From Publishers Weekly
The title of Stephenson's vast, splendid and absorbing sequel to Quicksilver (2003) suggests the state of mind that even devoted fans may face on occasion as they follow the glorious and exceedingly complex parallel stories of Jack Shaftoe, amiable criminal mastermind, and Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, courageous secret agent and former prisoner in a Turkish harem. In 1689, Jack recovers his memory in Algiers, evades galley slavery and joins a quest for the lost treasure of a Spanish pirate named Carlos Olancho Macho y Macho. This leads to adventures at sea worthy of Patrick O'Brian, and hairbreadth escapes from the jaws of the Inquisition. Meanwhile, Eliza is captured by the historical (and distinguished) French privateer Jean Bart while trying to escape to England with her baby. She must then navigate the intrigues of the court of Louis XIV, which are less lethal than those of the Inquisition by a small margin, but still make for uneasy sleep for a friendless female spy. Her correspondence with such scientific minds as Wilhelm Leibniz helps propel the saga's chronicling of the roots of modern science at a respectable clip. Of course, one can't call anything about the Baroque Cycle "brisk," but the richness of detail and language lending verisimilitude t? the setting and depth to the characters should be reward enough for most readers. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
This “con-fusion” of two distinct novels (Juncto and Bonanza), alternating between Jack and Eliza’s stories, is a must-read for Stephenson fans. Though neither entry in the Baroque Cycle has impressed the critics as much as some of Stephenson’s previous work, The Confusion proves his narrative skills are still in fine shape. Casual readers beware: many critics feel the lengthy scientific and historical digressions, however well researched and explicated, tend to hold up the story. If the book suffers from an information glut or stylistic terseness, then it is the cracking plot and rich milieu of the Baroque world that set the ship right.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* This guy really likes to write long books. Cyptonomicon, his 1999 epic, was roughly the same length as the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Quicksilver (2003), the first volume of his Baroque Cycle, was well over 900 pages, and this second installment is in the same ballpark. It picks up the story in 1689. Jack Shaftoe, self-proclaimed king of the vagabonds, is a galley slave, but that's soon going to change: he and nine of his fellow slaves engineer an escape. Their plan, to steal a cache of Spanish silver, turns out better (and also worse) than they could have imagined. Meanwhile, Eliza, a notorious spy whom Jack once rescued from a Turkish harem, is trying to get to London with her newborn baby. Set during one of history's most exciting times, from 1600 to 1750, this series brilliantly captures the intellectual excitement and cultural revolution of the era. With real-life supporting characters such as Isaac Newton and Wilhelm Leibnitz, the series blends fact and fiction so cleverly that it is virtually impossible to separate one from the other. Stephenson is a graceful writer, never getting bogged down in detail, keeping the story moving, dazzling us with his technique. The concluding volume of the trilogy is scheduled to appear in October 2004, and it's fair to say anyone who reads this one will spend the intervening months waiting with breathless anticipation. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Entertainment Weekly
[T]he definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk-love story. No easy feat, that. A-.


Entertainment Weekly
"[T]he definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk-love story. No easy feat, that. A-."


New York Times
"As rollicking and overstuffed as its predecessor [Quicksilver]."


Book Description

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves -- including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox -- devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger -- a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver ... nay, gold ... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe.

Meanwhile, back in Europe ...

The exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings, onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession -- her child.

While ...

Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly minted (or not) in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead ... and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.


Download Description
"Continuing the epic adventure begun in the bestselling QUICKSILVER! It is the late 1600s on the high seas. A group of Barbary galley slaves plot amongst themselves as they ply the oars of a pirate ship. These ten men -- unfortunates from around the world impressed into servitude -- have heard whispers of an enormous cache of Spanish gold. Together, they hatch a daring scheme: escape their chains, seize a ship, and discover the gold. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world . . . The beautiful Eliza, toast of Versailles and spy extraordinaire, attempts to return to London with her baby, a child whose paternity remains a mystery. But, as she makes her way home from the Continent, her ship is stopped by a French privateer -- and she is returned to the Sun King's court. And so Eliza is thrown back into a web of international intrigue, and finds herself contending with all manner of characters, including cryptographers, poisoners, Jesuits, financial manipulators, and the stray pirate or two.

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves -- including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox -- devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger -- a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver ... nay, gold ... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe.


