The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel

It's been a long time since I was disappointed in a Stephenson book. This one just feels like he's writing it for his own amusement, spending most of its time poking fun at government bureaucracy and offering giggly sex stories with a maturity level somewhere between middle school and 90's sitcom. Normally spot on with his depictions of technology, this time it's hand wavy at best, ending up with "something something super cooling plus quantum stuff equals magic." This from an author who wrote a novel about cryptography and included actual working computer source code.

It's entertaining, I won't deny it. Stephenson does still write character interactions well, and I chuckled at a number of his stabs at corporate life. But I can get that from daily life in my own cube farm, I didn't jump to get the hardcover because I wanted to rehash what I do for a living. Given his track record I expected much more.

An amazing blend of science, magic and time travel. I saw this a bookshop and browsed the first page. I was hooked. Logged on to the store and saw it was half the paperback price and bought it.
This was a non stop read. I loved every moment of it and I loved the way the story is told through differing points of view. Its been a long time since i read a book that was so much fun.
The science is hard science and quite interesting. The magic is, well magicky. Together the story flies, dragging you along with it.
The various characters are interesting and believable and loveable, even the evil ones.I just wish there were more pages in the book focusing on the bad guys. They were good at being bad and for perfectly logical reasons.

I love this quote from the book... "not because //// is trying to do something evil, but because //// is trying to make things unfamiliar to you. And that is inconvenient for your view of how life is to be lived, with Walmarts and cotton underwear and things for which you need this so-called rare earth. You want to have always had those things. That’s all." the //// is to avoid spoilers..
Its an interesting way to look at the bad guys.

Diachronic Effect is akin to time travel. But in this novel, the power medium is not a machine but a witch. Yes, a witch. Magic has always existed, until it was deactivated for good in July 1851, by a technological advance that caused the collapse of the witche's wave function. Yes, Quantum Mechanics is also involved in the phenomenon. If you want to understand it, or grasp the idea of it, prior to reading the book, research a little about the"Shrodinger's Cat" thought experiment in Quantum Mechanics. Neil Stephenson does it again with a great plot. The book ends on a standoff between two rival groups. Is Neil thinking about a sequel????

VERY disappointing. As a long-time and devoted fan I have to assume that most of the text is contributed by his co-author. So trite and laborious I doubt I'll make it through -- the style is an insult to the reasons you've come to like his books. I'm not talking about the premise; I'm talking about the book. Yes, a movie screenplay. Wait for the movie.

I'm sorry that I can't recognize Neal Stephenson's input into this work. This is so much ms gallands work his name is only attached as a marketing tool. If you are into "story telling" which obviously this work's sole ambition then you won't be disappointed. But if like me you crave the rich depth of Stephenson's other work then don't waste your time. This piece was written in anticipation of some screen deal. I feel used!

I usually enjoy Stephenson, even though he is sometimes too long-winded. I thought a co-author might help with that. Instead, it's the reverse. The writing here is interminable. How in the world do you make time travel and witchcraft BORING? Well, one way is to constantly interject seventh-grade-level "romantic" thinking into the characters. Another way is to have those characters meander around in long ellipses while NOTHING FREAKING HAPPENS.
When I saw that I was 41% of the way through this thing, and my interest was still not caught, and I was reading it as if it were a chore, I gave up. Sadly, that was after more than seven days had passed, so I am unable to return this miscarriage and I mourn the loss of my money.

I was expecting a novel more along the lines of Mr. Stephenson's previous works: the Baroque Cycle, Anathem, Reamde, etc. This one is disappointing both in the narration and the many asides with Powerpoints, email exerpts and reports. I could not find anything to like/dislike about any of the characters.
I regret spend money on this before reading other reader reviews. Next time I'll know better, especially if Neal has co-authors.

Sigh! This reads like a manuscript of cobbled-together writing exercises that the authors decided to publish "because they can". The premise is flawed, the characters don't really go anywhere, it's very uneven and it cotains some really lazy narrative tricks.
Some unsatisfying plot holes:
- why focus only on time travel if you have the option to resuscitate magic?
- why would Erszebet agree to restrict herself to doing only time travel, since she's been waiting for 200 years and is desperate to get back to magic?
- who are these people who hold Melisande pretty much captive in 1851? That whole bit could have been worked a lot more.
The characters' lack of character:
- Tristan the love interest remains a random pile of attributes that don't come together in a person and I, at least, never understood what was so great about him.
- The only characters with an agenda are Grainne and Magnus, introduced halfway through the book. Everyboy else seems to accept whatever happens with robot-like compliance and a tiny bit of whingeing.
Unevenness:
- The authors seem most excited when they get to write about the horrors of the office culture of a government bureaucracy. Compared to the zip put into that, the decriptions of the imperial court at Constantinople, the Great Exhibition and Shakespeare's Globe come across as bland and uninspired.
Lazy narrative tricks:
- The different voices and narrators add some flavour but in the end they feel mostly like "finger exercises" where the author practices styles - it's form over function.
- The attempt at "will they won't they" tension is dead in the water. We find out early on that they will - and then the authors spend all of the book asking "will they??" as if it wasn't already clear. So we get neither romance nor suspense, and only a coy "afterwards" sex scene at the end.
Sigh again... I wonder if the collaboration format means that neither Neal nor Nicole was as stringent with the quality as they would be for a single-author novel? I haven't read anything by Gallard but Stephenson is usually far, far better than this.
I did enjoy reading "The Rise and Fall" despite all that, but it was hard to lose myself with so many little narrative annoyances. There's some good imagining of what life might have been like in the past; like details about dress and behaviour in the 1600s New England... Graínne the Irish witch is pretty exciting... and the Vikings'map software gambit. But then that plot line just peters out. They introduce some interesting history that I, for one, knew nothing about, like the Constantinople palace guards... but, well. Maybe this would've been better with heavy editing as "Book 1" of a series, and they could have kept some of their ideas for follow-on books and given them more space, attention and thought.

*SPOILERS*

The main turning point in this book is based on the fact that witches can do other things besides Sending, and that witches may actually be intelligent, self-serving, and devious. They're people.

Somehow, every non-witch character in this book, including the ones who are paid to be paranoid and suspicious, forget this. Never even address it until they are taken unawares. Even with the example of the Hungarian witch Erszebet Karpathy, who is manifestly intelligent, vain, and willing to threaten and manipulate to get her way...even with this example they are unbelievably stupid toward the other witches.

Security? What's that? Sure, their emails are secure, but the human side? Not at all. This is a military operation, started by a mid-grade military officer, overseen by the military head of a department who is not prone to ignore these things. It defies belief.

A few simple frank conversations between supposedly intelligent characters would've staved off disaster. "I can't tell you these things and *here's why*." "We have to do this boring work now and *here's why*." "What do YOU think of this, and do you have any ideas?"

It was all very slapdash and glossed over. Didn't work for me.

Clever devices and twists and turns. Classic Neal is all over the time line. I enjoyed the witty additions by his co-author. Have to purchase her books now too as I own all of his. This book was so well crafted that I sat down, exhausted, to read the first 2 chapters and have found that I had to devour the entire magnificent thing. There was only one small sentence missing from the entire story. I loved it. More please.

*SPOILERS*

The main turning point in this book is based on the fact that witches can do other things besides Sending, and that witches may actually be intelligent, self-serving, and devious. They're people.

Somehow, every non-witch character in this book, including the ones who are paid to be paranoid and suspicious, forget this. Never even address it until they are taken unawares. Even with the example of the Hungarian witch Erszebet Karpathy, who is manifestly intelligent, vain, and willing to threaten and manipulate to get her way...even with this example they are unbelievably stupid toward the other witches.

Security? What's that? Sure, their emails are secure, but the human side? Not at all. This is a military operation, started by a mid-grade military officer, overseen by the military head of a department who is not prone to ignore these things. It defies belief.

A few simple frank conversations between supposedly intelligent characters would've staved off disaster. "I can't tell you these things and *here's why*." "We have to do this boring work now and *here's why*." "What do YOU think of this, and do you have any ideas?"

It was all very slapdash and glossed over. Didn't work for me.

Clever devices and twists and turns. Classic Neal is all over the time line. I enjoyed the witty additions by his co-author. Have to purchase her books now too as I own all of his. This book was so well crafted that I sat down, exhausted, to read the first 2 chapters and have found that I had to devour the entire magnificent thing. There was only one small sentence missing from the entire story. I loved it. More please.

I enjoyed this book, but did not find it as captivating as most other Neal Stephenson books, and I believe I’ve read them all. It was a fun story concept, and moved along, although it took a while to get rolling.

