He seemed to not want to deal with research enough to make it non-fiction, nor with story enough to make it good fiction. He just sort of threw modern characters into historical settings contrived enough to make the points he wanted to make about economics.

So it feels like not quite historical fiction, not quite fantasy, and either way not really thought through? That would frustrate me.

(I read Quicksilver when it came out, but can remember almost nothing about it except the narrative voice, some details from the life of Lawrence Waterhouse, and the fact that I couldn't believe Eliza as a character at all. I should have read The Confusion and The System of the World ditto, but I can't remember anything about them, so maybe I didn't after all. I enjoyed the historical sections of Cryptonomicon. I'll put up with a lot for Turing.)

And has long since apparently decided that editors are for other people. Bah.

I really wish that were not the default failure mode for successful authors. It doesn't happen to everyone, but it happens to too many.