Customer Reviews

Confusion (Baroque Cycle 2)

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a huge fan of Neal Stephenson's book "Cryptonomicon", which now serves as a sort of introduction to the Baroque Cycle. That being said, I was a bit disappointed in Quicksilver, Volume One of the Baroque Cycle. The tome resembled Cryptonomicon so closely (same author, same size, same character families) that I could not help but get my hopes up for another such read. Instead I found it dry and difficult to finish, where Cryptonomicon had been a fantastic page turner.

Then I read The Confusion. Now I think I understand. Quicksilver is not to be compared to Cryptonomicon, but to the first third of Cryptonomicon, which (I seem to remember) was a little hard to get through. It is the beginning of the story where the author is planting the seeds for later developments.

The Baroque Cycle is twelve books, or three volumes (of which The Confusion is the second), or countless stories, but it is one read. The Confusion is the part of the read where things start getting really, really good, and if I know Neal Stephenson, the satisfaction will only continue to escalate in volume three.

If you have already made it through Quicksilver, then you have arrived. Treat yourself and read this book... er.. volume.

If Daniel Boorstin, Tom Clancy and C. S. Forester had decided to collaborate on an epic novel, this would have been it, except they wouldn't have written one as racy as this one is.

As made clear in "Cryptonomicon," Stephenson loves parallelism. This volume of "The Baroque Cycle" is two parallel but intertwined tales:
- one of The Cabal, a polyglot group of a group of one-time galley slaves who risk everything as they transport a cargo of gold literally around the world
- the other of The Junto, a pan-European collection of royalty, savants and merchants who accidentally devise the modern banking system in order to transport money without moving metal.

Don't read these books if you're looking for subtle character studies (though there are some subtle and witty conversations to decode). However, if you've the kind of mind that's interested in everything and how it got that way, if you enjoy a hell-for-leather tale (or two) set in exotic locales and times, or if you like to watch a brilliant literary stylist construct a story as carefully structured as a well-done sonnet, then buy this book and set aside enough time to savor it.

After reading Quicksilver, though I already had my copy of The Confusion, I had to take a bit of a breather and I read The Bourne Supremacy, though once I was a few pages into it I couldn't help myself looking forward to The Confusion. That's not to say that Ludlum is not enjoyable to read, but there's so much lacking in his work compared to Stephenson's.

The Confusion, as many have mentioned, is a combination of two books, one following Jack Shaftoe in his literally round-the-world exploits, the other following Eliza, Duchess of Qwhglm, etc., as she continues to rise in Europe's aristocracy. It's an ingenious device to combine the two novels in one, as the reader is left with a cliffhanger in one chapter of the first novel and spurred on in reading the other so he can learn the outcome of the first.

At it's heart, so far, the Baroque Cycle is a love story. Jack and Eliza are a classic couple, torn apart by forces (for the most part) beyond their control. Around them the world of the 16th century continues to swirl, a storm of political, economic and social change, which in reality left no life untouched. Jack and Eliza seem to somehow be caught in many of the pivotal locations and events of the age, and as readers, we get swept along with them. Along the way, of course, we get a dose of the science that Stephenson loves to explain, as well as a good chunk of geography, social satire, and humor.

Stephenson, while he may be getting more long winded, is getting better and better. I hate to pick favorites, because there are so many incredible authors out there, but he is certainly near the top in my book. Can't wait for The System of the World!

The revolution of the western mind continues in Stephenson's second volume of his Baroque Cycle.

By "con-fusing" (this is a Stephensonism, not mine) the fictitious lives & passions of the epic's main characters, Jack Shaftoe & Eliza, with real events and equally real/colorful characters of the late 17th century, Stephenson has accomplished something which no teacher before him has...

THE CONFUSION con-currently conquers the following subjects (among many, many others):

- the dawn of a truly global economy

- the pre-teen years of the commodities & futures markets

- the minting of hard currency

- the injection of fiat

- the role of the New World in revitalizing and further confusing international relations

- the pioneering minds of the Utilitarian Enlightenment (not of the artistic sort that has come to dominate discussions of the Enlightenment).