I wasn’t enthralled with the method of story-telling via memos, etc. I did appreciate the subtle commentary on bureaucratic growth and how it can engulf and kill creativity. And the acronyms were a similar comment on government/military methodology.

Neal Stephenson is a very talented writer and this book reminds me of his Trilogy series of 16th century historical fiction. In DODO, he creates a fast-paced blending of witches and time travel, adding his unique element of humor and just the right dash of sexiness. I became a bit tired of his endless complex acronyms, but that seems to be a part of our current culture and keeps the reader on his toes to keep track of characters and references. Very satisfying reading experience.

Don't read this on a kindle. You will tear your hair out trying to read the many pages with tiny print and no contrast. The varying fonts drove me crazy.
And for Stephenson fans- well, this is a disappointment from the basic premise- magic vs photography- to the plot. Pass.

Very engaging and well written book. The narrative is also very original - books with different POVs can be tricky to master, but the author's really make it work on this one, and you get a very distinct feeling of getting to know the characters through their different speech/writing patterns. The story moves at a good pace and is well interconnected. I love certain characters and feel their anguish, and REALLY share their feelings of near hatred for some of the less likeable characters. You'll know which ones I mean, believe me. One of them in particular is the definition of a twat (pardon my French). I found the ending a bit abrupt and if feels like there can be a Vol. 2 to continue with the story, as some character and story arcs are not fully explored.

.... A story of time travel, with plenty of thuds and bangs along the way, complicated by clueless bosses and government red tape. "WITCH" people from our past, would your bring forward in time?? The story line is pure "MAGIC", ,,,the "SHEAR" adasity of the authors in its story telling is impressive (puns intended) ,,, r

Lots of engaging ideas, an interesting read.. and then the book just ends. It's almost like there's a word count in the authors' contract and shortly after that's reached, they just wrap things up. In the glory days of print, I could see the pressure to keep the book at a certain size coming from the publisher. In the days of electronic publishing, the authors must also be involved.

It pains me to write this about something which Neal Stephenson helped create, but this is not a good book. It is a bad romance novel.

It is basically a direct to DVD style sequel to Anathem...the one in which few of the people responsible for it seem to have actually understood (or cared about) the original story and were far more interested in showing a few bits of rippling muscle and how the plucky heroine isn't (no, really) actually interested in those things than in, you know, actually creating a compelling story for the suckers who will throw their money at it.

From reading this book to finish on an iPad for six hours this weekend, I can report I didn't necessarily keep up with all the acronyms ..or jargon...but I did grow to care about the characters and give the novel lots of stars for driving to a witty and exciting finish. I assume we will see more of DODO in the future? I hope so...

A huge fan of Neal Stephenson's fine work who eagerly awaits his every book, I am frankly disappointed by DODO. Lacking his usual thought provoking plot supported by complex characters moving forward with great flow toward peak events, DODO features a linear plot and one dimensional characters, all plodding along in a predictable manner. Whereas I usually consume Mr. Stephenson's book like a fine meal, one bite at a time, reading this novel has been like eating my way through 3 day leftovers from the fridge, chewing and swallowing until it's done, without really enjoying the meal.

In The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O, Neal Stephenson supplies the reader with a Michael Crichton story while channeling Orson Scott Card. Science and technology combine with supernatural elements to create an engaging and occasionally tense narrative which spans centuries on a dizzying journey to a remarkable conclusion.

The idea behind this novel is classic Stephenson and had great potential, but the execution was bland. There were moments of building tension that were simply released unsatisfactorily. The journalist style (telling versus showing) did not help. Further, the entire premise made for easy, random, deus ex machina that makes any tension short lived.

I've stuck with Stephenson through thick and thin - adored his early works, and forgave his inability to write an ending. But this was, unfortunately, a big swing and a miss. I've never much enjoyed books written by two authors, especially when one (Stephenson) has such a style and form that it's easily recognizable. It honestly feels like a book written by different people, and is a mishmash of plot issues, poor character development, and an unfair reliance on magic catastrophe (diachronic shear and a number of other unique names). I feel, as others have noted, that this was a fairly blatant attempt at getting a screenplay made. I suppose it could be adapted over a miniseries, or, heaven forbid, a movie series. There were parts I enjoyed, and Stephenson's skewering of bureaucracy and corporate double speak is hilarious. But what I expected was a robust historical exploration, but the majority of it seems to be concerned with plans, discussions of plans, and interruptions of the plans. The ending, in typical Stephensonian fashion, is unfulfilling, although clearly designed to set up a sequel. I'm not sure I'll be on board for that one...

After a promising start, this book slowly devolves into being an absolute chore to read. It slogs on for a couple of hundred pages, then it just sort of ends. There's just enough interesting premise to make you really miss the Stephenson who could deliver Snow Crash or The Diamond Age.

The basic premises of this book make no sense. I mean, I understand this is a work of fiction, and a one about magic to boot. But they don't make sense on their own terms. I could go on about it for a long time, but I don't see how I can do it without creating spoilers, so I won't. This said, the book is brilliantly written, at times hilarious, the satire at the bureaucracy and "corporate culture" is spot-on, the characters are vivid and the adventures are breathtaking. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it, though I do wish the authors came up with a better explanation of magic.

Stephenson & Galland have created a terrific work of written art. From narration, typography, character development, sneaky humor/sarcasm to twisted plotting grounded in reality. Technology vs Magic...better or just what we are used to? Awesome read.

This book started out with awesome, truly unique ideas and I loved the first half. But, as I continued, I found following the story line somewhat tedious due to the format of using communications. Reading along one realizes that this is an open- ended book, ready for lots of follow ups. However I could easily see this as a science fiction series on TV. Hopefully some producer will pick this up!

... and the worst of Stephenson in one book, co-author or not. Tons of Big Ideas, tons of info-dumps; convoluted plots, convenient deus ex machina ... Still, almost all Stephenson is better than most spec-fic these days, so I’ll take it. And frankly, I wouldn’t mind another look into a pos-DODO magical world.

Context: I loved Cryptonomicin, Seveneves and Reamde, but found Anathem tough to connect with. If you're like me, you'll love DODO. Even more than the others I mentioned, it's accessible and entertaining from the get-go. Highly recommended.

As is usual with Neal Stephenson, the book alternates between "best book ever" and "what the hell is he waffling on about now"
If you can struggle through the bits where he gets bogged down in detail, this makes for a great fun ride of a tale
One of the more "TV series" probable ones too.

I could not get past the first chapter let alone finish this book. I tried on 3 separate occasions to read and get into the story but I just couldn't. Boring, flat and uninteresting characters. Bummer.

For me it was better paced than SEVENEVES. It's a fun spin on the literal impact of technology on magic, witches never saw it coming and vice versa, great good versus evil but which is which depends on one's perspectives.

It felt like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with witches and time travel. The audio book was fantastic and for the first time I found myself choosing to listen rather than read. The ending was great! I'm really hoping there is a sequel. I would love to spend more time with these characters in this universes.

This book started out a real page turner, as all of his books are, but half way through he must have gone on vacation and passed it off to his assistant. It quickly devolved into a bunch of mumbo jumbo technobabble that read more like an instruction manual for playing Dungeons and Dragons with page after page of character descriptions and player abilities. God it was boring. I had to stop reading for a while. Then I came back and just skimmed the rest of the way, skipping the boring cataloging of emails, government paperwork, the setting up of servers, and endless minutiae. And sadly the book ended up exactly as I expected. I could have written the ending after reading only the first handful of chapters. What a sad and boring disappointment. In my mind I'm already writing a better story. I'll just pretend I read that instead of this thing.

The book is a big set up and never pays off. This is pretty typical for Neal Stephenson, but I thought the characters were basically thin-veiled fan service (neckbeard system admin CS PhD SCA swordfighter!)

I got the sample on my Kindle last night - and gritted my teeth to slog through the sample after the first 3-4 pages, ONLY because I don't feel good leaving a review without reading the whole book. But I just couldn't - I couldn't pay for it, and I couldn't imagine throwing more good time after bad, finishing this sad flailing effort. I've been reading NS since The Big U, and Zodiac - I know his writing, and this is NOT it. Even his collaborations with his uncle (Interface, The Cobweb) had huge NS footprints all over it - the flavor was the same; the writing absolutely "rhymed" with his other works. This? This is junk. Not only doesn't it have his feel - that'd be OK! if it were GOOD writing. But it's not. It's tedious, hackneyed, and clumsy. Say what you will about NS being .... errrr ... "profligate"? "generous"? -- he can craft a sentence, a scene, and a character. The fact that it shows up on the store under just his name (at least on this screen), and not hers, is disingenuous at best. This is not NS's writing, imho, and I'm saddened that he allowed his name to be put to it.

