#64 in Historical fiction
The System of the World
- 892
- Pages
- about 16 h
- Reading time
- Prometheus Award
- Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“The System of the World” is a vast, rewarding finale to “The Baroque Cycle”, mixing historical and invented figures in a tale of schemes and ideas. Neal Stephenson delights in detail and digression, and the plotting of his characters keeps the long book engaging. Some readers find stretches of it heavy going. At nearly nine hundred pages, and as the third volume of a trilogy, it is for those who have read the first two.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The System of the World is a novel by Neal Stephenson and the third and final volume in The Baroque Cycle. The title alludes to the third volume of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which bears the same name.
Reading order · The Baroque Cycle
Full order & progress →- QuicksilverStart here
7.67.6 / 10 - The Confusion
8.28.2 / 10 - The System of the WorldThis book
8.18.1 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.4 across 200 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 58% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Historical fiction average of 8.0. That is how 8.1 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 27 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 8.5 | 173 | 87% |
Frequently asked
How long is The System of the World?
It has 892 pages — longer than 98% of the ranked books in Historical fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Historical fiction — with scores between 7.6 and 8.2, closest to this book.
