Neal Stephenson – Baroque Cycle

At a moment when the demon of work had long kept me from adventuring myself, here I found fiction that took me on far-ranging travels: through different yet connected historical periods, political and economic intrigue, scientific advances, cryptology and multiple entertaining episodes that mixed invented characters with well-known figures and events, while conjuring up the living conditions of the century. I have a thing about Isaac Newton and alchemy (they played a significant role in my book “Hoodwink”) and they are here, too. I enjoyed the long, humorous digressions, liked the smart, sexy Eliza and also the notion of making Enoch Root apparently immortal and able to crop up in and link any of the story lines.
 
Stephenson wrote Cryptonomicon before going on to devise and write Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World as the grandest of prequels. I prefer old-fashioned chronological order and I’m glad that saved Cryptonomicon until last, to let its more recent and modern-day narrative feed off all that had gone before.