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The Baroque Cycle (8 volume) #2
King of the Vagabonds
A chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe -- London street urchin-turned-legendary swashbuckling adventurer -- risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox. . . and Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent a contentious continent through the newborn power of finance.
--back cover
--back cover
400 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
Neal Stephenson
88 books28.6k followersNeal Stephenson is the author of Reamde, Anathem, and the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), as well as Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 145 reviews
July 2, 2017
Part two of the first Cycle takes a huge departure from the first book that mainly revolved around science and a richly detailed England to follow Jack, the self-styled King of the Vagabonds in this traveling adventure around all of Europe in the late sixteen-hundreds.
Include spies, a huge political intrigue, hanging out with all the lower sorts, and enough scrapes, tosses, and near-death experiences for any taste. Jack doesn't really have the ear of anyone, let alone a king, but what he does have is a talent for getting into the biggest messes.
What makes this special is not only the characters, which are a serious hoot but the amount of research and a perfect inclusion of real history and events on a scale I've never before seen. This might as well be a Masters course in history if it hadn't been written so excitingly and humorously.
I think I might have enjoyed this one even more than the first book in the Cycle, but only in terms of pure adventure and sneakily introduced economics, medicine, and a good idea about how the REST of the world lived during these times. Jack's about as low as they come. :)
I totally recommend this for Historical Fiction lovers everywhere. :)
Include spies, a huge political intrigue, hanging out with all the lower sorts, and enough scrapes, tosses, and near-death experiences for any taste. Jack doesn't really have the ear of anyone, let alone a king, but what he does have is a talent for getting into the biggest messes.
What makes this special is not only the characters, which are a serious hoot but the amount of research and a perfect inclusion of real history and events on a scale I've never before seen. This might as well be a Masters course in history if it hadn't been written so excitingly and humorously.
I think I might have enjoyed this one even more than the first book in the Cycle, but only in terms of pure adventure and sneakily introduced economics, medicine, and a good idea about how the REST of the world lived during these times. Jack's about as low as they come. :)
I totally recommend this for Historical Fiction lovers everywhere. :)
July 2, 2018
"Jack had been presented with the opportunity to be stupid in some, way that was much more interesting than being shrewed would've been. These moments seemed to come to Jack every few days."
- Neal Stephenson, King of the Vagabonds
Stephenson continues his Quicksilver Volume with Book 2: King of the Vagabonds. Where Book 1: 'Quicksilver' dealt primarily with Isaac Newton and Daniel Waterhouse, King of the Vagabonds centers around the adventures of "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe*, Doctor Leibniz, and Eliza. It seems to have taken stock of Joseph de la Vega's .
'Confusión de confusiones (1688),' and perhaps also Charles Mackay's later Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and even Frances Gies 'Life in a Medieval City'. Much of the book involves the adventures of two or three of the above Jack, Liebniz, Eliza making their way across many of the markets and cities of Europe. It allows Stephenson to discuss not only the politics of the age of Louis XIV, but also the changing markets (Leipzig, Paris, London, Amsterdam), politics, religion, and birth of the Age of Resaon.
Stephenson has said in Book 1 he was primarily dealing with nobility and the top-end of the economic ladder. So, in Book 2 he wanted to spend a bit of time at the bottom of the ladder (hence Vagabonds).
* "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse, and Eliza (of Qwghlm) are all ancestors of characters from Stephenson earlier book, Cryptonomicon. Enoch Root appears in this book as well as in Quicksilver AND Cryptonomicon. He is like a Zelig for science. Always appearing just where he needs to be to give the wheel a turn, the cart a push, the clock of progress a wind.
- Neal Stephenson, King of the Vagabonds
Stephenson continues his Quicksilver Volume with Book 2: King of the Vagabonds. Where Book 1: 'Quicksilver' dealt primarily with Isaac Newton and Daniel Waterhouse, King of the Vagabonds centers around the adventures of "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe*, Doctor Leibniz, and Eliza. It seems to have taken stock of Joseph de la Vega's .