This sucker feels like one of those crap "Tom Clancy" or "Robert Parker" or "Robert Ludlum" books, some of which have a "with" on the cover if they're feeling especially lip-service-ethical - and by "they" I mean the publishers because the named authors are DEAD. Only Neal's not dead -- I think. (Just maybe brain-dead, or under severe pressure of blackmail or extortion, for putting his name on this dreck.)

He's apparently since disavowed The Big U (and I think Zodiac) as not-his-best-writing. Can't believe he'd keep his name on this, vs. those which were at least an entertaining, well-crafted read.

Immersive, with characters you care about, even when you hate them. Provides legitimate satire about institutional bureaucracy, and it is really funny. As usual for Stephenson the details are brilliantly laid out to make you feel you are there, especially great since this book involves time travel. This book examines progress and enlightenment against a backdrop of other times without being heavy handed. I highly recommend this book, especially if you liked Seveneves, and Anathem.

I write this review after reading only a few pages: Regardless of the quality of the novel, Kindle's edition is terrible. Chapter subtitles and certain emphasized words within the text are awkwardly printed in tiny, faint, and difficult-to-decipher fonts. You must use either a magnifer or blow up the font size to capture the content. What a terrible thing to do to such a fine author. Kindle has botched editions before --- most grievously to the Churchill's war histories.It is not an acceptable excuse that Kindle only delivers a publisher's electronic files; we are paying Kindle, not the publisher.

Stephenson has this habit of doing his 'science' reveals by having a question and answer session where the expert talks down to the moron who dutifully asks the dumbest, or most obvious, questions. If you read Cryptonomicon and found the style acceptable then this could be for you. Then there's the childish treatment of one of the characters who is trapped in the past. Her tale is told as a written chronicle that is being read, including the crossing out. The first time it was amusing, after a hundred times it is just pathetic and pointless. Nobody who feels the need to cross out their 'bad words' is going to keep on writing them with a quill pen. So we have parallel universes, all tightly coupled, and time travel, and magic explaining how it's all tied together. So we take a slow crawl through the consequences of time travel as run by the military. Oh god help me, why did I give this man more of my money for writing crap like this. I am sure Nicole Calland had a lot to do with the portrayal of women in the story, or at least I hope she has made them more believable to women, but I am not going to inflict this on my wife to see if she can detect a woman's hand. All I get from this is the usual plodding Stephenson tropes.

Why did the use of magic or any reference to magic being practiced in the present tense just stop in the year 1851? Did a specific event in the history of our world trigger the demise of magic? Or could it have been the advent of a certain technology? These are the questions that form up the premise of THE RISE AND FALL OF D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and co-author Nicole Galland. The aforementioned D.O.D.O. is a secret government organization that is charged with discovering why magic just disappeared as a real thing and became something more fictional or legendary. The main character Melisande Stokes is an expert in linguistics who is asked by Tristan Lyons, a leading member of D.O.D.O. to help translate ancient texts that he hopes will shed more light on the mystery of the total disappearance of magic. While completing their work, Melisande and Tristan develop a device that allows them to travel back in time. This device may be the key to perhaps finding the answers they seek and altering the events that occurred over 150 years ago with the hopes of keeping magic alive. The problem is when you interact with people and meddle in events from the past, it can have some very dire and catastrophic results for the present day. Consequently, in blindly seeking the answers to their questions, Melisande and Tristan may have opened a Pandora's Box that they wish they could slam shut.

Neal Stephenson has long been a favorite author of mine, so I am always going to read any new book written by him. When I found out that he co-authored THE RISE AND FALL OF D.O.D.O. with Nicole Galland, I was intrigued even more. I was not previously familiar with Nicole's work but soon discovered that she has contributed to the Mongoliad series which is a project of different authors that was started by Neal Stephenson. I have to say that I enjoyed this book immensely. It has all of the elements that I crave in a great read: a solid mystery, historical backdrop, time-travel, witchcraft, and thrilling action sequences. I found the references to witches and their history to be the most fascinating aspect of the story. We get a ton of info regarding the Salem Witch Trials as well as other events in history that involved witches and witchcraft. The time-travel part of the story also worked incredibly well for me. I liked the way the authors handled how manipulating and injecting yourself into the past can have some very real consequences for the present-day and future. That is where the story ultimately hooked me and had me turning pages frantically late into the evening hours. I wholeheartedly recommend THE RISE AND FALL OF D.O.D.O. to those who love historical fiction with a little dose of fantasy and alternate history. This book also made me want to pick up more of Nicole Galland's books and give them a try.

Everything about this novel had me excited to read it. The fruitful genre of magic, the comical dodo bird as a mascot (of sorts) and the renowned authors guiding the tale. In short, the book was a disappointment. I couldn't help but think that it might have been better suited as a series. The authors spend so much time setting the scene that it feels like 100 pages would go by without anything meaningful happening. Perhaps if they felt the "weight" of having to condense meaningful plot arcs into a smaller space, they would have been a bit more terse. The "excerpt" format (comprising of transcribed interviews, journal entries and intra-office communications) can be successful, but it started to feel "cute" (redacted foul language/hyperbole) at best, and plodding at worst. The character development was unimaginative for the most part, to the degree that you could almost predict surprises before they came. And finally, I was a bit disappointed that an accomplished science fiction writer like Stephenson would sign off on time travel as it's described in "D.O.D.O." (**LITE SPOILER ALERT**) I can appreciate the idea of "strands," but the whole idea of the traveler leaving behind things like fillings, medical devices and so on immediately got me wondering. What if the time traveler had gulped down a diet soda and a bag full of gummi bears before she traveled back? I would expect these foreign substances to have to similarly be excluded the way any other new-fangled thing like a pacemaker would.

A good premise, decent action sequences. WAY too many cliche characters and too much snark toward bureaucracy. I don't mind a bit of that -- it works pretty well in the Laundry Files, for example. But characters need motivation. Several of them seemingly had none, especially the villains who were almost literally like chess (or maybe D&D) pieces, each with a range of motion and a set of attributes, but no core ideology. Okay, at the very end, Tristan expresses some interest in the post-Enlightenment Liberal tradition--but without really demonstrating he understands what he's saying.

It will be interesting to see what they do next. Going back to Albertus Magnus's time to prevent the future from being altered sounds cool. Or possibly trying to firewall technology threads from magical threads in the multiverse. If, as the book's premise has it, an infinite number of pasts converge on a singular present and then expand into an infinite number of futures (but really there are also an infinite number of presents, or else witches could not wend across them), then why does one thing have to happen or the other? Why isn't there space for both?

Let's start with the acknowledgement that I am not a Neal Stephenson fan. I have tried Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, and just couldn't get into the stories. However, I have always *felt* that I ought to be a fan, so when this came out yesterday I bought the audiobook version and went through it.

The book is first person, from the POV of a woman who is a polyglot -- a highly-trained expert in ancient languages. She is approached by Tristan (no cultural reference there) who works for a super-secret government agency that hires her on to help them with a puzzle: they had accumulated thousands of ancient texts indicating that magic existed up until 1851, when, after decades of decline, magic not only ceased to exist, but disappeared from the common cultural awareness. Why?

The first thing I want to say is that this is a "speculation" that has occurred to many other writers, notably Larry Niven in "The Magic Goes Away." Stephenson and his co-author come up with a plausible, physics-based reason why this might have happened, and a specific historical event that occurred in 1851 that would plausibly make their version of magic suddenly and permanently stop working. The bulk of the book is a physics experiment *from hell* that is designed to bring back the ability to do magic, at least on a limited scale -- and all the unintended consequences THIS little decision entrains.

NO SPOILERS HERE. Unlike the previous books, I was able to retain interest and follow the storyline along without trouble. I liked it. It's an enjoyable romp, I'd say, meaning a plot that follows a plausible chain of events that all arise from a single independent wonder, just for the sport of it. No message is expressed or implied, thank goodness.

Comparing this book to the works of Tim Powers, I'd say that Powers' books are better at evoking a sense of mystical, sometimes threatening otherness. Powers' books are also more consistently serious. This one goes more along the lines of modern dramedies, such as Joss Whedon writes in TV and movies, in which you are at times in a drama, at times a horror novel, and at times a comedy. This I actually find doesn't work very well for me. This is, however, at least in part due to the tones of voice and inflection that the reader on the audio book uses. I tried listening to passages in a "flat" tone of voice, more as I might read it, and decided that the reader puts in inflections that lighten the tone, when the text could be read in a more somber way. So, if you like your books without the humorous tone, you may be better off with the text version than the audio version. So the reader's choice of inflection doesn't skew your experience. Finally, Tim Powers has a remarkable ability to take you into a really bizarre alternate reality, that feels real enough to affect your view of the world for hours afterward. This one feels less absorbing, more purely for entertainment and less atmospheric.

