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Avg. Customer Review: 
 Wonderful story!
Stephenson's very long historical novel, the sequel to Quicksilver is here! Confusion courses with Stephenson's scholarship but is rarely bogged down with too much historical detail. Stephenson is especially impressive in his ability to represent dialogue over the evolving worldview of seventeenth-century scientists and enliven the most abstruse explanation of theory. Though replete with science, the novel is as much about the complex struggles for political ascendancy and the workings of financial markets. Further, the novel's literary ambitions match its physical size. Stephenson narrates through epistolary chapters, fragments of plays and poems, journal entries, maps, drawings, genealogic tables, and copious contemporary epigrams. Stephenson has matched ambition to execution, and his faithful, durable readers will be both entertained and richly rewarded with a practicum in Baroque science, cypher, culture, and politics as the story continues. I'm always sad to finish long novels, because life seems so mundane afterward. For fun, if you are open minded and looking for those books begging for its pages to be turned...look no further. I just read a copy of Edgar Fouche's 'Alien Rapture,' which also blew me away. Perhaps, most of all, it was because Fouche was a Top Secret Black Program 'insider', whose credibility has been verified over and over. I also really liked Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons.' Want to be shocked, check out Dr. Paul Hill's 'Unconventional Flying Objects,' which NASA tried to ban. The possibility of NASA and Government cover-ups makes truth stranger than fiction, which is based on someone's truth. Anyway great reading all.
The sequel to Quicksilver is here!,
Stephenson's very long historical novel, the sequel to Quicksilver is here! Confusion courses with Stephenson's scholarship but is rarely bogged down with too much historical detail. Stephenson is especially impressive in his ability to represent dialogue over the evolving worldview of seventeenth-century scientists and enliven the most abstruse explanation of theory. Though replete with science, the novel is as much about the complex struggles for political ascendancy and the workings of financial markets. Further, the novel's literary ambitions match its physical size. Stephenson narrates through epistolary chapters, fragments of plays and poems, journal entries, maps, drawings, genealogic tables, and copious contemporary epigrams. Stephenson has matched ambition to execution, and his faithful, durable readers will be both entertained and richly rewarded with a practicum in Baroque science, cypher, culture, and politics as the story continues. I'm always sad to finish long novels, because life seems so mundane afterward. For fun, if you are open minded and looking for those books begging for its pages to be turned...look no further. I just read a copy of Edgar Fouche's 'Alien Rapture,' which also blew me away. Perhaps, most of all, it was because Fouche was a Top Secret Black Program 'insider', whose credibility has been verified over and over. I also really liked Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons.' Want to be shocked, check out Dr. Paul Hill's 'Unconventional Flying Objects,' which NASA tried to ban. The possibility of NASA and Government cover-ups makes truth stranger than fiction, which is based on someone's truth. Anyway great reading all.
Absolutely Briliant
This is a beast of a book, wild, ferocious and full of mystery. One of those mysteries is the origin of the modern world. Using the medium of fiction, Stephanson strips away layer after layer of recieved wisdom and shows us how a few extrodinary people, and a great deal of ordinary ones, invented the modern notions of finance, banking, credit, trade, stock markets, globalization and the little matter of science. Yes, these people invented science as we know it. And Stephanson will show you the world they inhabited, page after page, untill you feel that you are amongst the greatest minds Europe ever produced. Which is not to say that The Confusion is all about dry academic discourse. The first page of the book finds Jack Shafto miraculusly cured of syphilis, wandering confusedly on a beach while a fifteen hundred gun salute is fired in the honor of the Caliph. From there, we are engaged in one of the best travelouges, adventure stories and general assembiledges of all out mayhem ever collected in one volume. In the spirit of equal oppertunities, this is not strictly a lads book. Equal time is given to Eliza, a former Harem virgin,and by her own wits and courage created a duchess in two nations. Also, by the end of the book, a mother of three. Now, this is a long book, and jam packed with details. Like the art which insipred it's name, the book contains ever increasing levels of ornimentation and detail, built on mathimatically and geometricly pure lines. Well, curves actually. Quite often, the reader can become lost in the welth of images and imagry. Not to worry. Stephanson provides both Newton and Liebinitz to explain the nature of those curves and ornimentation. Even if the titans occasionally disagree.
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