Recently finished all three volumes of this incredible work of historical fiction.
The Baroque Cycle
- Volume I: Quicksilver
- Volume II: The Confusion
- Volume III: The System of the World
The first, Quicksilver, takes you on a verbal voyage from 18th century Massachusetts to an earlier time in Europe. Your first travel guide is Daniel Waterhouse, Natural Philosopher. If you've read Stephenson's earlier novel Cryptonomicon, the name Waterhouse should be familiar. Daniel is the ancestor of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, the fictional WWII codebreaker. Another Baroque Cycle travel guide, Jack Shaftoe, the King of the Vagabonds, together with the kidnapped princess rescued from a Turkish harem weaves a tale of love and treasures lost and found and lost again. Jack also has decendants in Cryptonomicon. But the Cryptonomicon connections are but tantalizing threads compared to some of the other Cycle guides. There is Isaac Newton, or Louis XIV of France, or Gottfried Leibniz, or William III of England, or Blackbeard the pirate, or a half dozen or so others.
Quicksilver the volume, was published as three books or three interwoven story lines. These story lines are continued first in volume II, The Confusion, and then in volume III, The System of the World. Together, these two volumes contain 5 more books.
Dennis