'Confusión de confusiones (1688),' and perhaps also Charles Mackay's later Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and even Frances Gies 'Life in a Medieval City'. Much of the book involves the adventures of two or three of the above Jack, Liebniz, Eliza making their way across many of the markets and cities of Europe. It allows Stephenson to discuss not only the politics of the age of Louis XIV, but also the changing markets (Leipzig, Paris, London, Amsterdam), politics, religion, and birth of the Age of Resaon.
Stephenson has said in Book 1 he was primarily dealing with nobility and the top-end of the economic ladder. So, in Book 2 he wanted to spend a bit of time at the bottom of the ladder (hence Vagabonds).
* "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse, and Eliza (of Qwghlm) are all ancestors of characters from Stephenson earlier book, Cryptonomicon. Enoch Root appears in this book as well as in Quicksilver AND Cryptonomicon. He is like a Zelig for science. Always appearing just where he needs to be to give the wheel a turn, the cart a push, the clock of progress a wind.
March 18, 2018
so-so.
Not bad, but definitely not even close to his other books (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon).
I loooove themes in the series (cryptology, numismatics, the transformation from feudal rule toward the scientific and "western") but somehow I just do not have that can't-stop-reading feeling which I had while I was devouring Cryptonomicon.
I will keep reading it, though.
Not bad, but definitely not even close to his other books (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon).
I loooove themes in the series (cryptology, numismatics, the transformation from feudal rule toward the scientific and "western") but somehow I just do not have that can't-stop-reading feeling which I had while I was devouring Cryptonomicon.
I will keep reading it, though.
August 12, 2013
I wasn't for sure what to expect from this book after the first in the series was such a well written historical fiction of early science. According to the reviews I read, this was nothing like the first (with the exception of the setting being the same time period). So while I wasn't for sure what to expect, I didn't think I would laugh so much. This book was so enjoyable. The characters were real people, living in a hard world. They knew the world was hard, but they didn't know it could be any different. In the introduction, Neal Stephenson tells us that he wants to tell the story of how a poor person in this time lived. Now the story does seem to develop the overall theme, however only moderately so, in my opinion. I don't have the words to describe "Half Cock Jack" he is one of the most interesting and enjoyable characters I have ever come across. He is not always likable, but he is never dull.
Even though this book is tagged by many as "science fiction" please know that it is such a minor aspect of the overall plot that if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd miss it. There are some rated R parts so reader beware.
The ending does have a feel of being a book in a series, but no cliff hanger here.
Even though this book is tagged by many as "science fiction" please know that it is such a minor aspect of the overall plot that if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd miss it. There are some rated R parts so reader beware.
The ending does have a feel of being a book in a series, but no cliff hanger here.
February 26, 2012
A couple years went by between my reading the first book in this series and getting my hands on the second, but given how little the characters and events in this book overlap with the first, it really doesn't matter.
Where the first book followed Daniel Waterhouse, Natural Philosopher and scion of a staunch, politically active Puritan family, and took place mostly in England, this book follows "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe (whose nickname refers as much to an anatomical peculiarity of his as it does to his spontaneous and intemperate disposition) and a mysterious, beautiful and very clever woman named Eliza, and takes place mostly on the European continent.
It also has much less of an emphasis on 17th-century science than the first book, delving more into that era's political and economic developments. (Indeed, so much of the action of this book revolves around schemes relating to the buying and selling of shares of stock that I was both bored and somewhat confused for long stretches in the middle. Finance is like intellectual Kryptonite to me; can't understand it, have zero interest in understanding it.)
