Book-The System of the World

I must admit, I breathed a sigh of relief as I finished the last page in this book, the end of a long trilogy, The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson.

The third book, The System of the World, was better than the first two...I finally felt like there was some payoff for going through the other two books. But still Stephenson's style, his overabundance of detail, grated on my nerves.

There was one scene, where Daniel Waterhouse, one of the main characters is in a prison yard. Stephenson tells us where he is in relation to every building around him..."to his left 100 yards away was..." and so on. When Dr. Waterhouse moves, Stephenson tells us again where the building have shifted in relation to his new position..."so now that building was 50 yards on his right.." It is too much, and did not advance the story line. It could have been told as effectively with far fewer words.

The book continues the exploits of Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, Jack Shaftoe, Eliza and Sir Issac Newton, and actually brings all the characters together, with interaction between them all, not separate story lines, like the other books. This was one reason I enjoyed it more. It just should not have taken so long to get here.

The storyline itself was interesting, the change the world saw in this period was amazing...from philosophy, religion, government, finances, science...almost everything was undergoing dramatic change. And these books chronicle much of it through a few main characters and dozens of minor ones. Again...as is Stephenson's habit...too many.

I thought I would enjoy this 2600 pages trilogy much more than I did, and a probably will not be reading Stephenson again.