Quicksilver is both a worthy prequel to Cryptonomicon, and an indication that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is shaping up to be a far more impressive literary endeavour than most so-called "serious" fiction - No scholarly, and intellectually provocative, historical novel has been this much fun since The Name of the Rose." (Charles Shaar Murray Independent)

"Staggering diversity and detail ... An astonishing achievement." (Sunday Telegraph)

"A great, heaving countryside of a book...consistently funny...fluent and elusive, while retaining just the right hint of poison" (Telegraph)

"Stephenson mixes a library’s worth of ideas with compulsive derring-do … its scope and inventiveness become addictive." (Time Out)

"A breathless ride…the writing gives an immersive sense of time and place" (Face)

Book Description

The first novel in Neal Stephenson's acclaimed Baroque Cycle.

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Alison Young

All over the place

17 February 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I loved Anathema and was delighted to see there was a sizeable series to get my teeth into. I was disappointed. I couldn't see what the connection between some of the aspects was meant to be, and the lengthy establishment of the character Enoch at the beginning came to nothing. The story picked up pace a bit when Eliza appeared, but again it seem disconnected to the whole. I didn't spot the promised comedic moments. I was left with the impression that I'd read a lot of writing, some of which was very good, but not a book.

4 people found this helpful

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6 March 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I originally tried to read this book when it was first published, and failed. I recently purchased it on Kindle and have just completed all 3 volumes of the Baroque Cycle ... and loved it. An astounding story with a scope stretching around the world and covering more than half a century during a time of huge change - economically, scientifically and politically. You probably already know of many of the characters, but NS weaves them in a fantastic story told in many different styles. In part, it reminds me of Life and TImes of Tristram Shandy, while other parts are picaresque and some sections are epistolaric, and may others in between. There are parts which remind me of the epic novels of John Barth, particularly where one of the main characters, Jack Shaftoe, features in stories being related with in the main narrative. The Baroque Cylce is a huge achievement, particularly since it is a fantastic and fun read.

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5 March 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I am struggling to write this review as I do not whether to recommend reading the book or not. It was a very clever book but I found it almost too clever and often had to revisit pages to try and understand the relevance of the text. It concerned lots of different characters and flicked backwards and forwards in time and had lots of different story lines all going on at the same time.The historical aspects is what drew me to the book in the first pace and I think that is what kept me reading to the end. I did not dislike it nor particularly like it and felt a sense of achievement and relief at reaching the end. I may allow a suitable gap before starting Book 2.

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Otten Ford

The whole Baroque Cycle is majestic in it's sweeping geographical and historical narrative.

13 August 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a review of the whole Baroque Cycle. Majestic seems a good word to describe the cycle. The story circumnavigates the world, starting in post revolution Britain and returning in time for the first Georgians. Along the way we meet many kings and queens - more majesty.

Despite the setting, the language and dialogue are in modern English, with the odd stylistic reversion to baroque forms. Sometimes Stephenson appears to slip up and uses an American term such as "gotten", but this may be deliberate. His knowledge and research in areas such as geography, codes, architecture, history and early science is astonishing. It becomes diificult to detect where facts about the lives of Newton, Wren, Leibniz, James II etc. drift from historical fact into fiction. The major fictional characters have depth and develop during the cycle in a satisfying way.

The cycle is not high fiction, but it's also not a simple narrative. Stephenson uses more than one literary method to cary the plot, including sections written as for a play. There are some excellent and imaginitive action sequences which move along at a great pace. However, there is no escaping from the fact that these are big books and they take a certain level of commitment to complete. Perseverence is justified for the satisfaction gained.

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J. Hind

Entertainingly Educational

18 December 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

It irritates me intensely that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is frequently classed as Science Fiction, even in bookshops. It is quite straightforward Historical Fiction (or Faction as it mixes real with imagined characters). It seems if you write one SF novel in your life, you are forever tainted with that label! This cycle of books will appeal to anyone interested in history, particularly the history of ideas. Stephenson's great talent, also evidenced in his Cryptonomecon, is his ability to infiltrate a surprisingly deep and sophisticated educational experience into a really good novel.

I have just finished reading the complete cycle again and for the first time in order (more than two thousand pages in total). It is a stonking good read, with only the odd page or six tending to drag a little. It is easy to say it needs an editor, but the problem is that an editor would probably cut far too much, and the wrong bits. Stephenson can make a conversation about philosophy between two princesses in a garden into a really exciting page-turner, but his action passages tend to drag badly. These can feel like a scene-by-scene description by a nine-year-old boy of a movie he's just watched!

Stephenson's trick is to tell the story from the perspective of three invented characters who have a modern outlook on life (while not being glaringly anachronistic). This enables him to render characters like Leibnitz and Newton accurately as only partly modern figures (Newton is an alchemist and Leibnitz something of a religious obscurantist), whilst allowing them to be viewed and interpreted by characters we can identify with. Contrast this with John Banville's frankly unreadable novels about Copernicus, Newton and Kepler in which the accurately rendered thought processes typical of the times are alien and incomprehensible to the modern reader. We forget that science has selected the stuff these early scientists got right and edited out whole bodies of nonsense.

Read these books for their exciting narrative, great characterisation and lovely, flip humour. But you will find that you have absorbed an amazing amount of knowledge, both traditional historical knowledge and also the foundations of modern science and capitalism. This experience left me viciously angry about the lousy standard of history teaching in schools. When I was taught this period, nothing happened that did not involve the British, and history was the tedious machinations of kings, politicians and religious nutters. Stephenson's history is global in scope and unashamedly emphasises the origins of the ideas that have lasted to shape the modern world.

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Most recent customer reviews

Bill Y

Superb!

Mr Stephenson leaves you gasping at the breadth and depth of his erudition. The trilogy is a master work.

Published 9 months ago

Terence

Hard Going

Hard going in my humble opinion. But worth the persistence. I will press on with the next book in the series but will take a break by reading a few other books in between.

Published 1 year ago

THE BARON

I WISH I HAD NOT READ THIS, JUST SO I COULD READ IT FOR THE FIRST TIME

This is one of the best novels I have ever read, if not the best. After a slow start of 70 or so pages (of necessary character and place-setting development) it takes off into the...Read more

Published 1 year ago

Jolanda Gelissen

Captivating and intelligently written historical novel

I was gifted this book by a friend a few years ago. The blurb on the back cover and the raving reviews intrigued me, and I eagerly set to reading.Read more

Published on 18 February 2016

Mr. S. J. Garrett

Astonishing and hilarious.

Daring, digressive, irreverent, informative and relentlessly funny, Quicksilver is a blunderbuss of a book.Read more

Published on 22 January 2016

Gabriele Rossi

Great Book!

Published on 2 December 2015

Dan Andersen

epic

Truly epic.... I have been a hard core scifi reader for decades. But this trilogy captured me completely... So intelligently written.Read more

Published on 26 June 2015

Victor Serge

This book and the trilogy are simply fantastic in every sense

This book and the trilogy are simply fantastic in every sense. As good a book as any... ever! I bought these books on kindle then bought them again in book form to give as...Read more

Published on 21 February 2015

Michal Babik

Five Stars

Published on 18 February 2015

D J Collins

Five Stars

Wonderful romp through rationalism and early reductive science. Great fun.

Published on 9 February 2015

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