media consumption

The System of the World

by Neal Stephenson

Here it is, the final installment of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I've already made the investment, I'm gonna see it through to the end.

I make is sound like some arduous task, but really, I eat this stuff up. Stephenson is all about doing interesting things with his characters, not at all about telling a story. Rather than build an actual plot, his novels read like a long (interminably long, in the case of the BC) series of elaborately constructed set pieces. Lots of things happen, but one is never sure of the direction the story is headed. And as far as setting a story in a time and place in which lots of things are happening, Stephenson couldn't have created a world with more going on in it than England in the century preceding the creation and expansion of the British Empire. It was the age of great conflict, exploration, and achievement in the realms of science, politics, and business.

If all that sounds interesting enough and you aren't scared off by he idea of reading a 3000 page story lacking the classic exposition-climax-denoument formula, then the Baroque Cycle might be worth checking out.

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