Anyway, the characters. Half-Cocked Jack sounds like someone took the most dramatic, colorful elements from Dickens (Jack's motherless childhood with his brother Bob, earning money hanging onto condemned men's legs as they swung from the gallows, ensuring a somewhat quicker death), Hunter S. Thompson (Jack is slowly losing his mind to syphilis, and as his side of the story progresses he becomes increasingly prone to vivid hallucinations which he cannot distinguish from reality), Jonathan Swift (in the frankly scatological descriptions of the kind of life Jack leads - hygiene is apparently a luxury a 17th-century Vagabond learns to do without), John Kennedy Toole and Gary Shteyngart (Jack's lewdness, sensuality and his knack for accidental heroism), and blended them all together in a single character. The actual experience of reading about this character's adventures is only slightly less awesome than whatever you've conjured up in your head while reading the previous sentence; the only problem is that they're so disjointed and episodic there's no sense of narrative momentum, just one damn thing after another.
The other main character is Eliza, a beautiful woman Jack rescues from a Turkish army camp during one of his brief spells of soldiering. When she first appeared, I wasn't sure I'd like her: her first interaction with Jack is a strained, eyeroll-inducing stretch of sexualized banter revolving around the tired, ages-old "battle of the sexes" scenario: the man has every kind of power imaginable over the woman, but because he desires her, that somehow evens the scales, or even secretly gives her the upper hand. Whatever. But luckily, Eliza is more than that: she's incredibly clever and a gifted storyteller, spinning tall tales that captivate Jack, who has lived more tall tales than most people have even heard. Like Scheherazade, she doles out portions of her life story (how she came to be a slave in a Turkish officer's tent, for instance, when she is a European woman who speaks English) strategically to make sure Jack keeps her with him long enough for her to get where she wants to go, which is Amsterdam.
Once Eliza gets to Amsterdam, she and Jack split up; she stays put, hoping to get in on the expanding mercantile economy and getting swept up in a scheme involving shares in a silver mine somewhere in the mountains of Germany, which gets her running in such high-rolling circles that she runs into a couple of lordly types who seize the opportunity to use her to further their various political intrigues. Her story gets more and more interesting and suspenseful as the stakes of her game rise and the rules get more complex; Jack's, on the other hand, seems to lose steam once he parts company with her. He continues to wander around Europe, with some vague notions of selling the fine warhorse and other loot he picked up in Turkey and thereby financing x more years of Vagabond life, and maybe also leaving something for his children. (He's never met them, but he knows he has some). He goes from place to place, stuff happens to him, he is increasingly unable to distinguish what's really happening from his hallucinations, which tend to resemble Elizabethan morality plays. It's all fairly anticlimactic, even though there are a couple of really awesome episodes. The book seems arbitrarily cut off at the end, for both of them, though. Eliza's arc in particular still seems to be building toward a future climax when the narrative ends and the (very long) section cataloguing the Dramatis Personae begins.
Where the first book followed Daniel Waterhouse, Natural Philosopher and scion of a staunch, politically active Puritan family, and took place mostly in England, this book follows "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe (whose nickname refers as much to an anatomical peculiarity of his as it does to his spontaneous and intemperate disposition) and a mysterious, beautiful and very clever woman named Eliza, and takes place mostly on the European continent.
It also has much less of an emphasis on 17th-century science than the first book, delving more into that era's political and economic developments. (Indeed, so much of the action of this book revolves around schemes relating to the buying and selling of shares of stock that I was both bored and somewhat confused for long stretches in the middle. Finance is like intellectual Kryptonite to me; can't understand it, have zero interest in understanding it.)
Anyway, the characters. Half-Cocked Jack sounds like someone took the most dramatic, colorful elements from Dickens (Jack's motherless childhood with his brother Bob, earning money hanging onto condemned men's legs as they swung from the gallows, ensuring a somewhat quicker death), Hunter S. Thompson (Jack is slowly losing his mind to syphilis, and as his side of the story progresses he becomes increasingly prone to vivid hallucinations which he cannot distinguish from reality), Jonathan Swift (in the frankly scatological descriptions of the kind of life Jack leads - hygiene is apparently a luxury a 17th-century Vagabond learns to do without), John Kennedy Toole and Gary Shteyngart (Jack's lewdness, sensuality and his knack for accidental heroism), and blended them all together in a single character. The actual experience of reading about this character's adventures is only slightly less awesome than whatever you've conjured up in your head while reading the previous sentence; the only problem is that they're so disjointed and episodic there's no sense of narrative momentum, just one damn thing after another.
