The Confusion

By Neal Stephenson

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060523867
• ISBN13: 9780060523862
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 832 Pages
• Weight: 2.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Viva_La_Revolucion!! Viva Stephenson!!

The revolution of the western mind continues in Stephenson's second volume of his Baroque Cycle. By "con-fusing" (this is a Stephensonism, not mine) the fictitious lives & passions of the epic's main characters, Jack Shaftoe & Eliza, with real events and equally real/colorful characters of the late 17th century, Stephenson has accomplished something which no teacher before him has... THE CONFUSION con-currently conquers...

Yet Again

After reading Quicksilver, though I already had my copy of The Confusion, I had to take a bit of a breather and I read The Bourne Supremacy, though once I was a few pages into it I couldn't help myself looking forward to The Confusion. That's not to say that Ludlum is not enjoyable to read, but there's so much lacking in his work compared to Stephenson's. The Confusion, as many have mentioned, is a combination of two books,...

If you've got the attention span, it's worth your attention

If Daniel Boorstin, Tom Clancy and C. S. Forester had decided to collaborate on an epic novel, this would have been it, except they wouldn't have written one as racy as this one is. As made clear in "Cryptonomicon," Stephenson loves parallelism. This volume of "The Baroque Cycle" is two parallel but intertwined tales: - one of The Cabal, a polyglot group of a group of one-time galley slaves who risk everything as they...

Delivers on Quicksilver's promise

I am a huge fan of Neal Stephenson's book "Cryptonomicon", which now serves as a sort of introduction to the Baroque Cycle. That being said, I was a bit disappointed in Quicksilver, Volume One of the Baroque Cycle. The tome resembled Cryptonomicon so closely (same author, same size, same character families) that I could not help but get my hopes up for another such read. Instead I found it dry and difficult to finish, where...

No "Middle-Book Woes" Here

After the apparent choppiness of "Quicksilver" I was a bit worried that "The Confusion" would fall prey to the same unevenness of the first book of the trilogy. I was also worried that this novel could suffer from the same fate as many middle books of trilogies. Fortunately, I found "The Confusion" to be a much more engaging read than "Quicksilver," and some of the revelations within have caused me to reevaluate my prior...