- the conflicting motives of the Roman Catholic Church, the various Protestant denominations, and the Oligarchy of the European nations/principalities of the latter 17th Century

- the boundless nature of the human spirit

- the nature of love itself

Needless to say, in order to envelop all the above while con-fusing it with a story of such enthralling intrigue, the Confusion is a megolith of a novel... but it is truly as awe-full (full of awe) as it is awesome!

Can't hardly wait for the third volume.

Put simply: this book blows Quicksilver out of the water. All of the potential that the opening act showed really did come to fruition in this opus.

I'm not sure what else there is to say. To all of those people who gave up on Quicksilver because of its meandering and glacial tendencies, I would certainly recommend that you give this a whirl. It starts with the formation of one of the most unlikely cabals in all of literature, progresses to the hijacking of a ship filled with gold, then a circumnavigation of the world. And that's just half the book.

Back in Europe there is all sorts of intrigue -- spies, alchemy, infedelity, etc. Of course, there are trademark Stephenson educational tangents about things that have nothing to do with the story, like how watered steel is created.

Add it all up -- pirates, convicts, spies, alchemy, swashbuckling, war, science, and sex -- and it makes for one hell of a novel that doubles as a history book about the evolution of modern finance.

And it ends with one of the best cliffhangers in recent time. I can't wati until October!

This is a slow-paced narrative, without a clear straightforward plot, which requires more reading patience that your average historical novel. But the style is rich and the characters are engaging and very well-developed. The reader will be swept away by an adventurous tale of slavery, freedom, and fortune-hunting, among other storylines interwoven in this ambitious work. Indeed, this literary tale might not satisfy readers of more lightweight commercial fiction, but Neal Stephenson is a great stylist whose writing will appeal to the scholar in you.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy/Series is considered one of the great science-fiction collections ever written, forming the basis of countless derivative and inspired works over the past fifty years. The Baroque Cycle will not, unfortunately, inspire fifty years of copycats, for a unique reason: it would be far too difficult to undertake with even moderate effort. This is a nine-book/ three-volume masterpiece of historical fiction that really has no peer in my experience (and please comment if you find any!)

As an aside, I could, at length, review each of the nine books and prattle on endlessly about this or that, but that's far too many reviews for what I intend to say about the Cycle as a whole. My comments apply to all books equally.

The cycle begins in the mid 17th century and spans the adulthood of one Daniel Waterhouse, a fictional contemporary of Isaac Newton. Of course, it also traces the life of one Jack Shaftoe, a fictional hero with his roots in every pirate story ever written or filmed. And then there's the mysterious Enoch Root, popping up again from the Cryptonomicon to move things along as the deux ex machina of certain story elements.

The number of interleaved story lines would be an impressive enough feat of writing, but the historical references were simply amazing. The sheer amount of research Mr. Stephenson invested for the Cycle must have been enormous. In short, Mr. Stephenson describes London before, during, and after the Great Fire of 1666 politically, sociologically, geographically, architecturally, and economically; he performs the same rigor of place-setting with Hanover and present-day Germany, Paris and present-day France, diverse parts of Egypt, Algeria, India, Mexico, South America, and Boston. This is the kind of book series that would inspire high-school students to PAY ATTENTION. For, if the students really do their homework and have a teacher partnered with them to put the book details into their proper context, you could quite possible craft an entire school year around the nine books, such is the depth and breadth of scholastic research involved in putting together such a series. It's no small achievement or idle boast: Mr. Stephenson has in some way taken his education and put it to its greatest use, as an inspiration to students.

All of this would be for naught if the stories weren't truly excellent at their core, and they are. You could boil down the Shaftoe story line to "pirate story" but that sells it short after the first book -- and there are eight more to go. What starts as a pirate story quickly become something of a precursor to spycraft and terrorism/counter-terrorism in the 17th and 18th centuries: currency manipulation, political scandals, and assassinations. I haven't even mentioned Isaac Newton versus Gottfried Leibniz in the battle for Calculus, or Isaac Newton's Alchemy, the reconstruction of London post-fire, the gold trade, the silver trade, piracy in the Atlantic and Pacific, the timber economy, the commodities exchange of northern Europe, the court at Versailles, and so on. I'm astonished as I write this.