The other main character is Eliza, a beautiful woman Jack rescues from a Turkish army camp during one of his brief spells of soldiering. When she first appeared, I wasn't sure I'd like her: her first interaction with Jack is a strained, eyeroll-inducing stretch of sexualized banter revolving around the tired, ages-old "battle of the sexes" scenario: the man has every kind of power imaginable over the woman, but because he desires her, that somehow evens the scales, or even secretly gives her the upper hand. Whatever. But luckily, Eliza is more than that: she's incredibly clever and a gifted storyteller, spinning tall tales that captivate Jack, who has lived more tall tales than most people have even heard. Like Scheherazade, she doles out portions of her life story (how she came to be a slave in a Turkish officer's tent, for instance, when she is a European woman who speaks English) strategically to make sure Jack keeps her with him long enough for her to get where she wants to go, which is Amsterdam.
Once Eliza gets to Amsterdam, she and Jack split up; she stays put, hoping to get in on the expanding mercantile economy and getting swept up in a scheme involving shares in a silver mine somewhere in the mountains of Germany, which gets her running in such high-rolling circles that she runs into a couple of lordly types who seize the opportunity to use her to further their various political intrigues. Her story gets more and more interesting and suspenseful as the stakes of her game rise and the rules get more complex; Jack's, on the other hand, seems to lose steam once he parts company with her. He continues to wander around Europe, with some vague notions of selling the fine warhorse and other loot he picked up in Turkey and thereby financing x more years of Vagabond life, and maybe also leaving something for his children. (He's never met them, but he knows he has some). He goes from place to place, stuff happens to him, he is increasingly unable to distinguish what's really happening from his hallucinations, which tend to resemble Elizabethan morality plays. It's all fairly anticlimactic, even though there are a couple of really awesome episodes. The book seems arbitrarily cut off at the end, for both of them, though. Eliza's arc in particular still seems to be building toward a future climax when the narrative ends and the (very long) section cataloguing the Dramatis Personae begins.
January 1, 2024
Read as part of my goal to read all the winners of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction. This is book 2 of the Baroque Cycle, the entire series was the 2005 winner.
My only really big question so far is how is this considered science fiction. It’s historical fiction. Very interesting at times, other times it is bogged down in details. But it’s an interesting education of Britain and its changing kings and scientific intrigues.
My only really big question so far is how is this considered science fiction. It’s historical fiction. Very interesting at times, other times it is bogged down in details. But it’s an interesting education of Britain and its changing kings and scientific intrigues.
June 18, 2018
Hilarious and very clever!
January 8, 2019
In terms of wit, Mr. Neal Stephenson gives Sir Terry Pratchett a run for his money.
June 19, 2011
To do justice to Neal Stephenson at his best is inevitably doomed to some form of stylistic copying or more ponderously yet, outright quotation. This book is very well written, in a tone I'll describe as Pratchett-Wallaceian, with humor you'll laugh over, poetic description you'll admire and innumerable sly historical tie-ins you'll catch delightfully, but only you're a nerd and that makes it even better.
Yes history: it's historical fiction, although the emphasis is on the fiction. Suffice it to say there is somehow, in reformation-era Europe, a dose of science, and even heroes thereof, and love and swashbuckling and fantastical romps through labyrinths. You can't beat it, really. Can I even describe it? Here goes:
Elizabethan era 007 makes reluctant rescues and demonstrates unintentional heroism, saving the future we now know as the past and vanishing without a trace, but he gets the girl so who needs a legacy?
Well, Stephenson has now given Jack Shaftoe that too. A fantastic read, and no, you needn't complete the somewhat ponderous precursor "Quicksilver" as prerequisite to your enjoyment.
