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[Prospero]

I just finished this today.

I enjoyed Stephenson's previous books I've read (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon), and I have a very high tolerance for multiple-volume works. But this just didn't do it for me--I'm taking time off from it before starting the second book at the least, if I start it at all.

It started out with a lot of promise, and the first couple of hundred pages rocked. Then the prose slipped into Stephenson's older style, with sentences that did little more than convey information. And there was way too much information, that wasn't clearly organized and seemed to be there just to show that Stephenson had done his research. (A good chunk of this info was stuff I already knew--two pages on conic sections; three pages on methods of selling stocks short; etc.) A good editor could have cut this book's length by half by getting rid of redundant descriptions and a few members of various royal families, and possibly more if the editor assumed that Stephenson's readers had college educations and didn't need an explanation of momentum that went on for four pages.

There were parts of it that l liked (the lyrical passage in which Daniel boards the Minerva, the friendship between Daniel and Isaac, the dialogue between Jack and Eliza, pretty much all of the last 20 pages). But I had to do a lot of mining through wordy prose to get to those bits. I may continue with The Confusion eventually, but not for a while.

(By the way, if you're thinking of starting the Baroque Cycle, do yourself a favor and pick up Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon instead if you haven't read it. It's the clear influence for this book, and Pynchon kicks Stephenson's ass around the block--he's a better stylist, he's smarter, and he's funnier. And Pynchon's got a gift for brevity--I never thought I'd say that about him, but now I see it's true.)

 

[nitewulf]

not much of a surprise to me. i loved snow crash, but i've been trying to finish cryptonomicon since last summer, im perpetually stuck at the last 150 pages or so. stephenson is a stylish writer, and is highly creative, but he just doesn't have the knack for tight flow. all his novels that i read are brilliant in spurts and extremely lame otherwise. he sorta loses the tightness of narration at some point and starts babbling and going off into tangents.
william gibson, he isn't.

 

[Mifune]

I enjoyed Quicksilver a lot. It was pretty slow-going and dense, and if I had to read one more paragraph about the royal bloodline and the resulting intrigue, I was gonna heave the book across the room. That said, the book is so worth it for the great moments scattered throughout...Daniel's friendship with Isaac at Trinity College, Jack's escape from the witches, Jack's descent into madness, his departure from the story, and that incredibly exhilerating beach rescue with Eliza and William, to name a handful.

I have heard that Quioksilver is the slowest and most dense book of the three, so I wouldn't give up yet, Prospero. Just do like me and wait for the paperbacks of the others. I honestly can't wait to read the next one.

 

[White Man]

I wouldn't be so quick to judge the series on the first book. It's definitely the weakest of the three. I still don't think the series is as good as Cryptonomicon, but it's definitely a good follow-up.

I have all 3 of these, and Cryptonomicon, 1st editions, signed. The Cryptonomicon has uncut pages, too. I bought a second copy to read.

 

[Gorey]

It's sitting in my stack of current reading, and has been for six months. I just can't get past the halfway point. I liked Cryptonomicon quite a bit, but Quicksilver is just too dense somehow.

 

[android]

I just finished Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell and am getting ready to start on the third and fourth Dark Tower books right now, so my giant book quota is filling. I think I'll start these after. I was thinking about these next or the Cryptonomicon books. Which is better?

 

[NichM]

You really owe it to yourself to read the Confusion if you managed to get through Quicksilver, though -- Quicksilver is the meal, and Confusion is 800 pages of dessert. I had similar reservations about the rest of the trilogy after finishing the first book, but I enjoyed the hell out of the Confusion.

 

[Prospero]

I actually bought all three books of the Baroque Cycle in hardcover before I started reading Quicksilver, so I'll get around to them eventually. I've heard somewhat better things about The Confusion, which gives me some hope.

White Man: since you have a 1st ed. of Cryptonomicon, could you do me a favor? I have a first edition of it as well, but I'm trying to verify that the first edition has multiple states. On the back cover of my copy, there's a blurb that says that Stephenson's writing is "a cross between Necromancer and Thomas Pynchon's Vineland." Could you check to see if "Neuromancer" is misspelled on your copy as well?

EDIT: android, Cryptonomicon is much better than what I've read of the Baroque Cycle so far (though just as the Baroque Cycle is strongly influenced by Pynchon's Mason and Dixon, Cryptonomicon is strongly influenced by Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, which I would recommend over it).

 

[SteveMeister]

The Confusion is pretty good. Just finished it last week, and have started The System of the World. These books are all three pretty heavy intellectual investments to read. Lots of characters, lots of locations, lots of stuff going on, and a tremendous amount of detail. It borders on ridiculous, but dammit I'm going to finish them!