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The Confusion The Baroque Cycle Vol 2 Neal Stephenson Books

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The Confusion The Baroque Cycle Vol 2 Neal Stephenson Books

I picked The Baroque Style to be the next book after my intro to Stephenson with Seveneves, largely due to the 4&1/2 star ratings of volumes 2 and 3, as they are the only Stephenson books rated that highly by Amazon readers. A quick glance at the reviews for The Confusion shows many comments to the effect that this was the favorite book of the three. Now that I'm 55% through volume 3, The System of the World, I can now say that I agree with those comments and absolutely loved The Confusion. Stephenson adds a lot of action to the story in this volume, and Jack Shaftoe takes center stage, whereas Eliza and Daniel Waterhouse were the stars of Quicksilver, volume 1.

But otherwise The Confusion is more of what makes this series great, brilliant storytelling and intrigue, lots of laugh out loud dry humor, Stephenson teaching as usual about so many different topics, and a wonderful and detailed look at the lives and loves of prominent and common people living in France, England and The Netherlands. Oh, and the dialogue. I have never been captured and held by dialogue before, and as with the first volume, even without the action in this volume, I would come back solely for the dialogue.

I have concluded that Neal Stephenson is the most entertaining author I have read.


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The Confusion The Baroque Cycle Vol 2 Neal Stephenson Books Reviews

The Confusion is Volume II of the author’s Baroque Cycle. Volume I contains the first three “books” of the cycle, while The Confusion contains Book 4 (Juncto) and Book 5 (Bonanza). These two books were originally published separately, but when combined in this volume, the “chapters” are alternated so as to maintain chronological order. That is because the two books deal with two completely separate story lines.

Juncto is set in northern Europe and features Eliza, Duchess of Arcachon and Qwhglm, and Daniel Waterhouse. Bonanza follows the adventures of Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe from his days as a galley slave along the Barbary Coast through Egypt, the Indian sub-continent (Hindoostan), the Far East, New Spain (Mexico) and ultimately back to England.

If you read Volume I, Quicksilver, or the three books that were encompassed therein, then you are familiar with the characters and the historical landscape (late 17th, early 18th century). While the historical fiction contained in these works is highly educational and at times fascinating (at others, somewhat confusing), this is not my favorite Stephenson effort. Nevertheless, as in his cyberpunk and sci-fi stories, a certain level of attention and effort is required in order fully grasp the author’s work. Some may not want to put forth the effort, but I appreciate it.
Like much of Stephenson's later work, the Baroque Cycle ties in interesting discussions and exploration of factual content with an overarching fictional narrative. Cryptonomicon delved into WWII history, mathematics, and cryptography; Anathem looked at philosophy and quantum mechanics; Seveneves goes into depth on orbital mechanics and various related topics. Similarly, the Baroque Cycle covers economics and world history, with various stops to look at natural philosophy, alchemy, and a variety of other topics. The Baroque cycle has been tougher for me to get into than most of Stephenson's other work, quite possibly because while I have a keep interest and pre-existing knowledge about many of his other topics of focus, I didn't know nearly as much about history prior to reading these novels.

The overarching plot is engaging, and there are many points in the dialogue where I found myself laughing out loud. For the most part, the book is very enjoyable. There are some parts of the writing that become tedious, however, particularly when long, graphic descriptions are given to various settings or long lists of things are spilled out - something which when reading could be skipped, but in audiobook form grows tiresome rapidly. The constantly changing narrative style is a direction that I don't particularly care for - the narration changes at times between third person, first person letters, screenplays, meeting notes, and a number of techniques. I found these changes to be a distraction rather than adding to the feel of the work.

The audiobook performance is excellent - the voices vary between characters and have good emotion and great pronunciation. I would prefer it if the audiobook tracks had some correspondance to the physical book so it were more possible to jump between the two, but you can't have everything, I guess.
Neal Stephenson's books all share a vital commonality detail. And it is this very trait which turns his books into works of art.
Breathtakingly awesome in their scope and length.

I'm only part way through 'Confusion', but it flows on smoothly from 'Quicksilver' (volume 1 of 3 in the Barogue Cycle) and becomes even more enjoyable as the characters list gets longer but ever more entwined, the plot develops and slowly works its way to a satisfying climax (as in all his books).

Word of warning if you only like 200 page quickie reads where very forgettable plots come and go like a breath of hot air stirring in the tropics, Stephenson is NOT for you. Ya gotta have 'balls' to read what is like a summer storm developing into a full-blown Cat. 5 hurricane twisting and destroying preconceived ideas along the way, and then reconfiguring reality into something more satisfying and wonderful than you could ever have imagined possible. I'm a fast reader on a , but I continue to be amazed when (as right now) I see messages such as the book is 17% complete - but with 21 hours left to complete the book.

I recommend Stephenson's books in general and this 3 book Baroque Cycle series to all readers - especially if you appreciate continuity stemming from historical characters blended smoothly with accommodating reality based fiction replete with intrigue, violence and sex (at times erotically intermingled).
I picked The Baroque Style to be the next book after my intro to Stephenson with Seveneves, largely due to the 4&1/2 star ratings of volumes 2 and 3, as they are the only Stephenson books rated that highly by readers. A quick glance at the reviews for The Confusion shows many comments to the effect that this was the favorite book of the three. Now that I'm 55% through volume 3, The System of the World, I can now say that I agree with those comments and absolutely loved The Confusion. Stephenson adds a lot of action to the story in this volume, and Jack Shaftoe takes center stage, whereas Eliza and Daniel Waterhouse were the stars of Quicksilver, volume 1.

But otherwise The Confusion is more of what makes this series great, brilliant storytelling and intrigue, lots of laugh out loud dry humor, Stephenson teaching as usual about so many different topics, and a wonderful and detailed look at the lives and loves of prominent and common people living in France, England and The Netherlands. Oh, and the dialogue. I have never been captured and held by dialogue before, and as with the first volume, even without the action in this volume, I would come back solely for the dialogue.

I have concluded that Neal Stephenson is the most entertaining author I have read.