Yes history: it's historical fiction, although the emphasis is on the fiction. Suffice it to say there is somehow, in reformation-era Europe, a dose of science, and even heroes thereof, and love and swashbuckling and fantastical romps through labyrinths. You can't beat it, really. Can I even describe it? Here goes:
Elizabethan era 007 makes reluctant rescues and demonstrates unintentional heroism, saving the future we now know as the past and vanishing without a trace, but he gets the girl so who needs a legacy?
Well, Stephenson has now given Jack Shaftoe that too. A fantastic read, and no, you needn't complete the somewhat ponderous precursor "Quicksilver" as prerequisite to your enjoyment.
June 24, 2008
The second book of Quicksilver, which it itself a three-book volume in the three-volume "Baroque Cycle" series.
Shifting gears somewhat from Quicksilver (the first book, not the first volume), Stephenson follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe, a seventeenth-century adventurer-hobo ("vagabond") on the Continent. Where the first book concerned itself mostly with science, King of the Vagabonds is a Picaresque novel rife with the spirit of Rabbelais and Shakespere-- bawdy, improbable adventures intertwine with genuine historical events and grim scenes of war and death. In place of science, economics seem to be the focus of this book.
After a brief stint in the Polish-Hungarian Army during the Battle of Vienna, Jack frees Eliza, a Qwghlmian kidnap victim, from the Sultan's harem. The two journey across the Continent, investing in get-rich-quick schemes and rubbing elbows with unexpected royalty.
Unfortunately, Stephenson's first successful novels were pigeonholed in the "Science Fiction" category; subsequent novels were placed there, apparently out of habit.
Shifting gears somewhat from Quicksilver (the first book, not the first volume), Stephenson follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe, a seventeenth-century adventurer-hobo ("vagabond") on the Continent. Where the first book concerned itself mostly with science, King of the Vagabonds is a Picaresque novel rife with the spirit of Rabbelais and Shakespere-- bawdy, improbable adventures intertwine with genuine historical events and grim scenes of war and death. In place of science, economics seem to be the focus of this book.
After a brief stint in the Polish-Hungarian Army during the Battle of Vienna, Jack frees Eliza, a Qwghlmian kidnap victim, from the Sultan's harem. The two journey across the Continent, investing in get-rich-quick schemes and rubbing elbows with unexpected royalty.
Unfortunately, Stephenson's first successful novels were pigeonholed in the "Science Fiction" category; subsequent novels were placed there, apparently out of habit.
January 17, 2023
I love Neal Stephenson but I can’t get into the Baroque Cycle. I started Quicksilver when it was first released and tried reading it three times. I finally got through it as an audio book on 2022 after hearing that once you get through it the rest is phenomenal. We’ll, I‘be now completed the second book, King of the Vagabonds, and though it was better, it’s not got me hanging on every chapter begging for what comes next. Might be a high bar, but life is too short for bad books. I’ll be ending my foray into the baroque cycle here.
March 11, 2016
I'd rank this a little lower than the first book though they're mostly on par with one another. The story is alright, but I don't find Jack or Eliza particularly likable characters. 2.5 stars
February 22, 2023
Reading Stephenson is pure joy. He is smart, funny, and unexpectedly grounded in reality. Starting with Cryptonomicon, I rarely fund a wrong note across sophisticated descriptions of cultures, historical events and economics/business.
In #2 of the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson introduces Jack Shaftoe--a clever Englishman coming from the poor areas east of London and willing to do what must be done to survive, aka the King of the Vagabonds--with Eliza, a slave girl from the fictional islands of Qwghlm (very much like the Hebrides) who is taken by a Frenchman in a raid and sold with her mother to Barbary pirates and from there to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire's harem. Jack meets or saves Eliza in the wake of the Hussars led by Sobieski saving Vienna from the Ottoman siege and they go off with ostrich feathers Jack manages to take from one of the Sultan's ostriches, a war horse (appropriately named Turk) and a Turkish sword, and Eliza shows a rare gift in making money first in Saxony (running in Dr Leibniz along the way) and Amsterdam and the first stock exchange in the world.
