The Culturatti

Part I / Part II

The Baroque Cycle — Vol III: The System of the World

Neal Stephenson

***WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUNDETH***

So, now finally at the end of this eight-book series (collected in three volumes), I see it can broken down thusly:

Books 1, 2 & 3 — Introduction

Books 4, 5 & 6 — Plot/Action

Books 7 & 8 — Denouement

Which isn’t really a bad way of structuring something, in terms of simply how to tell a story in parts; but when, as indicated above, those parts are whole books unto themselves, well, it could be considered a little tedious.  In fact, is a little tedious.  Books 7 & 8 — especially Book 8 — while I’ve labelled them denouement, could also be described as ‘anti-climax.’  For, really, nothing much happens.

(more…)

Part I

The Baroque Cycle — Vol II: The Confusion

Neal Stephenson

I actually finished this one a couple of months ago, but didn’t write about it at the time for various reasons.  But I have now just started reading Vol. III, The System of the World, which has got me all excited about this series again, and there’s no way I can contain my inner Culturatti-ness any longer.  Ergo this long overdue post.

This volume is definitely the meat and potatoes of the series.  You want plot?  This is where you get it.  As I mentioned in Part I, Quicksilver is almost all set-up and introduction: to the characters, to the world of the time etc.  There’s really no actual ’story’ at all; this is fine since what Stephenson does give us is so well-written and interesting we happily follow along.  But it’s in The Confusion that we finally have all the disparate pieces flung together, and, I have to say, I was not at all expecting what came out of it.  The central, core plot device is both so simple for an expert on that time period to use, and yet so clever (to use it in the way he does) that it really provides for an enthralling yarn.

(more…)