Quicksilver

Book One of The Baroque Cycle

By: Neal Stephenson

Narrated by: Neal Stephenson (introduction), Kevin Pariseau, Simon Prebble

Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

In this first volume of Neal Stephenson’s genre-defying epic, Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and courageous Puritan, pursues knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.

The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson’s award-winning series, spans the late 17th and early 18th centuries, combining history, adventure, science, invention, piracy, and alchemy into one sweeping tale. It is a gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive historical epic populated by the likes of Isaac Newton, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, and King Louis XIV, along with some of the most inventive literary characters in modern fiction.

Audible’s complete and unabridged presentation of The Baroque Cycle was produced in cooperation with Neal Stephenson. Each volume includes an exclusive introduction read by the author.

Listen to more titles in the Baroque Cycle.

©2003 Neal Stephenson (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“[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)

“A book of immense ambition, learning, and scope, Quicksilver is often brilliant and occasionally astonishing in its evocation of a remarkable time and place.” ( Washington Post Book World)

Quicksilver isn’t quick

This is a challenging book and you really have to pay attention. It’s not light reading. Still, very interesting and worth the listen.

Forest Gump for the Natural Sciences

I was first introduced to Neal Stephenson through his book Cryptonomicon (to which, in some ways, Quicksilver is a distant prequel). I loved Cryptonomicon, with its intricate plotlines, its fantastic characters, and its tidy resolution. I was eager to read more.

Quicksilver was a good book, but it did not live up to Cryptonomicon primarily because it is too slow moving.

If you are interested in natural sciences and the history of the Royal Society, this is a playful historical fiction that is extremely interesting in its portrayal of those scientists, their debates and activities.

The main character is a sort of ambling good-natured scientist who meanders through various scientific societies making acquaintance with some of the great minds of the time through seeming happenstance. In this respect, I loved the book and its completely irreverent approach to these great minds.

However, it had none of the adventure, urgency, or swashbuckling of Cryptonomicon. It was an interesting read, but a very slow one. Amusing and entertaining, but never gripping.

Extremely entertaining

This was extremely well done. Excellent story it excellent story. Excellent narration. Excellent research. Thank you very much.

Awesome way to read this book

I read this series first and then about 15 years later came back to them through audible. The writing and the narration go so well together. I’m so impressed! Strongly recommend.

Hg is the elementary form of all things fusible...

"That one man sickens and dies, while another flourishes, are characters in the cryptic message that philosophers seek to decode."
- Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

Not done, with BIG Quicksilver, just finished internal-Book 1: Quicksilver. It gives a bit of a low-brow SF Pynchon vibe. It works well in parts, and falls a bit flat in parts. I sometimes wish Stephenson wouldn't chase down every last snowflake. I really do, however, enjoy the primary narrator Daniel Waterhouse and his interactions with such figures as Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, John Wilkins, etc.

Having already read Cryptonomicon, I was also glad to see Enoch Root (one of my favorite characters from that book). Like Pynchon, Stephenson takes historical fiction and probes the fiction needle into history at funky angles. He thrills at causing his fictional characters to interact in oblique ways to historical characters. Given the large amount of negative space in history (think about how much we DON'T know about people like Newton, or even the consumate diariest Pepys), a creative writer of historical fiction can bend/reflect/refract the light of the past to tell many compelling stories (and they don't even have to be plausable, they just can't completely contradict major historical events).

The only reason I'm giving this a 1-star for performance is I find it RI·DIC·U·LOUS that I have to buy three credits worth of books to listen to 'Quicksilver' (the Volume, not the sub-Book). It seems a bit like William Morrow & Co is milking the structure of this book a bit.

Interesting but not flawless

I found this book to be interesting and entertaining, and enlightening of the period. It makes me want to read up on the history of the period. The biggest problem is that it leaves you in the middle of the story, with no conclusion at all, so you have to read the rest if you want to know what's going on. This seems to be a trend in some of the recent scifi/fantasy series I've been "reading," and I don't much like it at all.

Oddly enough I like it.

Short on story, long on details; somehow, I still liked it. The narration was excellent.

Eight Course Meal

I don't understand why some listeners are having a hard time getting through "Quicksilver." We all need to remember that this is just the first book of eight in The Baroque Cycle series. If you haven't read anything from Neal Stephenson before, please stop reading this review and go get some of his other titles to get familiarize with his style of writing.

That being said, I found "Quicksilver" to be excellent with the quirky math and the overall history of the 17th and 18th centuries in the European era. The characters are not all strict and serious. In fact, they are pretty humorous.

Like a five course meal, you start with a soup and salad. In the Baroque Cycle, there are seven more courses to go. I really enjoy at understanding the premise and hungry for more plates.

Just think as "Quicksilver" as an eight course meal that you just started.

Very Disappointing

Contrary to all the good reviews, I found this a big disappointing. Only because the narrators were great was I able to bet all the way through it. IMO it is a poor science history and is unnecessarily long.

By turns entertaining and tedious

Although I enjoyed the story overall and the narrator was quite good, there were points in the book where things just dragged on and on and on... It could have been a much shorter story with just as much impact.