This is well-worth the time invested to read, as a Cycle. If Mr. Stephenson ever posted his complete bibliography, or if some doctoral student ever decided to craft that two-semester, eight-course class tracing the book's scholarship, I would be among the first to delve deeply into it and re-learn my forgotten history, mathematics, and economics. Simply, this is one of the finest fiction series ever written.

-Fred

After the apparent choppiness of "Quicksilver" I was a bit worried that "The Confusion" would fall prey to the same unevenness of the first book of the trilogy. I was also worried that this novel could suffer from the same fate as many middle books of trilogies. Fortunately, I found "The Confusion" to be a much more engaging read than "Quicksilver," and some of the revelations within have caused me to reevaluate my prior assessment of the former book. A lot of the cryptic occurrances in "Quicksilver" are unravelled somewhat here, and the stage is well set for the final book of the trilogy.

Stephenson's style has developed a depth and density over the years, and while it is my opinion that "Cryptonomicon" is currently the novel that exemplifies the balance of depth and entertainment the best (so far), I will not be surprised if time proves this trilogy to have an even more lasting effect in the mind's eye than any of his prior works. Given the popular and critical acclaim of the aforementioned novel, that's high praise indeed!

Why you should read this:

Stephenson remains one of the most thrilling of authors. His wit, his prose, his dialogue, his drawing of characters, they really are almost unsurpassed. We feel that Stephenson continues to improve as a writer in general and those characters of Eliza, Jack, Waterhouse, Leibniz, and Newton have never been so palpably real. For those who were thrilled with Quicksilver, we feel they will be even happier with The Confusion. The anachronisms will seem less jarring, the progress of the novel is more linear and easier to follow, the writing a bit tighter. This is the central novel of an astonishing trilogy of books and one should most certainly continue them once started. For those interested in the history of calculus and in general the Age of Enlightenment, this is not a novel to be missed.

Why you should pass:

We don't believe that one should begin any trilogy with the second book. If you've not read Quicksilver, then you can muddle your way through this book-and probably be happy with it-but really it loses some depth. As before, if you're expecting laser gun battles, space wars, robots, or other tropes of sci-fi you ought to go elsewhere for those thrills. While this is generally quick read, the book is long and therefore heavy to drag around. If length will perturb you, wait to read this book until you have the time, leisure, and muscle to take it on.

READ MORE AT INCHOATUS.COM

It's rare to come across a work of such scope and depth, which challenges the reader, while remaining entertaining, and keeps up the pace for nearly over 800 pages, but the latest volume of The Baroque Cycle does all that, and does it with style. I've nearly finished it, and am already pining that it's almost over.

Stephenson tells a story that is enormously complex. I admit to getting a bit lost at times regarding who's who amongst the minor characters, and occasionally being baffled by a plot thread or two. But the occasional 'confusion' just made me want to read more. Like admiring a work of baroque art, the mind cannot comprehend all the details at once: careful scrutiny is required. However, I often found myself too excited by the narrative to pause and gather my wits. Which is allright, because Stephenson has a knack for gracefully reminding the reader of what he may have missed.

The structure of the tale is broken up, as the author explains in the preface, into two seperate books, interleaved with one another for the sake of clarity over continuity. But those "books" are woven together like warp and weft, forming an elegant brocade which, if seperated into its component parts, would leave us with something far less admirable.

"The Confusion" is all at once an exciting adventure, an historical treatise, an exploration of the rebirth of science, a love story, a mystery, etc., and each of these is handled with enormous skill. Stephenson has written some of the most exciting pages I've ever read, and likewise some of the most intriguing and informative. I simply cannot recommend this book (and its predecessor, "Quicksilver") enough.