Daniel Waterhouse as he becomes involved in the politics of the period, while maintaining his interest in science and his affiliation with the Royal Society of London. The novel follows the life and achievements of Dr.

On the other hand, it just might hook both.'Quicksilver' by Neal Stephenson is the first volume of a historical fiction series about the Baroque period. Dense and complicated, mostly readable save for some slow sections, this 2003 extravaganza may prove too much for fans of Stephenson's past sci-fi (I know at least one person who began to reread it as soon as he finished), and too playful and cockeyed for readers of more traditional historic fiction. London burns, the plague returns, Protestants and Catholics war against and torture one another in various times and places, pagans hold their ceremonies in the mountains of Eastern Europe, and many other surprising things (as well as familiar Stephenson themes such as cryptography) pass across these sprawling 916 pages - the first part of a projected trilogy called 'The Baroque Cycle.' Historic figures who appear in cameo range from young Ben Franklin to Samuel Pepys. Leibniz, nobles of the French court of Louis XIV, and William of Orange, plotter to the English throne. Eliza makes her way back up the map, becoming acquainted with Dr. Jack Shaftoe, a Thames River 'mudlark' and his brother Bob seek their fortunes as mercenaries on the continent, and Jack eventually hooks up with Eliza, a whip-smart and erotically inventive gal enslaved up north and raised in a Turkish harem. Daniel Waterhouse is a mediocre scientific mind, friend and classmate of Newton at Cambridge in the 1660s, and through Dan we meet many of the other celebrated British scientists of the time - when alchemy is giving way to the Scientific Revolution, but the two are still hard to tell apart. In an epic story that ranges between 16, and from Massachusetts Bay Colony and London to the silver mines of Saxony and the wars against the Turks in what eventually become Austria and Hungary, Stephenson chronicles the thoughts and adventures of characters from the lowliest Thames River scum to the kings of England and France, their courts, and the distant relations who plot against them.

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson