Books by author: Neal Stephenson

Interface is very much like a Michael Crichton book ( Terminal Man, for example). It has the same level of pseudoscience and the same loopy plot style. It's as good as Crichton, and as bad. Fun, but not lasting.

It's difficult to evaluate the middle novel in a trilogy, especially when you like the author but pretty much hated the first book in the series (Quicksilver). That said, I liked The Confusion. It focuses on the most interesting characters from the first book, Jack and Eliza, and it has a much more consistent level of action than its predecessor. Although the prose is still full of baroque detail, there's a lot more momentum here, and the plot is more self-contained. The Confusion changes my rating of the overall series from two stars (pretty much don't bother) to nearly three stars (worth it if you like the genre).

If The Baroque Cycle can be viewed as a massive, nearly 3,000 page story arc, perhaps the problem with Quicksilver is that the curvature at the beginning of the arc is too small to be detectable — it's all setup with very little development and no payoff. Continuing this line of thought, The Confusion contains the peak of the arc, and things develop at a pace that mostly fits inside the reader's head. This would suggest that the third installment, The System of the World will consist mostly of resolution. There are plenty of threads remaining to tie up, so this could be the case, but I'm a bit concerned that the remaining loose threads aren't so much the interesting ones (except, perhaps for the mystery that is Enoch Root).

I've got two new massive books (Dan Simmon's Olympos and the new Harry Potter) to read before I consider picking up the conclusion of this series, but I doubt I'll wait the 18 months I took between books one and two.

Much better than his other novels. I'm a little hesitant to rate it a "5", because it's not really one of the greatest books I have ever read, but I enjoyed it more than many of the books I've given a "4" in recent months. The story is excellent; the prose is coherent (but nothing special).

While The Diamond Age is a better novel than Snow Crash, it's not as good as the novels I've been giving four stars in recent months. Two years ago, it probably would have merited a higher rating, but my taste has changed. I'm no longer satisfied with this kind of pseudoscience romp. While it is one of the better science fiction genre novels I've read, it doesn't have the language craft that has become my main reading focus. The subject matter (nanotechnology and inter-cultural relations) is interesting but not compelling, and the plot elements all come together, albeit in a contrived way (much like a John Irving novel, but not as well done). For these reasons, I'd recommend this book highly to genre fans only.

"Baroque" is an apt subtitle for this book. Stephenson's novel is densely packed with minute detail that, if one were forgiving, one might describe as ornament. I'm not feeling so generous, so I'm going to call it pedantic. It appears that Stephenson spent several years doing exhaustive research on the late 17th century, and then felt obliged to include everything he learned. So the slick, flowing images that are brought up by the title Quicksilver are exactly not embodied by this doorstop of a book.

That said, there is a lot of genuinely interesting information in Quicksilver. Stephenson has done an admirable job of making the setting very rich, and in giving his characters detailed backstories. However, in the midst of all this, he forgot to include a plot. There are a handful of excellent — but very short — plot-driven segments (the attack by pirate ships in Plymouth Bay; the siege of Vienna; Jack's pursuit into the mines), yet there's absolutely no sense of larger story, and these vignettes could have been done as short stories, saving about 800 pages of meandering. I understand that this is a three volume work, and I've only read the first third, but you'd think Stephenson would want to give his readers a compelling reason to read the followup works. Even the "cliffhanger" at the very end is anything but — we knew 900 pages earlier that the character in peril will live for quite some time longer. And we even know that he'll procreate, so there's no need to worry about his plumbing.

A lot of readers have pointed out the character parallels between Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon: there are Waterhouses, Shaftoes, and Roots in both novels. In fact, we're led to believe that Enoch Root is the same character in both. If so, it would appear that his lifespan is more than 300 years. It's hard to imagine an explanation that doesn't turn these "historical" fiction books into "science" fiction. Maybe Root's a time-traveller, or perhaps he's found an alchemical fountain-of-youth, or better yet, maybe he's the Wandering Jew. Or it may just be that Enoch Root is a name taken on by a sequence of people who have belonged to the same secret society through the ages. So far, any clues to his true nature have been obscured by Stephenson's dense thicket of prose.

It could be that Quicksilver is an extremely elaborate setup for a payoff that will come in the other two books of the "cycle" (Stephenson eschews the word "trilogy"). I will probably read book two, but I won't be in line at the bookstore the day it's released the way I was with this one. And Stephenson is going to have to work hard to get back into my good graces.

As a final note, I point you to The Metaweb , a collaborative hypertext exploration of the contents of The Baroque Cycle. Some of the answers may rest there.

Snow Crash has the best opening of any science fiction novel I've read since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. After a few pages, it drops in quality (the prose becomes much less witty and original) but maintains a decent level. The novel keeps up a break-neck action-packed pace, with some rather interesting views of early (Sumerian, mucho B.C.) religion and neurolinguistics. Snow Crash is good, but it's not as amazing as it's cracked up to be.

This is an enjoyable read but it's nowhere near the league of Cryptonomicon.