Wow, I can't even remember when I started this book, 800+ pages as the second book in the 2400+ page The Baroque Cycle trilogy. I feel like a water-skier being pulled by a boat--sections have pulled me along thrillingly with wake-jumping stunts and all. The last couple of hundred pages moved like this. Other parts could not hold my interest, as if the boat didn't have enough power to pull me up out of the water--I have put this one down for months at a time and had to consciously make efforts to...

Excerpt from the journal of Neal Stephenson.What have I done? I must have been out of my mind to think that I could write a trilogy set in the late 17th and early 18th century that used three main fictional characters to explore the political and religious intrigue of the time as well as the development of the first stages of modern science and economics. If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, I had to incorporate a bit of science fiction by including my ageless character Enoch Root and hints tha...

As the Author’s Note informs the reader, The Confusion is really two novels, merged (or, in a pun this novel rather over-uses, con-fused) into one by interlacing their chapters, Bonanza and Juncto, with respectively Jack and Eliza as main characters (Daniel remains somewhat in the background for this volume). Events begin some time (years for Jack, months for Eliza) after we left them in Quicksilver, and that proves to be something of a problem – after enjoying the previous novel more than I had...

I'm writing this review of Neal Stephenson's The Confusion after finishing it and the final book in his The Baroque Cycle. So you can be sure that this review is going to be full of the sort of specifics and vivid details that make book reviews interesting. And you can be sure that, if I didn't think the entire concept took away from the art of reading and writing, that last sentence would have an upside down exclamation mark at the end of it, opensarcasm.com style.My main problem with The Confu...

The Confusion is a typical second book of an atypical trilogy, and that is not at all a criticism. The second book of trilogies always bridge the gap between the first and the last with a focus on character, plot development and building the framework for the payoff. When this is done well, as with The Two Towers, the second installment can hold its own with any installment in the trilogy; when this is done very well, as with Empire Strikes Back (I apologize for the movie reference), it can outs...

The Confusion is Book Two of the Baroque Cycle. While it is an excellent book it did not strike me as profoundly as the first book (Quicksilver). But even a mediocre NS book tends to tower over any rivals and this book, by no means, is to be considered mediocre.If you are familiar with the Baroque cycle, you know that the story centers around a few "main" characters through whom the events of history are viewed. The first book introduced us to the Baroque age and all the changes occurring in soc...

The jig is up, the news is outThey finally found meThe renegade who had it madeRetrieved for a bounty...—From "Renegade", on the 1978 album Pieces of Eight by StyxIf you have been reading my reviews with the close attention that I hope and pray you have, then you saw me mention upon rereading Quicksilver, the first volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, that the most fun was to be had during the swashbuckling and adventurous sections involving Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds

The Confusion is Captain Jack to Quicksilver's Old Jack. This is adventure, much more in the mould of Wilbur Smith - heaps of fun (as my Aussie relatives say!). It's still got that twisty-turny rambling-Stephenson plot, that's as much of a world-tour as it is a narrative arc, but where I thought Quicksilver was utterly fascinating, I thought The Confusion was truly enjoyable - both get 5-stars, but surprisingly different books!I have 40+ books sitting on my 'review-soon' shelf that I just don't

I remember like it was yesterday when I first read Neal Stephenson. I learned about him from a lit blog in 2004 when I had started reading blogs but had not yet started my own. I read Snow Crash (1992) and was blown away. He opened up a whole new world of reading for me called "cyber punk" and led me to William Gibson and on from there.I have read Stephenson's books in the order he wrote them: The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver. The only glitch is that his books are so long and take me

This is the second volume in Stephenson's Baroque cycle.At the end of the last book, Half Cocked Jack was a Galley Slave off the Barbary Coast, Eliza was making a run with her baby from the continent to London, and Daniel Waterhouse had Joined the Royal Court and taken a Mistress.This book picks up several years later. Eliza is captured and brought back to France, Daniel's Mistress died of small pox, and Jack has been cured of the Syph by some sort of extraordinarily high fever, although it has

Reviewing one of Stephenson's tomes is always difficult; this is a huge book with many redeeming and not so redeeming aspects. Stephenson tells us in the prologue that The Confusion is basically two books 'con-fused' together; the two story arcs run parallel in time, so Stephenson gives us a linear narrative divided into two related but discrete tales here. The first follows Eliza-- the former harem slave girl 'half-cocked Jack' rescued from the siege of Vienna by the Turks. The second follows J...

finished the reread of Confusion and while the short review I wrote on the original read is still relevant, the book like the whole Baroque cycle benefits so much on the reread as now I can appreciate the little details too; this being said, The Confusion (the title word itself having quite a few apparitions in the text as the "transition" word from the old to the new) is the most epic adventure/intrigue/picaresque novel of the three, told in chronological order alternating between action in Eur...

It feels like Quicksilver, the first book in this series, was just an (extended!) prologue, establishing the setting and characters, as we finally start getting some plot in this one. This one interleaves the stories of Jack Shaftoe, last seen being taken as a slave on the high seas, and Eliza, the woman he rescued, ironically enough, from slavery. After Jack somehow gets better from syphilis, he joins with a diverse group of fellow slaves, escapes, steals a vast horde of treasure and goes on t...

I sometimes think Neal Stephenson novels are fit only for college professors, especially business professors, with a need for astronomic levels of excitement, but since this category includes *me* I love this series. The form of the novels reminds me of a baroque and convoluted Candide - a picaresque in which philosophical speculation trades places back and forth with big-time all-star adventure - burning ships, mistaken identities, kidnappings, mounds and piles of gold, murderous Jesuits, etc.