Quicksilver

Name: Quicksilver
Rating: 3.94 (45813 reviews)

by Neal Stephenson Book 1 in the The Baroque Cycle series.

First published 2003

Amazon

3.9(45,813)

Daniel Waterhouse grows up among English Puritans but is drawn towards the experimental philosophy of Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke and the early Royal Society. His story moves through Restoration London, the plague, the Great Fire and the political crisis that eventually removes James II from the throne.

Alongside him, the soldier and vagabond Jack Shaftoe rescues Eliza from enslavement and carries her into the courts and markets of Europe. Their rise through war, finance and espionage connects scientific discovery to the ambitions of Louis XIV and establishes the families whose descendants appear in Cryptonomicon.

The Restoration setting links scientific change with financial and political experimentation. Newton’s work, the Royal Society, new forms of credit and the expansion of state power all emerge from the same unstable decades. By moving between laboratories, courts and battlefields, the novel treats the scientific revolution not as an isolated intellectual event but as part of a broader reorganisation of European power.