Upshot: I have to try Cryptonomicon, in audio format, and see if I like it. That's the best I can do to help you know whether this might be a good one for you. It was pretty good.

I just finished listening to the audio version of this today. I had misgivings before I started about magic being involved, but after a page or two it was no problem at all. I loved this book, and was totally swept up in it. Other reviewers have done a great job of giving an idea what the plot and characters are like and how well all that is done, but one thing that really stood out for me was how laugh-out-loud hilarious it was all the way through. And that's thanks to the excellent writing. There are two examples of hilarity I'd like to highlight.

The character Melisande Stokes, trapped in 1851, writes a long description of how this happened to her, and she tends to use both 21st century swear words and slang. And every time she does, she revises her original text and rephrases it in very proper Victorian English. In the audio version, there's a zipping sound between the two types of phrasing, implying the excising of the original to be replaced by the rephrased text. It happens constantly, and in almost every case is extremely funny.

At a couple of points in the long story, Vikings are sent forward in time to the 21st century, create mayhem in a Walmart store over a period of days, and then are sent back to their own (and other) times. Back in their own time, they relate their experiences to a bard who writes accounts of what happened. In the audio version these accounts are read in a heavy Scandinavian accent. The text is so wry and amusing as people from 9 or 10 centuries ago struggle to express what our time is like using their conceptual framework. The results are so clever and amusing - extremely well written passages - and wryly question our views of our own time, and our values. Such clever stuff!

I got through it. That about sums it up. Too much detail; who cares about all the bureaucratic red tape in the DODO? Not me. And there were reams of paper wasted telling all about their rules. So put aside the objection that the story could be told in about 1/3 of the novel's length, what else did I find problematic? How about a suspenseful plot. Or inexplicable time travel with little consequence. OK. At some point a trapezoidal building does become 5 sided, but the DODO people reacted to the change. That can't happen. If the future changed, their's changed in their time.
All in all I was disappointed. I am a devote Neal Stephenson fan. This one fell short. Two stars for nostalgia.

The first 75% of this book was great. Funny, dramatic, and entertaining. Typical Stephenson.

But, in the last 25% of the book, the plot just falls apart. The ending is not coherent with what happened in the first 75% of the book, and even lacks a bit of coherence with itself. You read entire sub-plots that turn out to have nothing to do with the conclusion of the story, while much of what actually happened to generate the conclusion is never told (and unknown), and is even contradictory to what you read before.

For example (SPOILER ALERT - STOP HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS):

1. How was the Walmart/Viking witch going to get home after the Walmart raid? I cannot imagine that they just planned to leave her in the present, but that's what the book would have you believe!

2. Whatever happened to the Asian family that was recruited from Sam Francisco in 1850? If they were to play no part in anything to come later in the book, why did I need to spend pages reading about the recruitment of that family?

3. What did Grianne do that caused the Pentagon? And why was she spending her time doing *that* when what she really wanted to do was prevent technology, and specifically photography? Building up the military industrial complex seems to be just the opposite of what she was supposedly trying to do. And instead of telling us about Grianne's recruitment of someone in 1850 San Francisco, why not tell us about those things?

4. Since Grianne was cultivating the Fuggars for years, how did they come to oppose her in the present?

5. How did Tristan learn that Dr. Rudge (who is an advisor to D.O.D.O.) was also connected to the Fuggars? We learn that he knows in the last 25% of the book, but we never find out how he found out, or why it mattered.

6. Where did the Fuggar's find their own witch in the present?

7. If the Fuggar's already have their own ODEC (and/or are already connected to D.O.D.O. via Dr. Rudge), why did the Fuggar's steal and then hide the ATTO, as opposed to allowing D.O.D.O. to retrieve it?

I'd like to be told that this book (and Seveneves) was not written for Stephenson's typical fans; that this book is aimed squarely at a teenage demographic. Hearing that would give me hope that his next book might be a return to form. I started reading Stephenson with Reamde, then Anathem, then the Baroque Cycle. I loved them all. Seveneves had promise but as others mentioned, the epilogue left me with a bad taste. DODO felt juvenile from the get go; I found it hard to connect with Melisande & Tristan from the very beginning. If you don't like the main characters, or care what happens to them, it makes for a difficult read. Sadly, there was plenty else not to like in this book. Where is the thoughtfulness and the detailed explanation of how things came to be? Too much fluff, not enough substance.

It only took a few pages for Neal Stephenson to become one of my favorite sci-fi authors a while back. Many pages later (he writes some rather long books), he hasn't disappointed me yet. In his latest, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., he has collaborated with Nicole Galland, who has written some of her own historical fiction and who previously contributed to Stephenson's Mongoliad series (OK, maybe Mongoliad was a bit of a disappointment).

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. opens with journal entries from Melisande Stokes, a linguist who taught at Harvard in the 21st century until she was recruited by D.O.D.O., the Department of Diachronic Operations. Her task was to help with the translation of documents from a wide range of time periods and locations, with the purpose of tracing the decline of magic, but now she is stranded in nineteenth-century England. As we learn, magic was used actively throughout human history until the mid-19th century, when it completely ceased.

D.O.D.O. developed a way to isolate the historical stream so that a witch could perform magic within an enclosed space called an ODEC (Ontic Decoherence Cavity). The witch can send someone back in time, where they can manipulate events and then find a contemporary witch to send them back where they came from. D.O.D.O. used this technique to shape history in subtle ways, sometimes with unexpected results, such as the military headquarters known as the Trapezoid suddenly being renamed (and reshaped) as the Pentagon.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O is all about time travel, magic, and--bureaucracy. As D.O.D.O. grows in scope and effectiveness, Stephenson and Galland tell the story via journal entries, inter-office memos, reports, letters, e-mail chains, and other means. Part of the fun of the book is seeing D.O.D.O. become a full-fledged department under military command, with personnel issues, funding requests, and office politics. Example: a memo about ISO 9000 compliance, and the use of the word "witch" as "a violation of our Diversity Policy." (FYI, the Policy on Official Jargon and Acronym Coinage has determined that MUON is the preferred title, for Multiple-Universe Operations Navigator.)

In one hilarious chain of events, a thirteenth century warrior comes to modern times. He is particularly impressed by Wal-Mart. He gets himself sent back to Viking days, where he composes, in the style of Norse epic verse, "The Lay of Walmart." It goes on for several pages; here's a sample:
South face the glass gates; the fat fool
Northward led me, shouldering them aside
Greeting a guard, vested in blue,
Scarcely strength to stand had that old ogre.
. . . .
From there, to the west, lies all the food in the world.
North, a cornucopia of clothing, all colors.
Doubling back south, white witches
Doling out drugs, physicians philtres.
As Stephenson's readers know, he weaves complex plots, and while there may seem to be random diversions from the story, he and Galland bring it all together. Of course when anyone, including the military, start messing with time travel, something is going to get botched up. And when you recruit individuals who have magical powers, you have to anticipate that some of them may want more power for themselves. . . .

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is great fun to read and, I suspect, will be fun to read again and again.

How do you suck most of the fun out of a time travel story? Make each foray into the past a military mission with limited goals that preclude any details about the period. D.O.D.O. is an organization that send multiple travelers into Elizabethan England, arriving a stone's throw from the Globe Theater, but apparently nobody ever has time to relax and go see a play there. About all we learn about the past is that it smells so bad it makes you want to puke. As time travel is merely a means to an end, very little of the book actual deals with journeys into the past, with much more attention paid to the military organization of the time travel agency. While military fiction can be interesting and time travel fiction can be interesting, combining the two is a terrible idea that brings out the worst elements of both. Every time the story get interesting, bureaucracy brings it back to earth with a crashing thud.

Ok - Usually with fiction I don't write review...But if I can save someone their money and time...I hope it helps. There may be spoilers in this - but in full disclosure, I didn't finish the book I made it to about page 450 and then had to pull the plug out of annoyance. So I won't ruin the ending, but may give some things away...
The premise of the of book was interesting. For some reason (never fully explained - only implied) the government has decided that magic did at one point in time exist and seems to have ended at a certain point in time. This is due to it's acquisition of a random assortment of documents, old books, letters, and journals from across the world of various people in various times talking about it. They recruit a gal who specializes in ancient languages to begin the process of translating these...The character, Mel, is never given a good reason for this. Why are we looking into magic? How do we really know it existed based on haphazard random mentions from across time and place. As an academic (she's a Harvard professor) there really should have been a bit more skepticism. But since she gets a hefty paycheck and she's only a junior professor, she chooses to set aside her teaching to take this up. Ok - fine I'll buy that. Paychecks win oftentimes.
Still, she never gets any of her questions answered and even the book intentionally makes a running joke of 'It's classified'. Even to the point I was at, we still never understand what the government is trying to do - rather you have to guess it is to use magic for their own enrichment of power in the world theatre. And the first part of the book is a horribly dry discussion of quantum physics and how it can help to establish a room where magic can be effectively practiced in modern times - presumably to eventually send someone back in time to help magic stay alive...But maybe to begin manipulating events to prevent other things or move history in a different direction? Again - you really don't know to what end this is all going for.
Moving on - eventually said machine is built and right about the time the construction starts, a witch, who has preserved herself just for being able to do magic in this room shows up. Right. The characters begin geeking out on what they can have this witch do, and the witch seems willing to be used as a puppet without any explanation of how this will do anything to improve her life or that of her witchy sisters or anyone she may have cared about in history....This part is where it finally got interesting enough to get my attention and it felt like we were finally moving to something good. The witch, being a bit of a diva, gets offended when a highly stereotypical military man shows up (the boss of the leader we have known to this point) shows up and orders he to perform magic. She sweetly appears to comply and then sends him back to medieval times in a non-English speaking country. Apparently when one time travels, one arrives without anything man made - so they arrive naked, and without any modern enhancements (dental fillings, pacemakers, prosthetics, etc.) The team discovers a historical mention of the event - apparently the guy, having shown up without speaking a language anyone understands, missing a leg, and nude to boot, is tried as a warlock and burned at the stake.
OK - by this point someone should be in horror at what said witch has done. And no, she can't bring him back - that requires another witch at the 'other side' to cooperate and send him forward. Rather than anyone questioning the witches motives at this point - we continue forward and everyone writes the guy off as an 'oops'. Not one person seems concerned this could happen again or why even the witch is helping out.
So we have a secret covert group of government types trying to accomplish who knows what, the group of characters at the mid-level trying to help said government group pretty much unquestioningly, and a witch whose motivations and actions are unpredictable and temperamental. The only question anyone of the three parties seems concerned with is 'How do we keep going?,' and 'What magic should we play with next?'
The story moves on and essentially now the team decides they need funding outside the government funds to more time travel missions are sent to get an artifact they can auction off in modern times. But mind you, even with outside funding, they are still answerable to this secret government oversight (If you are annoyed by the number of times I bring this up - just imagine your annoyance in the book with this continual reminder).
At this point I will say - the authors then move to a more 'documentary style writing' and it is awful. You have a substantial portion of the book that is transcripts of a senate hearing (with tons of redactions - I am assuming this is meant to be funny and mysterious - its annoying and only enhances the one dimensionality of the characters) and new office memos setting up policies (again I think meant to be funny - but with all the humor of the German stand up comedian in the Heineken commercials), new character dossiers, and even inter office emails. At this point, I got annoyed. As a previous review mentioned, we read fiction to escape reality (aka - our offices) not go back to it. I pressed forward.

Finally a new mission occurs - but it is covered in a report style format...and while we finally get back to simple story telling it hops between this and dozens of memorandums/emails/policies....and I had to quit. I finally got to the point where I simply hope they all got lost in some time/space other reality so the story would end.

If my description seems overkill and absurd - then I have given you an idea of what to expect with this book. I wanted to like it...But it was all over the map without delivering anything it never promised to answer in the first place.

The Rise and Fall of DODO is a collaboration between Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. The novel is about the existence of magic: that magic once existed, but the invention of photography (and the entire enlightenment in general) wiped it out. The story involves two protagonists, Melisande Stokes and Tristan Lyons, who discover away to restore it, and then find out that because of the restricted circumstances under which magic may be used, the way to use it for military purposes is to do time travel.

The time travel premise is surprisingly well-worked out, with interesting consequences for major disruption to the timeline, and the "many worlds" theory requiring multiple trips to be able to effect even relatively minor change. The "made-for-Hollywood" nature of the novel requires these consequences to be huge special-effects-laden events, but that doesn't detract form the well-thought-out nature of the stuff.

The inter-character relationships are less well-done, with the villains being telegraphed almost right from the start, and no explanation of how those villains ended up being where they were. When things go south, we get a lot of rushing about but no real final resolution, in a "made-for-TV-series" ending which leaves all sorts of plot-lines dangling.

Unlike a lot of Stephenson's recent work, the novel itself is compellingly readable and fun. But the flaws more than outweigh the strengths when you get to the end. It's OK reading, and not a complete waste of time, but that's as much praise as I can give it.

I really enjoyed this book. I was not previously much of a Neal Stephenson reader, so I came at this book fresh with no comparison possible. I found this collaboration between Stephenson and Nicole Galland to be witty and well written. The premise took me a bit to get into, but once I had bit, I just loved it. I listened to it as an audiobook, but have already purchased a paper copy so that I can have it for my shelf.

For those interested in format, it is fun (especially for a historian like myself) to have the novel written as a series of documents composed by various characters. Sometimes they are "diary"-style accounts, sometimes they are emails, sometimes they are "debriefings," transcripts of surveillance footage, etc. There is even a memorable bit of alliterative verse (the "Lay of Walmart") that will have you snorting into your coffee. These various documents are chatty enough and contain enough dialogue that they do not seem dry, and the shifting perspectives drive the narrative in interesting and provocative ways. I love epistolary novels, and while this isn't exactly letters, there is a similarity of form that I enjoyed.

I look forward to a sequel!

If there is such a thing as a typical Neal Stephenson story (long, complex, madcap) then I would say this title qualifies. I mean, it's not often you find a book that features Army special operations types, linguists, witches and time-traveling Vikings, right?

This was an enjoyable read with a nice balance of action, science and humor. However, I felt like it took a long time to really gather up a full head of steam. I also felt like it ended quite abruptly without a satisfying conclusion.

In the book, a US government operative discovers why magic died out in 1851 and finds a way to bring it back using quantum physics. This is the impetus for the birth of the titular agency. The fledgling bureaucracy then begins using magic to operate across time.

I liked that the book didn't get bogged down on the inherent paradoxes involved in time travel. These can be migraine-inducing. A shortcoming is that Stephenson hints at other nations engaged in similar operations and yet we never get a glimpse of them. Along the lines of the many worlds theory, perhaps introducing such ramifications would have indeed induced said migraines. There's also hints of an extragovernmental group,the Fuggers (pronounced - I'm not making this up - 'Fuckers') operating in the same arena and yet they only appear very sparingly and in a truly active capacity at the very end.

There's an interesting device whereby one of the characters narrates most of the story while trapped in Victorian England. The reader is asked to imagine her writing down these events with quill and ink (something Stephenson himself is reputed to have done while writing his Baroque Cycle). There's a fair bit of humor which is usually present in the best Stephenson works ('Anathem being the notable exception).

Characters are pretty good. Besides the two likable leads, there's the world-weary Hungarian witch, Erszebet Karpathy, who provides much of the humor. Other characters, Irish witch Grainne and Viking Magnus, only appear rather late in the story. (As I said, this one takes a while to get going.)

This book probably would have blown my socks off it had been a new writer (or really any other writer) but Stephenson sets a high bar for himself.

Aaaaaghhh!!

I was so excited to get to this, based on previous Stephenson works.

I am only in the first part, but it is SOOOO BAAAAAD that I just have to say something now.

(I'll come back if I can stand to carry on and it gets better.)

The writing is, "meh," but what really gets me is the worse-than-absurd misrepresentation of science in setting up the premise. So much for the possibility of, "willing suspension of disbelief!"

The only way I can describe the premise so far is that is seems like someone barfed up a mixture of badly maligned, partially digested psuedo-physics, cocktail party meta-theory, and badly disfigured logic.

For any reader of intelligence and more than 6th-grade science, it is a hot, smelly mess.

As far as the premise, it would have been better if the authors had waved a magic wand rather than try to justify anything with such pathetically weak pseudo-science and irrationality.

Serious, authors -- if you decide to revise for a later edition, call me -- I'd happily help you spare your readers this misery.

I have a very short list of “automatic” authors -- novelists that, whatever they write, I want to read it. I don’t even bother to read the reviews. Neal Stephenson was one of my earliest additions to that list, back when I read _Snow Crash_ and then _Cryptonomicon,_ and he’s never disappointed me. Still, I have my favorites among his works, and there are also those books that I really had to work at. This one falls somewhere in the middle, I think, but I still don’t quite know how I feel about it.

