Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)

Rating:
Summary: Immense potential - but a victim of its own cleverness
Review: "Too many notes!"

I truly wanted to love this book. I was not at all daunted by the size of the tome (although it was a bit of a lower-back strain to lug it around), nor the topic (I like big sprawling picaresque novels), but found myself steadily growing bogged down throughout my reading of it. I'm not sure I will be able to handle the second and third books in this trilogy.

Stephenson possesses an incredible talent for turning a phrase, and clearly has a ravenous apetite for 17th c. European history and intrigue (which I also love), but in Quicksilver he shows himself, sadly, to be a rather poor storyteller. It seems to me that he fell prey to his own pleasure in language, and forgot all about us, the gentle readers. I'm of the school that one should write to communicate, and wit and historical detail should stay a close second lest it be construed as a clever child showing off.

The issue isn't really with the multiple protagonists, overall. It's with the fact that the protagonists themselves aren't sufficiently highlighted in the foreground of the plot(s) for me to follow them around without getting dizzy. I found the sections that focused on Daniel somewhat dull, but perhaps his character merely was. Eliza is a delight, as is Jack; I've always loved Pepys, Newton, et al. I enjoyed the interweaving of fictional and historical characters immensely, and found many pages so quoteworthy I nearly spat out my coffee from laughing aloud, but ultimately found myself so distracted by the cast of thousands, multilayered plot lines, playing back/forth with time settings, that my interest flagged...

At bottom, Quicksilver has a whole lot of words and ultimately says little. It needs flowcharts, diagrams, and hyperlinks to remind us where we, and the characters, are at.

For some examples very well written historical fiction, set a bit later, read "The Sot-Weed Factor" by John Barth. Or, more frolick-y, "The Crimson Petal and the White" by Michel Faber. I ate 'em both up.