The System of the World
Book Eight of The Baroque Cycle
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Narrated by:
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Neal Stephenson (introduction)
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Kevin Pariseau
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Simon Prebble
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By:
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Neal Stephenson
About this listen
In this concluding volume of Neal Stephenson’s epic work, “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe must escape the noose of Jack Ketch; the rivalry between Newton and Leibniz comes to a head; and Daniel Waterhouse pursues his dream to build the Logic Mill.
The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson’s award-winning series, spans the late 17th and early 18th centuries, combining history, adventure, science, invention, piracy, and alchemy into one sweeping tale. It is a gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive historical epic populated by the likes of Isaac Newton, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, and King Louis XIV, along with some of the most inventive literary characters in modern fiction.
Audible’s complete and unabridged presentation of The Baroque Cycle was produced in cooperation with Neal Stephenson. Each volume includes an exclusive introduction read by the author.
Listen to more titles in the Baroque Cycle.©2004 Neal Stephenson (P)2010 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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London, September 1666. The Great Fire rages through the city, consuming everything in its path. Even the impregnable cathedral of St. Paul's is engulfed in flames and reduced to ruins. Among the crowds watching its destruction is James Marwood, son of a disgraced printer and reluctant government informer. In the aftermath of the fire, a semi-mummified body is discovered in the ashes of St. Paul's, in a tomb that should have been empty. The man's body has been mutilated, and his thumbs have been tied behind his back.
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Entertaining Historical Fiction
- By Simone on 05-01-17
By: Andrew Taylor
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Steeplejack
- By: A. J. Hartley
- Narrated by: Noma Dumezweni
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Anglet Sutonga lives repairing the chimneys, towers, and spires of the city of Bar-Selehm. Dramatically different communities live and work alongside each other. The white Feldish command the nation's higher echelons of society. The native Mahweni are divided between city life and the savannah. And then there's Ang, part of the Lani community who immigrated over generations ago as servants and now mostly live in poverty on Bar-Selehm's edges.
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Steeplejack Audio Climbs the Tops of Storytelling
- By Kerra Bolton on 12-08-16
By: A. J. Hartley
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Captain Alatriste
- By: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Margaret Sayers Peden
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
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Captain Alatriste is the story of a fictional 17th-century Spanish soldier who, after being wounded in battle during the Thirty Years' War, is forced to retire from the army. Now he lives the comparatively tame, though hardly quiet, life of a swordsman-for-hire in Madrid. Approached with an offer of work, Alatriste is told to go with another hired blade to an unfamiliar part of the city at midnight and wait.
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Good story...reader could be better.
- By Adina R. Montgomery on 07-26-05
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The Incorruptibles
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it - from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do. In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable.
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Great world, competent prose, messy story
- By Melanie on 03-31-16
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Angelmaker
- By: Nick Harkaway
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Joe Spork repairs clocks, a far cry from his late father, a flashy London gangster. But when Joe fixes one particularly unusual device, his life is suddenly upended. Joe's client, Edie Banister, is more than just a kindly old lady - she's a former superspy. And the device? It's a 1950s doomsday machine. And having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator, Edie's old arch-nemesis.
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A cure for the modern cynic
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 08-28-12
By: Nick Harkaway
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The Anubis Gates
- By: Tim Powers
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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When Brendan Doyle is flown from America to London to give a lecture on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, little does he expect that he will soon be traveling through time and meeting the poet himself. But Brendan could do without being stranded penniless in the teeming, thieving London of 1810.
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Yesterday… All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away
- By Doug D. Eigsti on 06-21-16
By: Tim Powers
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The Colour of Magic
- Discworld, Book 1
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
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Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
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TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
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Jester Leaps In
- A Medieval Mystery
- By: Alan Gordon
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In 13th century Europe, political turmoil is the order of the day and the Fool's Guild and its agents - jesters, jugglers, and knaves to a man - works behind the scenes to manipulate events, trying to maintain a balance of power. Theophilos, a member of the Guild known by many names, is still recovering from his last mission during which he was severely wounded and nearly lost his life but, in the person of Viola, found himself an apprentice and a wife. But there is no rest for the wicked.
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further entertainment
- By wylie smith on 09-16-24
By: Alan Gordon
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The Oversight
- By: Charlie Fletcher
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Once there were hundreds of members of the Oversight, the brave souls who guard the borders between the mundane and the magic. Now there are only five. When a vagabond brings a screaming girl to the Oversight's London headquarters, she could answer their hopes for new recruit, or she could be the instrument of their downfall.
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Fantastic start to a fantasy series
- By jessica on 06-01-14
By: Charlie Fletcher
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Where Flynne and her brother, Burton, live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran's benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC's elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there's a job he's supposed to do - a job Flynne didn't know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her.
