Agylen

I just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World, the third and final volume of the Baroque Cycle (after Quicksilver and The Confusion). I mostly liked all three, but I won’t try to convince you to read them: at about 900 pages each, they are filled with detail, complicated plots, historical references and a bit of supernatural events. It takes a good deal of determination to go through them, especially considering the many slow and overly erudite parts.

Anyway, I’m not going to write a full review here. I can review technical books but I won’t even try to write about “real” literature, least I make too much a fool of myself in public.

I would however like to discuss some of the questions that were left lingering in my mind even after the closing of the plot. One of the questions is the same one that was asked some time ago by one of the best-known Stephenson experts, Elliotte Rusty Harold: What’s up with the gold?. Or, more precisely, what did Jack Shaftoe put inside the Pyx? Unfortunately, Elliotte apparently did never put up the page where he promised to collect people’s response to that question. I also coulnd’t find anything interesting via Google.