Synopses & Reviews
In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver... nay, gold... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe.
Meanwhile, back in Europe...
The exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings, onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession her child.
While...
Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly minted (or not) in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead... and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.
Review
"[H]efty but propulsive....Packed with more derring-do than a dozen pirate films and with smarter, sparklier dialogue than a handful of Pulitzer winners, this is run-and-gun adventure fiction of the most literate kind." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Stephenson is a graceful writer, never getting bogged down in detail, keeping the story moving, dazzling us with his technique....[A]nyone who reads this one will [await the third volume] with breathless anticipation." David Pitt, Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"[E]very bit as rollicking and overstuffed as its predecessor....[B]rimming with a hail-fellow-well-met good cheer, at the heart of which lies a genuinely fun pirate romance." Stephen Metcalf, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"The Baroque Cycle...will defy any category, genre, precedent, or label except genius....Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking, and thrilling." Time
Review
"In its complexity, as well as the way it creates a vibrant fantasy world...the Baroque Cycle is one of the closest analogues to The Lord of the Rings trilogy we're likely to come across." Marc Mohan, The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
Review
"[A] work of idiosyncratic beauty whose plots boast tangled, borderless roots....[Stephenson's] globe (an irregular pearl?) never ceases to astonish us or its own creator, even as it grows smaller with each new discovery." David Ng, The Village Voice
Review
"Stephenson seems to take his aesthetic cue from [the Baroque] era's architecture, renowned for its elaborate embellishments and over-the-top ornamentation. And it works....[N]either confused nor confusing but a dazzlingly orderly display of meaningful intricacy." Nisi Shawl, The Seattle Times
Review
"[W]hen Stephenson completes his ambitious Baroque Cycle...he might just have created the definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk love story. No easy feat, that. (Grade: A-)" John Giuffo, Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Stephenson excels in marrying geekspeak with riotous action. When he describes a battle or a duel, his prose acquires thrilling panache....Unfortunately, these vibrant scenes are rare in a vast, dreary landscape." Josh Lacey, The Guardian (U.K.)
Review
"Brimming with period detail and spiced with literate humor reminiscent of the works of John Barth, this prequel to Stephenson's sf thriller Cryptonomicon demonstrates his masterly storytelling. Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"The Confusion is a rousing adventure of action and ideas, funny, gripping and informative....No matter where Stephenson finishes up, [this series] will have been one heck of a voyage." Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"The Confusion's greatest flaw...is bound up with its most striking achievement....His novel, stuffed with exposition and descriptions of places and processes, lacks narrative drive." Mark Kamine, Times Literary Supplement
Review
"Stephenson has plainly steeped himself up to the eyebrows in his chosen era, and can render entertaining treatises...that carry absolute authenticity. And his genius with elaborate set pieces of plotting is exemplary. (Grade: B+)" Paul Di Filippo, SciFi.com
Review
"[A] brawny, barrel-chested work of beauty. Stephenson's unique prose style at once charmingly old-fashioned and punk rock snappy is usually enough of an incentive to keep turning pages....[U]nparalleled geek literature..." Eric S. Elkins, The Denver Post
Review
"The plots...multiply and cross-pollinate faster than e-mail viruses, conveyed at times by passages so creakingly expository and characters so unrelentingly wooden you take the good with the bad with Stephenson you fear for splinters..." John Burns, Toronto Globe and Mail
Review
"The characters laying the bricks of this lengthy plot are an uninspiring lot....There is a story...but it is so smothered in ornament, discursion and detail that it's often impossible to see what unifies the whole." John Alden, The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"Stephenson has always excelled at pushing to the limits of absurdity....What Stephenson seems to be telling us throughout the Baroque Cycle is that the actual way things really happened the way systems of credit were created, or timber delivered is just as kooky as anything that a fabulist could concoct out of the wild speculation of his or her own mind." Andrew Leonard, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)
Synopsis
The second in the Baroque Cycle three-volume epic tale,
The Confusion
picks up where Quicksilver left off, and, as expected, thrills readers until its final page.
About the Author
Neal Stephenson is the author of Reamde, Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon; The Diamond Age; Snow Crash, which was named one of Time magazine's top one hundred all-time best English-language novels; and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.