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When We Cease to Understand the World
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When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
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the true heir w.g. sebald
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What listeners say about The System of the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Andrew Revak
- 06-16-16
The casting for jack shaftoe is spectacular
Who was your favorite character and why?
Jack Shaftoe and Daniel Waterhouse are impossible to choose between for me. They are both performed wonderfully and their stories completely enthralling.
Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?
Whoever performs jack shaftoe is completely amazing and has made me cheer with joy and cry with sadness. I actually choked up when jack was talking about his sons.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Yes, this book has done both and left me clenching my stomach with anticipation.
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- Cody
- 09-17-12
Great Ending to the Series
No one thing stands out when it comes to this audiobook because everything is done so well. The story is the perfect finale to the series and it is excellently performed. Although, like other Neal Stephenson tomes, it was a bit slow to get going as he set up the characters and the situations that would drive the story forward, I enjoyed the Baroque Cycle - and this reading of it in particular - from beginning to end.
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- John
- 10-20-19
Awesome series.
This book is a nice way to finish a great series. characters and the performances of Kevin Pariseau and Simon Prebble were just fantastic.
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- Doug D. Eigsti
- 10-28-14
Imp of the Perverse Embodied in Brilliant Fiction
This series must be contemplated as a unified whole. This review is for the entire BAROQUE CYCLE.
Sorry Neal, I was wrong. For me Neal Stephenson was a bit of an acquired taste. My first Stephenson exposure was with SNOWCRASH, a zany over-the-top Sci-Fi farce with quirky characters, tight plotting and fascinating ideas—try an ancient software virus in the human brain. My next Neal Stephenson encounter was THE DIAMOND AGE and this was for years my last. It was not until revisiting SNOWCRASH now as an audiobook (narrated by the superb Jonathan Davis) that I realized that anyone able to reach such dizzying fictional heights once deserves more than one strike. It was after this that I listened to ANATHEM; strike two. But there was one more title that had received acclaim that I first had to tackle before relegating Stephenson to one-hit-wonder status: CRYPTONOMICON. This was a home run; different from SNOWCRASH in almost every way but still wonderful, and really long. From this I learned three things: (1) Stephenson was not easy to pigeon-hole; and (2) He could handle fictional works in the long form; and (3) If you are not preoccupied with plot advancement, the rabbit trails can be quite scenic. So, once I learned that many of the characters in CRYPTONOMICON had ancestors in THE BAROQUE CYCLE, I determined to tackle the whole lot back-to-back, as if it were one giant novel. QUICKSILVER is the first audio installment of THE BAROQUE CYCLE, which is here divided into seven installments. In print form it is broken into eight books published in three hefty volumes.
I could tell from the comments of other listeners that this huge tome is not for everyone. If you require fast tight plotting, this may not be for you. If you enjoy witty repartee between vagabonds, kings, courtiers and thieves then this may be the mother lode. I liken Neal Stephenson to Gene Wolfe; another writer who can keep my interest just by the brilliance of his prose. It was in the middle of ODALISQUE, book three in the cycle, that I realized I didn’t much care that the plot was just creeping along, and that side trips to follow the numerous cast of characters kept taking me away from the one I liked best. I was enjoying the show and didn’t want it to end. This is truly not seven different novels, but one huge novel tied together by recurring characters and one vast and very satisfying story arc.
This accomplishment by Neal Stevenson is just the thing that the term magnum opus was coined for. Mr. Stevenson demonstrates his ability to manage a vast narrative alternate history and retains his focus over two-thousand six-hundred eighty-eight hardcover pages, through one-hundred fourteen hours of audiobook narration; yet the feel and texture and pacing is consistent throughout the entire work. Amazing. If you decide to tackle this tome you will be rewarded. It may cause you to rethink the whole audiobook medium.
I really enjoyed Stephenson’s insights into the politics of the scientific community, revolving around Isaac Newton. The fusing of Natural Philosophy (science), Alchemy, commodity-based monetary theory, rags-to-riches character transformations, and court intrigue make for a fascinating experience. Listening to this series is like taking a time-travel vacation to the eighteenth century. The shabby, muddy, miasmic grunge of the period’s living conditions sometimes remind me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Jabberwocky, with associated punch-lines. This is a very different world from the one we live in but I began to think I might understand it a little better and found that, in some ways, it might not be so bad.
If you are at all interested in free-market economics, and commodity-based monetary theory then one of the long-term story arcs will be of intense interest to you. Stevenson explores the impact of the foundation of the central Bank of England upon the flow of gold. And his deft insertion of an Alchemical component into the mix creates an enjoyable element of mystery. This is the storyline that required one-hundred hours to tell.
This is a Science Fiction work because the alternate-history angle with Alchemy infecting the realm of science will appeal to the SF fan. If you were provided with a plot outline or given some character sketches you may think this an historical novel, and it could be read from that perspective. But Science Fiction readers don’t as a rule read historical novels, but they will read this, therefore, whatever qualities it possesses, justify the SF label.
