Ok, Tell Me About The "Baroque Cycle"

I haven't read any of Neal Stephenson's stuff, but I recently bought Cryptonomicon because I've seen many here recommend it and I'm planning to read it on my trip to Japan.

But I've also seen the books in his Baroque Cycle and was wondering if any of you have read it and what you think. Can you give me a bit of an ambiguous, non-spoiler synopsis of sorts? Is it good? It seems like an undertaking, but it does look interesting.

Stephenson writes the historical novel of the enlightenment, beginning with the time of Restoration in England, following astounding developments in science, commerce, monetary systems, dynastic wranglings, and empire through Europe, the Muslim world, East Indies, the Americas--and I am only finished with the second volume.

His novel focuses on several fictitious characters of great color who interact with some real, some composite characters who manage in various exciting ways to deal in what was a dangerous age of violence and upheaval. Their personal lives gives them interaction, more than they may care for, with both the personages and ideas of the age--which ideas are also dealt with in an entirely anachronistic manner, so that you the reader are able to see all the implications of calculus, and timekeeping, and coinage, and atomic theory, and religious dissidents, and the style of men's clothing in 1603, and optics, and stock companies, and the failure of kings to propagate, and bills of lading, and on and on.

I found it rollicking good, but be forewarned--if you find you don't like it after, say, two hundred pages, it only becomes MORE SO.

I will have to think about if I really want to tackle that...

It's a bit slow at the beginning, but picks up after a ways, especially once Shaftoe comes on the scene.

Which Shaftoe? Bobby or DM or Amy?

All great characters! Finishing up Crypto now, only about 100 pages to go...

So it's the ancestors of the characters from cryptonomicon that we see (mostly), this Shaftoe is Jack Shaftoe, but he won't let you down as far as entertainment is concerned...

And I've just gotten to the Shaftoe part. The earlier bit is intellectually fascinating but things have definitely picked up.

This is an interesting period--also used the Alternate History/Fantasy trilogy "The Age of Unreason" by J Gregory Keyes (Greg Keyes in his newer series "The Kingdom of Thorn & Bone"). It's not as dense as the Baroque trilogy, but far more substantial than so much modern fantasy.

Now.

I'm having a terrible time getting through The Confusion because it's so much about Jack and Eliza, and I just have no interest in either character. I much prefer the Daniel Waterhouse side of the story.

But then again, I've also been known to skip the "Best Pizza Delivery Scene in all of Western Literature", too.

Call me a geek....

Pcat

Finished The System Of The World last week. What a great read. I don't normally buy fiction but I think I need The Baroque Cycle on my shelves.

No need for me to add anything. Do you write reviews for a living, that was better than most.