The narrator (or the primary one, anyway) is Melisande Stokes, a prodigy linguist teaching at Harvard. And out of nowhere she’s approached by the rather hunky Maj. Tristan Lyons, the head of the “black budget” Department of Diachronic Operations -- practically its only employee, actually. He has a growing stack of modern, medieval, and ancient documents he needs help with, all on the subject of witchcraft. Stokes is a little bemused but he’s offering four times her current salary, so she takes on the job. And soon discovers that witches are real, although they’ve been powerless since July 1851 (for certain reasons having to do with technology that are pure Neal at his most inventive), and that Lyons is interested in witchcraft for his own reasons. ( “Diachronic” = time travel.) And then they get a call from Erszebet Karpathy, a little old lady who claims Stokes told her a century and a half ago to get in touch after the beginning of the 21st century. Erszebet, naturally, is one of the last witches from before magic ended. And Lyons thinks he knows how it can be revived.

The story takes off from there, often galloping off several directions at once, as Stokes and Lyons both travel back to Plymouth Colony and Elizabethan London and Constantinople of the Third Crusade. The Department grows and the Pentagon’s bean-counters take charge. (Neal has some distinctly unkind things to say about military bureaucracy.) This isn’t an adolescent sort of time travel story, though. People die, messily, and the past shows itself to be a dangerous place. And witches can be just as political and self-serving as practically everyone else.

The problem is, the narrative shifts at times to a very un-Stephenson-like voice, which I assume is Galland’s contribution. They seem to know each other from the “Mongoliad” project, but Galland writes very different kinds of books and I’m not at all sure they should be working on the same story. And I have a very loud complaint about the ending. Which doesn’t actually “end” anything. The story just stops, leaving lots of loose ends trailing in the dust.

The Rise and Fall of DODO is a collaboration between Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. The novel is about the existence of magic: that magic once existed, but the invention of photography (and the entire enlightenment in general) wiped it out. The story involves two protagonists, Melisande Stokes and Tristan Lyons, who discover away to restore it, and then find out that because of the restricted circumstances under which magic may be used, the way to use it for military purposes is to do time travel.

The time travel premise is surprisingly well-worked out, with interesting consequences for major disruption to the timeline, and the "many worlds" theory requiring multiple trips to be able to effect even relatively minor change. The "made-for-Hollywood" nature of the novel requires these consequences to be huge special-effects-laden events, but that doesn't detract form the well-thought-out nature of the stuff.

The inter-character relationships are less well-done, with the villains being telegraphed almost right from the start, and no explanation of how those villains ended up being where they were. When things go south, we get a lot of rushing about but no real final resolution, in a "made-for-TV-series" ending which leaves all sorts of plot-lines dangling.

Unlike a lot of Stephenson's recent work, the novel itself is compellingly readable and fun. But the flaws more than outweigh the strengths when you get to the end. It's OK reading, and not a complete waste of time, but that's as much praise as I can give it.

I really enjoyed this book. I was not previously much of a Neal Stephenson reader, so I came at this book fresh with no comparison possible. I found this collaboration between Stephenson and Nicole Galland to be witty and well written. The premise took me a bit to get into, but once I had bit, I just loved it. I listened to it as an audiobook, but have already purchased a paper copy so that I can have it for my shelf.

For those interested in format, it is fun (especially for a historian like myself) to have the novel written as a series of documents composed by various characters. Sometimes they are "diary"-style accounts, sometimes they are emails, sometimes they are "debriefings," transcripts of surveillance footage, etc. There is even a memorable bit of alliterative verse (the "Lay of Walmart") that will have you snorting into your coffee. These various documents are chatty enough and contain enough dialogue that they do not seem dry, and the shifting perspectives drive the narrative in interesting and provocative ways. I love epistolary novels, and while this isn't exactly letters, there is a similarity of form that I enjoyed.

I look forward to a sequel!

If there is such a thing as a typical Neal Stephenson story (long, complex, madcap) then I would say this title qualifies. I mean, it's not often you find a book that features Army special operations types, linguists, witches and time-traveling Vikings, right?

This was an enjoyable read with a nice balance of action, science and humor. However, I felt like it took a long time to really gather up a full head of steam. I also felt like it ended quite abruptly without a satisfying conclusion.

In the book, a US government operative discovers why magic died out in 1851 and finds a way to bring it back using quantum physics. This is the impetus for the birth of the titular agency. The fledgling bureaucracy then begins using magic to operate across time.

I liked that the book didn't get bogged down on the inherent paradoxes involved in time travel. These can be migraine-inducing. A shortcoming is that Stephenson hints at other nations engaged in similar operations and yet we never get a glimpse of them. Along the lines of the many worlds theory, perhaps introducing such ramifications would have indeed induced said migraines. There's also hints of an extragovernmental group,the Fuggers (pronounced - I'm not making this up - 'Fuckers') operating in the same arena and yet they only appear very sparingly and in a truly active capacity at the very end.

There's an interesting device whereby one of the characters narrates most of the story while trapped in Victorian England. The reader is asked to imagine her writing down these events with quill and ink (something Stephenson himself is reputed to have done while writing his Baroque Cycle). There's a fair bit of humor which is usually present in the best Stephenson works ('Anathem being the notable exception).

Characters are pretty good. Besides the two likable leads, there's the world-weary Hungarian witch, Erszebet Karpathy, who provides much of the humor. Other characters, Irish witch Grainne and Viking Magnus, only appear rather late in the story. (As I said, this one takes a while to get going.)

This book probably would have blown my socks off it had been a new writer (or really any other writer) but Stephenson sets a high bar for himself.

Aaaaaghhh!!

I was so excited to get to this, based on previous Stephenson works.

I am only in the first part, but it is SOOOO BAAAAAD that I just have to say something now.

(I'll come back if I can stand to carry on and it gets better.)

The writing is, "meh," but what really gets me is the worse-than-absurd misrepresentation of science in setting up the premise. So much for the possibility of, "willing suspension of disbelief!"

The only way I can describe the premise so far is that is seems like someone barfed up a mixture of badly maligned, partially digested psuedo-physics, cocktail party meta-theory, and badly disfigured logic.

For any reader of intelligence and more than 6th-grade science, it is a hot, smelly mess.

As far as the premise, it would have been better if the authors had waved a magic wand rather than try to justify anything with such pathetically weak pseudo-science and irrationality.

Serious, authors -- if you decide to revise for a later edition, call me -- I'd happily help you spare your readers this misery.

I have a very short list of “automatic” authors -- novelists that, whatever they write, I want to read it. I don’t even bother to read the reviews. Neal Stephenson was one of my earliest additions to that list, back when I read _Snow Crash_ and then _Cryptonomicon,_ and he’s never disappointed me. Still, I have my favorites among his works, and there are also those books that I really had to work at. This one falls somewhere in the middle, I think, but I still don’t quite know how I feel about it.

The narrator (or the primary one, anyway) is Melisande Stokes, a prodigy linguist teaching at Harvard. And out of nowhere she’s approached by the rather hunky Maj. Tristan Lyons, the head of the “black budget” Department of Diachronic Operations -- practically its only employee, actually. He has a growing stack of modern, medieval, and ancient documents he needs help with, all on the subject of witchcraft. Stokes is a little bemused but he’s offering four times her current salary, so she takes on the job. And soon discovers that witches are real, although they’ve been powerless since July 1851 (for certain reasons having to do with technology that are pure Neal at his most inventive), and that Lyons is interested in witchcraft for his own reasons. ( “Diachronic” = time travel.) And then they get a call from Erszebet Karpathy, a little old lady who claims Stokes told her a century and a half ago to get in touch after the beginning of the 21st century. Erszebet, naturally, is one of the last witches from before magic ended. And Lyons thinks he knows how it can be revived.

The story takes off from there, often galloping off several directions at once, as Stokes and Lyons both travel back to Plymouth Colony and Elizabethan London and Constantinople of the Third Crusade. The Department grows and the Pentagon’s bean-counters take charge. (Neal has some distinctly unkind things to say about military bureaucracy.) This isn’t an adolescent sort of time travel story, though. People die, messily, and the past shows itself to be a dangerous place. And witches can be just as political and self-serving as practically everyone else.

The problem is, the narrative shifts at times to a very un-Stephenson-like voice, which I assume is Galland’s contribution. They seem to know each other from the “Mongoliad” project, but Galland writes very different kinds of books and I’m not at all sure they should be working on the same story. And I have a very loud complaint about the ending. Which doesn’t actually “end” anything. The story just stops, leaving lots of loose ends trailing in the dust.

Stephenson's previous books, (Reamde & Seveneves) started out very strong but, in my opinion, got kind of bogged down in the middle. DODO, however, "worked" for me all the way through. One difference might have been related to the co-author, Nicole Galland. I noticed, and welcomed, the humor in this volume... and it was a dry, witty sort of humor (kind of reminded me of Connie Willis in "To Say Nothing of the Dog"). Was that due to Galland's influence or was it the nature of the story to invite more humor? Obviously I can't know that, but I definitely liked the result.