About the Author
Neal Stephenson is the author of the bestselling Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The Confusion, the shelf-bending sequel to Neal Stephenson's equally meaty Quicksilver, continues his epic Baroque Cycle by following a remarkable cast of late-17th-century characters that includes spies, vagabonds, and historical figures like Sir Isaac Newton and German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

The two primary story lines revolve around Jack Shaftoe, the infamous King of the Vagabonds, and Eliza, a seductive spy who is both puppet-master and pawn to powerful alchemists, cryptographers, and kings. The novel begins with Jack a half-insane, pox-infected galley slave aboard a pirate ship. He and a cabal of ten ingenious slaves engineer a wild plot to win their freedom -- and untold fortunes. The complicated scheme -- which involves stealing an enormous cache of silver bound for Spain -- succeeds beyond their wildest dreams; but instead of thieving a hoard of silver, the cabal now possesses gold: "not just any gold, but gold imbued with miraculous -- even divine -- qualities."

Meanwhile, Eliza -- a former slave -- finds herself penniless once again in France and must use intellect and cunning to save herself and her children from certain death. Her primary objective is to seek vengeance on the man who forced her into slavery, but fate intervenes at the most inopportune moment￯﾿ﾽ

With the swashbuckling action and the quixotic ambiance of Alexandre Dumas classics such as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, the page-turning intrigue of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and a cast of characters to rival any Harry Turtledove epic, Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is destined to rank among the most ambitious historical sagas ever written. Wildly engaging, richly described and delectably complex, The Confusion is a storytelling masterwork. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves - including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox - devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger - a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver - nay, gold - nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe." "Meanwhile, back in Europe, the exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings, onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession - her child." Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly minted (or not) in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead...and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

With barely time to exhale, Stephenson has returned with Volume 2 of the Baroque Cycle, The Confusion, and it is every bit as rollicking and overstuffed as its predecessor … The Baroque Cycle is like the Nerf-style jousts one sometimes passes on campus quads: creatively anachronistic, oddly unembarrassed and emphatically not for everyone. But it's also brimming with a hail-fellow-well-met good cheer, at the heart of which lies a genuinely fun pirate romance. — Stephen Metcalf

Publishers Weekly

The title of Stephenson's vast, splendid and absorbing sequel to Quicksilver (2003) suggests the state of mind that even devoted fans may face on occasion as they follow the glorious and exceedingly complex parallel stories of Jack Shaftoe, amiable criminal mastermind, and Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, courageous secret agent and former prisoner in a Turkish harem. In 1689, Jack recovers his memory in Algiers, evades galley slavery and joins a quest for the lost treasure of a Spanish pirate named Carlos Olancho Macho y Macho. This leads to adventures at sea worthy of Patrick O'Brian, and hairbreadth escapes from the jaws of the Inquisition. Meanwhile, Eliza is captured by the historical (and distinguished) French privateer Jean Bart while trying to escape to England with her baby. She must then navigate the intrigues of the court of Louis XIV, which are less lethal than those of the Inquisition by a small margin, but still make for uneasy sleep for a friendless female spy. Her correspondence with such scientific minds as Wilhelm Leibniz helps propel the saga's chronicling of the roots of modern science at a respectable clip. Of course, one can't call anything about the Baroque Cycle "brisk," but the richness of detail and language lending verisimilitude to the setting and depth to the characters should be reward enough for most readers. Agent, Liz Darhansoff at Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman Literary Agents. (One-day laydown Apr. 13) Forecast: The third volume of the trilogy, The System of the World, is due in September (and it may take readers till then to finish volume two). Though fatigue might winnow out a few fans, most should stay the course. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In this sequel to Quicksilver, Jack Shaftoe, who is recovering from partial memory loss, finds himself one of a group of ten galley slaves aboard a Turkish warship and, along with his oarmates, immerses himself in a daring plan to escape, steal a ship, and acquire a shipment of precious metals. In France, Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, continues her clandestine work as an agent for England but becomes trapped on the continent by both her enemies and her many suitors. Narrated in Stephenson's exuberant prose, the tales of Jack and Eliza intertwine with the great events and historical figures of the Baroque era, an age of tremendous change and innovation. Brimming with period detail and spiced with literate humor reminiscent of the works of John Barth, this prequel to Stephenson's sf thriller Cryptonomicon demonstrates his masterly storytelling. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/03; the final volume, The System of the World, will be published in October 2004.-Ed.]-Jackie Cassada, Asheville-Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews