Finishing up Stephenson's Baroque Cycle

Quick notes as I reach the halfway point in Neal Stephenson's third book of the Baroque Cycle:
    This is a luxuriant, charming work.  As before, the novel glories in details and obsessions.  There's the steady rain of historical detail, with bits of fiction woven in, and a touch of fantasy.
    We see more of Newtorn and less of Jack, which makes for a good balance.
    One downside: what happened to the glorious writers of the period?  It's as if the chacters work around London precisely to avoid Swift, Pope, and that splendid group.
    Another downside: the book suffers from a geek's assessment of religion as functional, rather than content-based.  Beliefs are political, but have little weight of themselves.  That's quite ahistorical in this period (and would be so for our own epoch).

Comments

[Scott Leslie]

The one and only problem I have with the Baroque Cycle is that I have a really hard time recommending it to others to read. Not because it's not great - it's both encyclopaedic and stirring at the same time, who could ask for more? - but because I know few people either crazy or dedicated enough to recommend 2700 pages of text to at one time. (I should probably find a better class of people to hang out with!) So I end up turning folks on to Cryptonomicon (and Snow Crash for the absolute virgins) which, while it lacks the 'Baroque' setting of the trilogy, for my money packs almost the same intellectual whallop alongside as rollicking a plot into about two-thirds less pages.

[Harold Jarche]

Just starting the third book, and looking forward to it. Haven't enjoyed a series this much since the 8 volume "House of Niccolo" series by Dorothy Dunnett, http://www.dorothydunnett.co.uk/
Try recommending EIGHT books, of ~1,000 pages each, to your friends ;-)

[Reed]

I'm halfway through Confusion, having enjoyed Quicksilver. Lucky I'm a fan or I'd have given up on this one long ago. Seems like Stephenson set out to write the most long winded, tedious, lengthy text full of useless digressions and explanations and atrocious dialog, that he could get away with. Looks like the scheme has worked so far. Course, not that any of his books have ever been elegant and efficient fiction, just full of interesting ideas.