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The Confusion

by Neal Stephenson

I picked up this book on Independence Day Weekend and like a Harry Potter fan hopped up on Pop Rocks and Sunny D, plowed through the 800+ pages in just a couple of weekends.

And it was a dizzying trip. As in Quicksilver, Stephenson weaves together three different storylines among the swirl of events of the Baroque era. This time, the story touches on the rise and fall of the trading houses of Lyon, the founding of the Bank of England, the emergence of the House of Hannover, and a gold-smuggling global circumnavigation featuring an escape from Barbary slave ships, an encounter with Malabar pirates, a foray into the realm of the Moguls, a race across the Pacific with a Spanish galleon, and a return to the treacherous shores of Europe.

If you've made it this far, you can't give up now. There's one more book in the Baroque Cycle.

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