The writing was what I expect from Stephenson: solid, tight, and unambiguous -- a real pleasure, especially given all the sloppy books that I've recently encountered.

As I read, I thought of a couple of ways to solve Doctor Stokes' dilemma. It seemed to me that Stephenson & Galland chose the most straightforward, which worked. Also the attack on the 21st century Big Box, while amusing (and sort of plausible) felt a little like a side story... almost a distraction. The "leftover Viking" felt a bit contrived and too easily addressed, but that's a minor issue.

All-in-all, I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

The basic premise of this novel is that magic relies on quantum effects that are destroyed by observation in the form of photography. So as photography became more widespread in the 19th century, magic faded. The coup de grace was when the sun was photographed during a total solar eclipse in 1851. From that point onward, magic no longer worked. But scientists are able to isolate (in a quantum-mechanical sense) a small room. And within that room, magic works. The primary use of magic in the book is time travel, to bring about changes that are beneficial to the United States government.

But that's not really what it's all about. Much of the novel is a satire, poking fun at bureaucracy and political correctness. Think Dilbert. For example, here's a quote from the book: "So, two of the MUONs are attired in a manner that is culturally offensive to MUONs?" Only in the final hundred pages or so do the authors drop the satire and get more serious.

"The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is not up to Stephenson's normal level of awesomeness. I got bored in the middle and was marking time until I finished. Trimming it down by a few hundred pages and removing some of the humor would probably have helped.

Note: Initially, the time travel premise appears to have significant holes. But as the narrative proceeds, those holes are filled by reasonable explanations. So it's nice that no suspension of disbelief was required.

This is one of those books that took me a few days to fully process after finishing it, as a result I can safely say this is a good book.

This book is definitely not about characters X, Y, and Z doing cool things and beating the Big Bad. No, it is the records of the rise and fall of the organization D.O.D.O. I didn't realize this at first, but once I did, it all came together and I could appreciate it and enjoy it all the more.

All that aside, what we have here is the proving that magic existed once, but then it stopped suddenly on one auspicious day. How to bring back magic in a limited fashion and using it to send people back in time to manipulate things so the world becomes a little better, or before the enemies unseen do it first. Great plan right? Well at least until bureaucracy rears its ugly head. Seriously, the skill with which Stephenson wrote the bureaucratic nightmare and the awful coworkers was so realistic it made me uncomfortable. Additionally there are all kinds of very accurate portrayals of the past that breath life into it. Did you know whalebone bodices had to be custom made? Whodathunkit?

That's all you really need to know. If you like Stephenson's other works, or a totally different retreading of the time travel genre, I recommend this book to you. Overall, I doubt many people would be disappointed that they picked this one up.

Topnotch until the end of Tristan's visit to 1601 London and the first Shear.

After that the book lost steam quickly. It was like the author had a brilliant concept but couldn't think of a way to wrap it up. Hence the hundreds of pages of memos, lists, and text conversations. Kitchen sink approach after the good part of the story stopped.

Three stars for the concept and good writing and historical detail. Despite the huge gap in importance I was far more interested in what happened to the wooden bucket with the prized book than I was in the world-altering events afterwards.

Still confused about how magic was sparked once again in the chamber that was invented, or how photography could make magic disappear back in history. Or how magic continued in the chamber to allow more future time travel without a witch present.

This book is fun! The main characters are witty, the dialogue is breezy (even with long nonsense discourses about quantum mechanics), and the action is action-y. The time travel mechanic is unique and clever, and the world building is intricate and consistent.

I do not mean to suggest, however, that the book is a cover-to-cover swashbuckling adventure of fisticuffs and derring-do. The vast majority of the story involves the characters figuring stuff out, solving problems, and dealing with complications. And while there is a consistent linear narrative throughout the book, it’s composed of a variety of “sources” — journal entries, emails, letters, memoranda, Congressional hearing transcripts, transcriptions of security team recordings, etc. — that are used to satirize bureaucratic culture to charming effect.

I loved the book, but I will acknowledge it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s lengthy, but even so, the end still feels a bit rushed. The action is cerebral, the characters are a bit static, and there is a fusion of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and satire that might turn genre purists off. I recommend it to anyone interested in an original time travel tale that has a sarcastic sense of humor.

This book is a wild blend of Arrival, Timeline, and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, in which a linguistics professor is recruited by a shadowy government agency to translate documents suggesting that magic actually existed in the world before modern technology eroded it. When she helps uncover a limited way to still do magic today (in a controlled Schrodinger's Box environment), the agency then uses that power to send operatives back into the past to convince historical witches to cast more powerful spells on behalf of the modern U.S. government.

Things quickly go off the rails, and what follows is a very funny and inventive story of time-travel shenanigans, presented as an epistolary novel made up of various incident reports, diary entries, ancient epic poems about a Viking raid on the mystical land of Walmart, and more. It doesn't quite tie together as nicely as I'd like in the end, but it's still a very entertaining and imaginative read. (It's great as an audiobook too, especially with all of the different accents.)

Just as grace notes, imagine a middling genre-consistent Icelandic saga about a Viking raid on a Walmart, plus a very post-modern screwball romantic comedy about Tristram and Melisonde.

Lt Col Tristram recalled several special ops veterans, and Melisonde is a linguistics-flavored hard SF girl prodigy, learning dead languages rather than designing rockets in the basement. Each "witch" (magic once worked, ended but might be regained; semi hereditary sex linked abilities; no Wiccans) is an individual, including a barista who is also an oboe player with additude and a Very New England matron who tends her gardens and her genius, physicist husband with quiet brilliance.

As Science Magazine just ran a quantum mechanics summary article citing zero experiments, but just a possible kinda emerging astrophysics paradigm among degree-bearing clergy, the use of Everett, not Copenhagen many worlds is au courant. A finely crafted McGuffin that resonates with plot and character - not Lensmen turning planets into interstellar bowling balls.

A delight by itself, a good first Stephenson novel and likely followed by volumes 2 and 3, a bit like Mr Rick and his French police chief beginning their friendship as Casablanca fades to La Marseillaise.

Disclaimer: I read a pre-release copy provided by the publisher.

I'm a huge fan of Sci-Fi in all forms, and read a lot of books, but usually shy away from books as thick as what Stephenson writes. But this one kept me hooked for the full 730+ pages, despite the somewhat uneven tone that indicates a lack of cohesion between the 2 authors, or lack of a good editor to smooth the seems between their work. (This is the first time Stephenson has used a co-author, to my knowledge.)

This first reviewers here has already summarized the plot well with minimal spoilers, so I'll just try to point in the direction of more abstract qualities that might help you decide if this book is for you:

- For Neal's devotee's (among whom I do not count myself), I find this book to be more in line with the feel of SevenEves (which I very much enjoyed the first part, and accept the second part), than Cyptonomicon (which I never finished) or Snow Crash (which I have tried to start more than once, and failed to get very far.)

- Very minor spoiler here: For fans of Time Travel stores, on a spectrum from Back to the Future to The Time Traveller's Wife, this falls just slightly toward the latter from center. That is, it takes the idea of time travel seriously, but it's not afraid to have a sense of humor (especially in the 3rd part). But it's not a character study either. The characters are props to tell an imaginative story about the combination of science & magic & time travel, which just a splash of romance, because there is a male and a female protaganoist, and what else are going to do with them at the end but puyt them together? In many ways, I could describe this story, in both tone and structure, as the "Stargate: SG-1" of time-travel.

- The POV varies from that of the female protagonist, to other characters in the form of occasionally redacted memos, chat logs, and the like. This could be awkward, but is actually done exceptionally well, smoothly telling a mostly linear story effectively. There are even a couple very short section of poetry, which I will admit to skipping, and not regretting it.

- As an amateur student of Quantum Physics, I did have to suspend my disbelief to near breaking point early on, as they tried to explain magic in terms of "something decoherence something something many-world something wave-function." It almost made me give up in the early chapters, but the plot is tight enough thereafter that I got sucked in and forgot about that mild annoyance.

- One more sin of that type near the end, where they use the groan-inducing "Bill & Ted gimmick" of making something happen in the past by merely planning to travel backward and do it later. It really wasn't necessary, although a major plot point hangs on a similar sort of reverse causality, which snuck past me successfully until this blatant offense forced me to think about it

Overall: Would recommend to fans of time-travel stories, modern-magic stories, or general sci-fi fans who like their novels long. Physics students, skim sections with the word "Quantum" to save yourself the pain.

