[A] massive tour-de-force- Dense, witty, erudite, packed with fascinating characters, and gripping despite a distended length, Quicksilver is both a worthy prequel to Cryptonomicon, and an indication that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is shaping up to be a far more impressive literary endeavour than most so-called "serious" fiction - No scholarly, and intellectually provocative, historical novel has been this much fun since The Name of the Rose.

Staggering diversity and detail ... An astonishing achievement.

A great, heaving countryside of a book...consistently funny...fluent and elusive, while retaining just the right hint of poison

Stephenson mixes a library’s worth of ideas with compulsive derring-do … its scope and inventiveness become addictive.

A breathless ride…the writing gives an immersive sense of time and place

A brilliant, bulging historical novel ... Thrillingly accomplished ... Magnificent ... one finishes it already eager to begin the sequel

His style is spare, that's what is so beautiful. His novels are genuine romans philosophies - novels illustrating ideas

In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety