Finished The System of the World last night, and as the reading has proved to be something of an Undertaking, I feel as if I should talk about it a teensy bit to you all.
I say Undertaking, because the entire Baroque Cycle weighs in at something like 2,600 pages and too me something like 3 years to complete, of which Quicksilver took me three years to read from 2004-2006, counting a reread of the first third, the Confusion was worth a couple of months in 2006, and The System of the World took about 6 months in 2006-2007.
The length it took to read them isn't because they're bad. On the contrary. But they're packed with intensely dense prose, covering some very diverse and complex subjects (as is to be expected when Sir Isaac Newton is greatly involved as a character). Fiction does not generally make me mentally exhausted, but these books do. Which is good, yet, well, tiring. They are also written in such a way that the weavings of entire books worth of plot is not made clear unto the reader until the last two hundred pages or so of The System of the World, which makes for an interesting time reading Quicksilver and The Confusion, wherein one is obliged to smile, nod, and accept that People are doing Things, the Purpose for which shall be made clear in Time. Which they are. It is a mark of Stephenson's genius that while reading the end of System, I was thinking back to events from the first two books and saying "Oh! I GET it now!" and in general inside of the last 50 pages or so the whole thing suddenly makes sense and literally years of life are suddenly revealed to have had purpose and meaning. Which is utterly brilliant.
Too, it is not often one sees a series of books set during the Enlightenment, dealing with Men of Science as well as Commerce, not to mention assorted and diverse Soldiers, Pirates, Swashbucklers, Monarchs, Exploders of Infernal Devices, not to mention the odd Woman of Pleasure.
So the Baroque Cycle is really good, and you should go read it, albeit with the understanding that it's one of those series that, to readers, seperates the Men from the boys, as it were. Also Whir will generally appreciate Cryptonomicon more.
Posted by Dwip at September 15, 2007 10:21 AM