Well, I finally did it. After nearly six years I have successfully slogged through the 3,000 pages of The Baroque Cycle.

The System of the World is the third and final volume of the series, and it mostly manages to succeed at tying together the dangling threads of the first two installments, while providing Stephenson a platform to disgorge everything else he learned about the 17th century during his years of research. The story here revolves around Daniel Waterhouse, a geriatric fellow of the Royal Society whose ties to Leibniz, Newton, and Eliza put him at the center of a whole bunch of politics and intrigue around the British monetary system.

The plot moves a lot faster than it did in Quicksilver but there isn't as much action as there was in The Confusion. Stephenson relies heavily on dialogue to advance the plot here, and it gets tiresome in many places, though there are occasional soliloquies that made me laugh out loud.

We do, after 3,000 pages, finally get an explanation for Enoch Root's persistence through the centuries (including his 20th century appearance in Cryptonomicon), and though I won't spoil it, I will say that it is reasonably satisfying.

You have to have the right mindset to approach a work this gigantic, and although overall I can't really recommend it, I am glad to have read it.