Flutterby™! : Quicksilver update? 2003-10-31 18:27:14.45097+00

Quicksilver update?

2003-10-31 18:27:14.45097+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

So has anyone out there finished Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver? I'm about two thirds of the way through, unless something completely amazing happens I'm already pretty sure I don't care about the next two books in the series, and I'm trying to convince myself that it's worth finishing this one.

None of the brilliant prose that defined Snow Crash. None of the great ideas of The Diamond Age. The wonderful descriptions of processes in Cryptonomicon have been replaced with scenes that'd make a sitcom writer cringe.

And Bill tells me it doesn't get any better by the end.

#Comment Re: Quicksilver update? made: 2003-10-31 20:17:15.41172+00 by: debby

I finished it last night. Like you, I found it difficult to get through, mostly because I have little interest in late 17th-century political intrigue. That said, I love Eliza, and I was willing to slog through the rest of the book to find out more about her. And of course I'm curious to know how Enoch Root fits into the other two books.

#Comment Re: Quicksilver update? made: 2003-11-01 01:20:00.884426+00 by: Dan Lyke

I like Eliza, but the scene in which she was introduced went from action sequence to extremely annoying sit-com dialogue in way too short a time. And Half-Cocked Jack suffers from the "makes obvious mistakes" problem, which would be fine if his place in the world weren't as a counter-culture god.

I think I'd be less ticked off about it if I were reading it in paperback, but as I slog through more "Waterhouse wandering around London" I keep thinking back to Mary Gentle's Grunts, which I don't think actually contains the exact phrase I see most often cited to it, "Here seargent, pass me another elf, this one's split", but managed to take way too many pages to push over its approximately one good idea.

#Comment Re: Quicksilver update? made: 2003-11-01 03:31:09.725059+00 by: John Robb