his volume forms the middle part of Neal Stephenson's massive Baroque Cycle. It follows hard on the heels of Quicksilver, which appeared recently, in September 2003, and heralds the publication of The System of the World, which is slated for September 2004. If the last book bulks as large as the first two, then Stephenson and his publisher will have issued a single vast novel of nearly 3,000 pages—for that is what these three volumes constitute—in the space of only 12 months. Truly, then this is a Baroque work, accepting the definition of "baroque" as recomplicated and overwhelmingly ornamented, contrapuntal and elaborate.
It is manifestly impossible, in this small space, to summarize either the combined 1,800 pages of the Baroque Cycle issued to date, or even the plot of the second volume alone, for the events of the second book are manifold and hinge utterly on its predecessor. In barest outline, this is what the reader should know.
The events of the novel(s) take place between the years 1655 and 1713. These years span the life of Daniel Waterhouse, who is a youth in England in 1655 and an elderly savant in America in 1713. Waterhouse is friends with his fellow natural philosophers Isaac Newton, John Locke and Gottfreid Leibniz (whose theory of monads rivals Newton's theory of gravity). Waterhouse will play a pivotal role in the political and cultural upheavals of his era. In Quicksilver we were also introduced to Jack Shaftoe and Eliza of Qwghlm. When they meet, Jack is King of the Vagabonds, and Eliza a slave of the Turks, whom he rescues. The two fall immensely in love, and yet by the end of Quicksilver they are estranged, with Eliza becoming a conniving courtier in the Versailles of Louis XIV and Jack captured by pirates.
The Confusion is basically the story of how Jack and Eliza meet up once again. But their meeting, which forms the penultimate chapter of the book, comes about only after 13 years of separation, a period filled with innumerable adventures for both lovers. Jack endures servitude as a galley slave chained to his oar. He forms a compact with nine other slaves to escape and to rob a Spanish ship carrying much silver. The pact is carried through, but not with the anticipated conclusions. Jack and friends are harried across the Mediterranean. They travel through Africa and the Middle East to India. They lose their spoils, regain their footing as merchantmen of a sort, voyage to Japan and the South Seas, have adventures in South America, and are betrayed into chains once more, all before Jack finally finds himself standing before Louis XIV and Eliza. But this longed-for meeting is not the happy ending Jack hoped for, and he is sent on another capricious, impossible quest at the novel's end.
Eliza, meanwhile, has become a duchess, given birth three times, survived smallpox, ruined enemies, helped the king prosecute his war against England, dabbled in natural philosophy and alchemy, invented sophisticated financial systems and taken on many lovers, while always keeping Jack in her heart.
Three other major threads among many subplots in the book consist of the doings of an immortal alchemist named Enoch Root; the parallel quest by Jack's brother Bob for his own lost love, Abigail Frome; and the maturation of Jack's abandoned sons, Danny and Jimmy.
Straight historical novel or steampunk?
What is Stephenson trying to do in this series of books? Knowing the intentions of any writer is essential for determining his success or failure. And whether a writer's intentions match or frustrate the expectations of his audience is another vital question as well.
The Baroque Cycle is a prequel to Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (1999). (Many of the newer characters are the ancestors of those in Cryptonomicon.) That equally massive book, like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) was cast as a vast, picaresque conspiracy novel that would reveal the secret 20th-century roots of our present Information Age. It is only logical to expect, then, that the current books would be intended to reveal the roots of the roots, so to speak, the formative events and shaping forces and personages who created the modern era. In this way, the Baroque Cycle then would have become analogous to Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (1997), which took place at a similar remove from GR. And is this type of project not the essence of steampunk, which strives to overlay modern or postmodern concerns and conceits atop the past to tease out common features?
But if this is Stephenson's intent, then he's gone astray somewhere. The steampunkish elements of his tale are minimized. The roots he's attempting to expose—the invention of modern trading and banking policies, the rise of science and technology from alchemy and natural philosophy, the liberation of the individual by the Enlightenment—are buried, subsumed, swamped, obnubilated (to use one of his favorite words) by the sheer masses of period detail and the recomplicated plotting.
Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, if all we are looking for is sheer historical thrills, a mix of verisimilitude and over-the-top action. But we will have to put aside our science-fictional aspirations, as Stephenson seems to have done, and settle for a more-or-less straight historical saga. Judged on that plane, these books deliver plenty of rewards. Stephenson has plainly steeped himself up to the eyebrows in his chosen era, and can render entertaining treatises on the distillation of phosphorus or life as a galley slave that carry absolute authenticity. And his genius with elaborate set pieces of plotting is exemplary. The battle in Cairo during which Jack gets to slaughter an archenemy goes on vividly for pages and pages, yet never lags. Likewise, Stephenson's antic humor, his flair for creating characters and his ability to make every last coincidence and historical tidbit dovetail are remarkable.
But if we wanted this kind of pure historical romance, we'd be reading Patrick O'Brian. Where are the observations and insights that relate all this ocean of storytelling to our current era? Lost in a welter of (mostly) entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean material. A single sentence from Enoch Root that parodies Clarke's Law—"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo"—is hardly enough to carry the day.