—PERSISTENT THEMES OF THE BAROQUE CYCLE—
Predestination versus Free-Will is on everyone’s mind
The debate between Protestantism versus Catholicism had a huge political impact
Geocentrism versus Heliocentrism is the only thing everyone can agree upon
Commodity-based Monetary theory makes the world work
Court Intrigue and witty conversations provide joy in every circumstance
Meritocracy rags-to-riches stories abound
People can endure much if they have hope
Vagabond underworld versus Persons of Quality show we have much in common
Alchemy counterpoised with Natural Philosophy revel the nature of science
Encryption and secret writing have long been employed
True love makes life worth living
Courtly liaisons show the shallowness of the ruling class to whom society is entrusted
Simon Prebble does yeoman’s work on this production. To my ear he nailed every single pronunciation of every word in the course of over one-hundred hours of narration—no mean feat. His character voicings are subtle but immediately recognizable. His talent allows him to even give convincing alternate pronunciations of words to the different characters that are appropriate to their individual personalities. The more foppish English characters habitually emphasize different syllables than the lower class characters. Despite the deep quality of his voice Simon Prebble handles both male and female character voices convincingly. His voice has a limited range but I was constantly amazed at how he could make subtle alterations in inflection, diction and pacing to effectively distinguish the various characters in a conversation. Simon Prebble achieves the desirable state of occupying the place in your head usually reserved for your own internal sub-vocalizations when you are reading a print book to yourself. This is a high achievement indeed and makes this a soothing book experience.
Narrated by Simon Prebble (Main text)
Kevin Pariseau (Chapter epigraphs)
Neal Stephenson (Introduction)
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- Tim Curtis
- 09-30-18
One of my favorite epic trilogies of all time.
The way Neal Stephenson paints so vivid a picture in your mind with his use of words, is a beautiful thing. The System of the Word is the perfect culmination of The Baroque Cycle. Jack Shafto's journey has a satisfying terminus.
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- Tim
- 03-07-14
Last Nibble
After spending about a month with all three volumes that consist of 115 hours, I have accomplished something that I wanted to do for years. I have to thank my friend for reminding me to purchase these books. I'm not a hoarder of books. Just because an audiobook is on sale, I don't get them and save them for later. I don't like having stockpile of books that I might not ever read. I tend to buy them as I go. Having a backlog of reading material is a chore and not a pleasure.
As for the last book in the "Baroque Cycle", I have the up most respect for Neal Stephenson and how well he can tell a story and stay on topic. It is remarkable how focus he was to write almost 2700 pages and publish them within a few years time. Unlike his predecessor George R.R. Martin in "A Song of Ice and Fire", Neal Stephenson completed the "Baroque Cycle" in favor for his audience. I don't like to compare the two authors together, but it seems like Martin is being selfish by not completing his series in a timely fashion. Even his loyal followers, including myself, have their doubts that he will ever finish them.
Coming to the end to "The System of the World" is a bitter sweet. I am relief that it has ended and with the result that I was expecting. I kind of wish that there was a fourth volume because it is that awesome. Besides the "Dark Tower" by Stephen King, "Baroque Cycle" has to be one of my favorites. Neal Stephenson wrote this one for his readers and chose not to extend the tale any further. In that respect, he is a decorative author that enjoys his readers.
I have no regrets at getting to know Jack, Newton, Eliza and Daniel.
In my review of "Quicksilver", I have compared it to starting an eight course meal.
I have come to the last nibble and I'm satisfied.
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- Alennx
- 05-28-17
Get them all and listen in order. Excellent!
One of the best series I've ever read/heard :)
Wildly interesting, exciting, funny, sad, epic and subtle.
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- Chris Johnson
- 05-11-18
The Baroque Cycle
This series by Neal Stephenson is far more than a brilliant and entertaining work of literature, it is also an encyclopedic introduction to the history of commerce and the European Enlightenment.
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- Kevin
- 01-20-15
The Final Chapter
This is a fitting end to this series. Its a well told story tracing parts of the true Baroque period in the guise of SCI-FI. This series was okay. Some of the books are great, others are a bit slow. Overall, its a fun few of our history told through some interesting characters. Over the course of the books, the fun heros do get somewhat lost in the story. The are very compelling in the first few books and not so compelling in the last.
But I am glad I read the series.
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- Dan B
- 04-16-23
A fitting conclusion to a LONG slog!
I can't say I necessarily recommend reading the entire Baroque Cycle, given the investment of time and mental energy it will take to get through all the books. However, if you've gotten this far, you definitely need to finish the series. This final book is great. The story finally gets gripping, and most of the wide ranging threads get resolved. I felt genuinely sad at the passing or departure of certain characters, who I have been hearing about for what seems like 100+ hours up to this point. I also love the readers, they bring a genuine humor to what could otherwise be a somewhat dry story.
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