The dialogue is so very clever and unexpected, it keeps the reader hungry for more. Jack is quick to act to get out of the many dangers all around late 17th century European life, while Eliza is both brilliantly intelligent and beautiful--somewhat implausibly the two make a successful life always one catastrophe away.
It is quibbling somewhat in such a sharp and intelligent book that Stephenson refers to the Ijsselmeer when he should be talking about the Zuiderzee--given that the Dutch only turned back the salty sea connecting the center of Holland to the North Sea in 1932, when the Dutch shut off the inlet with the tremendous achievement of the "afsluitdijk"--the dike which shut off the ingress with the North Sea into what then became the Ijsselmeer (the Ijssel lake). Here and there his German is also not fluent.
But what a small quibble for such an enjoyable book, and onwards to Odalisque!
In #2 of the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson introduces Jack Shaftoe--a clever Englishman coming from the poor areas east of London and willing to do what must be done to survive, aka the King of the Vagabonds--with Eliza, a slave girl from the fictional islands of Qwghlm (very much like the Hebrides) who is taken by a Frenchman in a raid and sold with her mother to Barbary pirates and from there to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire's harem. Jack meets or saves Eliza in the wake of the Hussars led by Sobieski saving Vienna from the Ottoman siege and they go off with ostrich feathers Jack manages to take from one of the Sultan's ostriches, a war horse (appropriately named Turk) and a Turkish sword, and Eliza shows a rare gift in making money first in Saxony (running in Dr Leibniz along the way) and Amsterdam and the first stock exchange in the world.
The dialogue is so very clever and unexpected, it keeps the reader hungry for more. Jack is quick to act to get out of the many dangers all around late 17th century European life, while Eliza is both brilliantly intelligent and beautiful--somewhat implausibly the two make a successful life always one catastrophe away.
It is quibbling somewhat in such a sharp and intelligent book that Stephenson refers to the Ijsselmeer when he should be talking about the Zuiderzee--given that the Dutch only turned back the salty sea connecting the center of Holland to the North Sea in 1932, when the Dutch shut off the inlet with the tremendous achievement of the "afsluitdijk"--the dike which shut off the ingress with the North Sea into what then became the Ijsselmeer (the Ijssel lake). Here and there his German is also not fluent.
But what a small quibble for such an enjoyable book, and onwards to Odalisque!
August 16, 2025
While theoretically I should enjoy this swashbuckling adventure a lot more than the dry and docile life of the previous volume’s Daniel Waterhouse, I found the characters of Jack Shaftoe and Eliza to be a little too indulgent of Neal Stephenson’s dorkiest impulses. Where Daniel is a gentle observer, Jack is a man of action. He chases an ostrich through the siege of Vienna, he takes shrooms with witches in Germany, he crashes an aristocratic French soireé, and he has an innocent boyish love for Eliza, a white sex slave whom he liberated from the Ottoman Turks. Yeah, the woman he rescues from a Turkish harem is a blonde-haired blue-eyed white teenager. Now maybe this is me being “the one friend who’s too woke” but I find this a tad ridiculous. Not only is she a stunning European beauty in her late teens but her life of victimhood has made her witty and capable, with only some light trauma for our hero to fret over. Barely a year after she’s rescued from sexual slavery by an adventure man, she’s doing secret math with Gottfried Liebnitz and advanced economic maneuvering in Amsterdam. She’s just a bit too much of a savvy Gen X-er tech nerd’s fantasy for my taste. Like, you couldn’t have made her Armenian or Jewish or something? It’s still not enough to tear me away from this world though, which is rendered so beautifully and completely that I feel like I can forgive an old nerd his flights of horny fantasy.
November 1, 2017
3.5 stars. I'm really conflicted about this book and this series. I keep reading. I am interested. It can be funny and cutting and satirical. But it is truly an acquired taste, and one that I'm not 100% sure I love. There is more plot and action in this volume than there was in the first. But that is still leavened with copious amounts of history and science -- as I read a lot of nonfiction on those topics, this does not entirely turn me off, but I could see it being tedious to many readers. Perhaps my biggest issue with the book is that I usually turn to my reading with a distinct mood for either fiction or nonfiction, and the blending of the two in such obvious ways (with entire passages dealing with finance or history, with chemistry or physics) can be very jarring. I think I'll continue as I respect Stephenson and loved Cryptonomicon (which stars the descendants of many of the major players in this series). But I have to say my feelings are mixed.
July 13, 2021
Book two of The Baroque Cycle departs from the wealthy scientific society of Quicksilver and follows the adventures of a lowly criminal, Jack Shaftoe, living in 17th century Europe.
The story starts out strong, with Jack stealing boat anchors and getting hired to speed up death in hangings. It eventually gets somewhat long winded and confusing through the middle, and the ending is a bit of a letdown. Even still, the adventure is rather entertaining to follow.
I can't make any claim to the veracity of the history Stephenson included in this book, but it does seem like he did his homework, as the level of detail in the world and events is excellent.
I think most readers will enjoy this book more than Quicksilver, as it hits at a much more relatable level than the Royal Society hubbub of the former.
The story starts out strong, with Jack stealing boat anchors and getting hired to speed up death in hangings. It eventually gets somewhat long winded and confusing through the middle, and the ending is a bit of a letdown. Even still, the adventure is rather entertaining to follow.
I can't make any claim to the veracity of the history Stephenson included in this book, but it does seem like he did his homework, as the level of detail in the world and events is excellent.
I think most readers will enjoy this book more than Quicksilver, as it hits at a much more relatable level than the Royal Society hubbub of the former.
January 25, 2023
Book 2 of 9 of the Baroque Cycle achieves its goal of introducing immediately compelling characters who will shape the plot in the later installments of the series, as well as setting the scene for an explosive conflict. Inconsistent pacing and a meandering plot made for a difficult read at times, but the story is punctuated with enough intriguing, hilarious, and/or beautiful moments to keep the reader engaged. The heartbreaking ending reveals how effective Stephenson is at forcing the reader to be invested in his characters.
As a stand-alone story it wouldn’t work as well, but as the second installment of a long saga it does a great job at setting up the major players in the stories to come.
3.3/5
As a stand-alone story it wouldn’t work as well, but as the second installment of a long saga it does a great job at setting up the major players in the stories to come.
3.3/5
November 25, 2021
Like the first book, this is relentlessly rich in world-building detail... yes, Baroque in name and nature. Unlike the first book this seems much more concerned with entertaining with its supernaturally witty and capable underdog protagonists, with almost non-stop banter that wouldn't be out of place in a top-rating 2010s TV series.
What left the biggest impression on me was the nerdy deep dives into 17th century European economics, especially the vivid and enthralling depictions of trade and society in Amsterdam; and also the colourful and often outrageous set pieces which could easily become classic scenes if they were ever put on film. Fun stuff.
What left the biggest impression on me was the nerdy deep dives into 17th century European economics, especially the vivid and enthralling depictions of trade and society in Amsterdam; and also the colourful and often outrageous set pieces which could easily become classic scenes if they were ever put on film. Fun stuff.
November 11, 2018
An interesting jump from the first book in the cycle, exploring the lives of lower classes. The author does a good job of integrating historical figures, and putting poor Jack in all sorts of humorous situations. As usual for this series, it meanders its way around a bit, which may put some off. Despite this, the characters are strong, interesting and involved in a world that has numerous complex intrigues. My main gripe is rather pedantic - the author must have used the word diverse about a million times. This becomes more obvious in the audiobook, and seems to happen throughout the series.
October 3, 2019
Madcap second part of the massive “Quicksilver”—Stephenson’s ability to connect an individual to history in a way that remains historically plausible even as one accepts the necessity of fantasy is fascinating. It’s like the first book approached history from above, while this one treats the same material from beneath—connecting them are events, sure, but beyond that the rapid expansion of a certain set of ideological ideals and philosophical perspectives perforate the material in both books, manifesting as both blessing and curse. Can’t wait for the third part!
