John Derbyshire quite liked Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle:
A novel stands or falls by the pleasure it gives to the thoughtful and attentive reader. By that standard, and setting aside the minor blemishes noted above, the Baroque Cycle is a very fine work of popular fiction. The more you know about math, logic, and computing, the more you will find in it; but any reader who, at a bare minimum, does not mind mathematical and technological topics will find something. If you have been wondering whether you should tackle Neal Stephenson’s three big volumes, I urge you to do so.
So did I. I don’t know if it’s quite as superficially entertaining as Cryptonomicon, but it’s a more impressive literary feat and one that I suspect will eventually come to be considered his masterwork… unless we’re fortunate enough to see him again surpass himself.