Quicksilver

Book One of The Baroque Cycle

By: Neal Stephenson

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

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)

LOVED IT!

I really loved this book...and the sequels...I'm up to the third one and I find them all big fun! It's going to be one of those series that I will be sad to have it finish. I look forward to my commute time so I can catch up on my listening. I guess I'm a bit of a girl-geek who loves history...maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much. It reminds me of the Ken Follet books about the middle-ages, which I enjoyed as well!

Also learned a valuable lesson -- I shouldn't put too much stock in reviews, since this book got such bad ones and if I'd read those before I bought the book I might not have.

WARNING

This is not "Quicksilver" the first volume of the three volume Baroque Cycle.

This is "Quicksilver" the first *book* of the first volume. The first printed volume, also conveniently called "Quicksilver", contains "Quicksilver", "King of the Vagabonds", and "Odalisque". Theses are separate purchases on Audible.

So, other than being a bit disappointed to find out that I bought "Quicksilver" instead of "Quicksilver", it's a quite enjoyable story. If you're a science geek like me, you'll enjoy the fictionalized account of Newton, Hooke, Leibnitz and other key players in this key point our history.

The audio quality and narration is also particularly good, though the Dutch, German and French accents all sound a bit similar.

Definitely good.

Here's the deal: when I work on projects around the house I like to listen to audiobooks. This book is ideal because Simon Prebble has an amazing voice, and the book is nice and long. I had read the book so it was easy for me to follow along. If you want constant action, this isn't for you. The action scenes are few and far between, and Stephensen puts long, boring dialogs in all of his books which is when I hit x2. Otherwise, just be patient and you'll be hooked. Eventually.

Listening makes easy work of this long novel

There are a lot of reasons one might be tempted to skip this book (too long, not interested in old English history, no female characters, no plot), but one very good reason to pick it up: amazing writing. Although the themes of this novel and Snow Crash (still my favorite Stephenson novel) couldn’t be more different, the same brilliant writing is present in each. In Quicksilver, Stephenson fascinates with an account of the beginnings of modern science in the 1600s in England, throwing in a good bit of English history to boot. Want to know why coins have little markings on their sides? How sundials work? When the burning of London happened? What kinds of experiments the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge did in the first years after its founding? It’s all here, along with pirates, religion, politics, wars and blunderbusses. There’s barely a plot to hold it all together, but still I couldn’t put it down. I am definitely going to be reading the next book in the series.

[I listened to this as an audio book performed by Simon Prebble and Kevin Pariseau. They did a marvelous job. I decided to listen at 1.25 speed, which was great, really made the book fly by. I finished in about a week! I would highly recommend this as a truly enjoyable listen.]

Always good

I've read the Baroque Cycle trilogy twice since publication - it is extraordinary fiction. The very things that make it enjoyable to me - finely-grained, dense story telling - also seem to be the very things that many of the reviewers here don't like about it.

The plot is rich, particularly if you know your history - Stephenson's story telling and characters come through with developments that are pure kick, intriguing, complex, humane, and understandable.

Simon Prebble's narration is perfectly fitting and well done - masterful acting, really. The many characters are all distinct to the ear and the imagination. If you liked the read, you shouldn't be dissappointed.