October 24, 2023
I only read this book as I had accidentally bought the third in the series and so picked up one and two just to not waste the third. Sunk cost and all that.
I hated the first one, Quicksilver, total garbage. I really quite enjoyed this one. I liked the characters and although the plot felt a bit like just following them around as they wondered aimlessly around it was such a stark contrast to the other it made me like it more.
A vagabond and a harem girl mooch around western Europe not having sex.
I hated the first one, Quicksilver, total garbage. I really quite enjoyed this one. I liked the characters and although the plot felt a bit like just following them around as they wondered aimlessly around it was such a stark contrast to the other it made me like it more.
A vagabond and a harem girl mooch around western Europe not having sex.
October 18, 2024
Solid adventure and wit. As I said in my review of Quicksilver, this series has surprised me as to how much I enjoyed a historical narrative. Stephenson manages to flip the script somewhat on the first book in a way which was rewarding.
As much as I love the natural philosophy and alchemy so far in the series, Jack the vagabond had me totally live inside in a way I’ve not noticed from a book in years.
Stellar stuff, I will go straight on to the next book eager for more.
Woody Hayday
As much as I love the natural philosophy and alchemy so far in the series, Jack the vagabond had me totally live inside in a way I’ve not noticed from a book in years.
Stellar stuff, I will go straight on to the next book eager for more.
Woody Hayday
September 21, 2021
For me, this was a much better book than the first. It’s a great way to learn a little of European history with a lot of fiction thrown about. The fun is sorting the fact from the fiction. And the two protagonists- well- more like anti-heroes and the shared and separate exploits? It reads at times like a tale written in the times it describes which was probably the idea. The humour from Jack made it a 3 star read. Recommended to the normal crew.
March 11, 2017
This is the second part of Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy which is part of a larger 3 part series. So this is actually part 2 of 9 - somewhat like Starwars. The first volume was about Newton and some of the major players of the 17th century. This one followed a vagabond and his travels through Europe. It was fun and I'll definitely read the next volume when I can get around to it.
August 12, 2017
A romp through Europe during a period religious, political, and economic upheaval through the siege-walls around Vienna, the markets of Leipzig, the canals of Amsterdam, and the streets of Paris. I wouldn't rate this as highly as Quicksilver, but Stephenson certainly does a good job of surprising you at points when you least expect it.
October 26, 2018
2nd book in The Baroque Cycle. Alternate History features a vagabond who wonders through Europe, France and Holland. Gives a glimpse of the countries during this early time period with a lot of humor. I listened to the audio read by Simon Prebble. The historical setting is the late 17th/early 18th centuries for the Baroque cycle and the stories combine history, adventure, science, and alchemy.
January 12, 2019
What drew me to this series was science and there is little of that in this book, and I’m finding myself more and more lost in the setting. The end of this book is not rewarding for the effort to keep-up with the going-no-where plot. Jack was enjoyable but on the whole that did not save this book for me.
October 16, 2019
Do you like historical fiction with deep and endearing characters? This is just it. This is the kind of book that gets you looking at wikipedia a lot.
This isn't "better" than Quicksilver (book 1) its just a bit fast paced, less (but not so much) science focused and more comical.
History fans rejoice.
This isn't "better" than Quicksilver (book 1) its just a bit fast paced, less (but not so much) science focused and more comical.
History fans rejoice.
September 22, 2020
This volume is just focused on Jack and Eliza and who doesn't love them, even stupid, mad, foolish Jack who makes me cry in the last chapter.
It's very much a divergence from the seriousness and science of the previous volume, and I loved it. Now onwards, back to London and science.
It's very much a divergence from the seriousness and science of the previous volume, and I loved it. Now onwards, back to London and science.
April 19, 2021
3.5 stars, a gaudy and unusual story, the complete opposite of Quicksilver, I loved both Jack and Elaiza and even though there's far less intrigue in this book it's still somewhat hard to follow but a very fascinating story nonetheless.
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