Items related to Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
Synopsis
Quicksilver is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe -- London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds -- risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox.
And it is the tale of Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent Europe through the newborn power of finance.
A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life, Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.
And it's just the beginning ...
Performed by Simon Prebble and Stina Nielsen
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About the Author
Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . .Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
From the Back Cover
Quicksilver is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe -- London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds -- risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox.
And it is the tale of Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent Europe through the newborn power of finance.
A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life, Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.
And it's just the beginning ...
Performed by Simon Prebble and Stina Nielsen
Reviews
Starred Review. Adventure, romance, politics, history, theology, magic, science, money and calculus: this audiobook has it all, and it astonishes on several levels. Never mind that it is only the first third of a trilogy or that this massive audiobook consists of "selections approved by the author" (the reading is punctuated with phrases like "here follows a brief summary of pages 167 to 182" or "pages 653 through 677 have been eliminated"). Stephenson's (Snow Crash; Cryptonomicon) masterfully complex and entertaining plot braids the life of Daniel Waterhouse, a colleague of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with that of the "king of the Vagabonds," Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe, and Eliza, a harem slave turned powerful financier. It is a tale of the pursuit of knowledge in Baroque Europe, peppered with taut action, knee-slapping humor and head-scratching science. BBC announcer/Shakespearean actor Prebble's performance is wonderfully nuanced. His authoritative narration, combined with his chameleon-like facility for character and accent, is nothing short of enchanting. Though he performs both male and female parts, Nielsen reads Eliza's copious letters; initially, this seems like a strange choice, but the shift from storytelling to that of reading merits the transition, and Nielsen's contribution enriches the whole. The experience of listening to this audiobook is something rare, as it's a literary tale that brings history, science and philosophy to life in a heartily entertaining fashion.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In the first of a proposed Baroque Cycle, we are immersed in seventeenth-century Europe and America--on the threshold of the Modern World. Alchemy is transmogrifying into chemistry, superstition into science. The Age of Reason dawns while crowned heads make war; court intrigue is the realpolitik of the day; Christendom is getting a face-lift. Pirates, spies, adventuresses, vagabonds, Jesuits, and other infidels abound, along with cabals, spies, juntas, conspiracies, waylayings, and ransomings! They're all crammed in here, along with plots and subplots that this reviewer, for one, cannot keep track of, and that principal narrator Prebble is largely indifferent to. When he does pay attention, he conveys some of the author's wit and sense of historical and scientific adventure. Otherwise, he is on an extremely well-tuned, mellifluous autopilot, so that the text neither suffers nor gains. Auxiliary narrator Nielsen, on the other hand, grates on the ear. Y.R. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
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Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
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Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
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Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
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