At first, I thought I was reading a Connie Willis book, which is a very high compliment. Then it fell apart. I like a good, humorous fantasy, but there were so many eye-rolling moments that my disbelief suspenders snapped completely 1/4 way in.
The first person narrators are extremely unconvincing women. The men are idiots, but the women are persuaded to go along because they can't resist how adorable the guys are. Because common sense would have stopped the plot right then.
The characters are exploring and discovering world-shattering stuff, but they seem to feel they can only do it through the US military -- which is portrayed just like the government in Avatar -- bombastic, stupid, cheap, and secretive. This is used to explain many other of things that would otherwise never happen. All they had to do was approach Google or a university with their discoveries and they could have had massive budgets and possibly even smart bosses.
(Trying not to spoil here: There is a critical role filled by an unreliable person. The protags act as if this person is irreplaceable, when in fact the way they found the person points to a way of finding many better people to fill this role. Of course, chaos ensues. Because idiocy.)
I used to adore Stephenson. By comparison to earlier books, this is lazy, lazy, lazy excrement.

I'm torn between three and four stars. DODO is an original and well-written story. Some of the characters are three dimensional and nuanced, most notably the antagonist. Others are cardboard cutouts of characters, basically place-holders or steryotypes to forward the plot. (Two characters must have blazing chemistry, because I keep getting told that they do.) But the thing that bored me was the endless bureaucratic satire. I got it after the first three memos. The bigger an organization gets, the more silly and arbitrary the rules. Then again, I work for the govenment and therefore live that reality daily, so what is tiresome to me might be fresh and exotic to another reader. I also listened to the book vs. read it, and I don't think that all the memos, emails and time-log transcripts translated well to the audio format.

When I talk "books" with fellow nerds, Neal Stephenson is still my favorite author. Snow Crash and Diamond Age are genuine modern classics. Cryptonomicon remains among my favorites, and Anathem is quietly but profoundly brilliant. Zodiac is full of mad energy. The Baroque Cycle is good but inconsistent, a love letter to the history of science. SevenEves is a solid and enjoyable offering. ReamDe is the canonical fail IMO, but other readers would disagree.

You know...I think madness is what I'm missing in DODO. Where is the ingredient list of Hackworth's steak sandwich condiment? The physics of Turing's bicycle chain? The philosophy of the 9th convox? Bobby's haiku and S.T.'s landlord and Enoch the Red's cigar box and samurai sword fights in the hops field?

Maybe that's not fair. Every author should have an arc, a professional maturing. But since the time of ReamDe, I've felt that something was lacking. Call it madness or call it magic...but perhaps around that time a daguerreotype was taken of the eclipse, because nothing has felt quite the same since.

I'm a Neal Stephenson fan but had not heard of this release until I spotted on the new book shelf of my local public library.

I'd be fascinated to know how Stephenson and his co-author Nicole Galland split up the creative tasks for this book. Although I'm not familiar with the co-author's other work, Galland's contribution seems essential and unique to me, based on my reading of Stephenson's previous sci-fi novels (all of them). Being (yet) another time travel adventure, it covers some familiar territory. As I was reading this, some of the Connie Willis books come to mind, as did Stephenson's own "Cryptonomicon".

Slightly longish at 752 pages, it remained a page-turner most of the time, so went quickly. The long story has a nice twist to it. A good read.

Amid this book's numerous sins, the greatest is probably that it ends not with a fall, but a whimper. Setting aside the sexism, the unnecessarily incorrect scientific detail, and the romance between two people with no chemistry, the story is a series of bigger and bigger missteps, larger and more cumbersome bureaucracies, solutions that require every more complex solutions bolted on... all of which ends in a side-step and a shuffle; we get setup for a (please, no) sequel, a page or two of 'and finally they had sex!', and a whole lot of 'wait, that was it?' The title promises a fall, but the book itself is unwilling to give us a proper cataclysm, and it's all just a little pointless and unsatisfying.

I told myself, after being disappointed with Reamde, Anathem and Seveneves, that I would no longer buy a NS book before a good amount of frequent readers pronounced it worthy. It's my own fault for not listening to my own advice.

In short: too little NS science, too little plot, WAY too much memo/diary/chat and other silliness that just feels like the authors thought they were being so clever, and the worst scourge of modern literature: the story that only serves to set up a sequel.

I, for one, will be skipping the future swashbuckling adventures of Jack Ryan, I mean Jack Reacher, I mean whoever the characters are in this book that I've already forgotten. That's the worst criticism that I can give to a NS novel - it's so bland and forgettable that I just finished and can't remember character names after reading for weeks.

The book is pointless and your book dollars are best spent elsewhere or on any pre-Anathem Neal Stephenson novel.

This is the most baffling book. My entire family read it (or tried to read it). The first half is extraordinary, just riveting, compelling, startlingly well written. Then at the half-way mark it just suddenly completely changes to the most insufferable and unreadable writing, just unpleasant in every sense. We were all a bit baffled that we had all quit on the book around the half-way point after starting out loving it until we realized there are two authors. The question is why would these two work together. If they were artists one would be Matisse and the other some local bumpkin who paints velvet paintings of clowns. Just shocking really. No one is sure what happens in the second half as we all quit. Maybe the first writer comes back later? I guess we will never know.

As a Neal Stephenson fan, I was greatly disappointed. The book read as if it had been written by a couple of pre-teens, giggling as they wrote dirty words in sentence fragments and then crossed them out. It's full of clichéd language, such as "biting his lower lip." Who does that? If you must read this book because you're a Stephenson fan (as I am), then at least wait for the paperback and pray that the publisher does away with the artsy font that makes every lowercase a look like an o.

I find that Summer is the perfect time to indulge in a doorstopper-sized novel. Just in time for a July vacation, I hefted a whopper of a novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland titled, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.. For readers with the luxury of time to delve into a huge novel, this one contains real treasure. There’s magic, time travel, witches, and a great government agency, the Department of Diachronic Operations (D.O.D.O.), with a very interesting mission. I feasted through the multiple characters and narrators, the complexity of the science, and the warmth of the human relationships among interesting characters. My relaxing vacation was enhanced by reading this indulgent novel.

Rating: Five-star (I love it)

By way of background, I have read everything Stephenson has written, loved a lot of it and liked almost everything else. This book, not so much.Start with the fact that my Nook version came with numerous flaws that had me scrolling forward page after page to try to continue with the book as it was written. Seems that the Stephenson wrote the book as narrative plus series of memos and passages from other books. Those memos apparently fouled up the Nook programming so the reader would get stuck on one page, which would repeat over and over. The only solution was to use the "Go To" function to advance the Nook to a later page, and read on from there. When it happens five or six times in the book, it gets old, believe me.
Technical problems aside, the plot has lots of illogical points, there is a Deux ex machina -- a family of bankers that' always there to save the day -- that's just a little too convenient (think Enoch the Red in Stephenson's historical trilogy and Cryptonomicon) and characters who you never really work up a lot of sympathy for or interest in.
In short, I was disappointed. Add this one to Reamde on a list of Stephenson's lesser works.

Another long winded with nothing to say book from Neal Stephenson which adds nothing to the countless time travel stories before it. Much like the characters in the book, far to much time was spend imagining and then describing how things would work, than actually figuring out what to do with it.

For example:
There's a bit about naked Vikings raiding a Walmart to get information they used to carve treasure maps on to each others back so that they could take that back to their time... and they made it boring, and nothing seemed to come of it.

I liked this book. It was entertaining and kept you eager to see what would happen next. Even though its a big book it did not take me a long time to read it. It has a secret government agency, time travel, witches, and mad scientists which is a hard recipe to go wrong with. It reminded me of the old Fox Network series Fringe so if you liked that series you would probably like this book. This is my first Neal Stephenson novel so I don't know how it stands in comparison to his other novels. But it entertained me enough to consider reading one of his other mammoth tomes. Right now I'm busy re-visiting my friends in Middle Earth.

This is perhaps the most unusual book I have read in quite some time.

The idea is simple enough: the magic of witches ceased with the advent of modern technology, and the US government wants it back -- for its own ends. At first a small operation is set up, but once a witch is found, the department (DODO) becomes very large -- and eventually is forcibly reminded that witches are unreliable and unpredictable. A good deal of time travel is involved.

Interested? Well, hang on there a moment; this is not YA or event Chick-Lit. Nope. This is not particularly a novel for grown-ups as much as it is a novel for the intelligent and well-educated. In other words, I know some people who could've read this and loved it at age 12, but I'm pretty sure most people ought to pass this one by.

To get the humor and subtlety of this novel, I suggest that the reader should have the following:

1) a basic understanding of physics

2) some knowledge of coding and basic computer science

3) a good background in European history, the politics of Elizabethan England, early American colonization, piracy, the vikings, and the Crusades.

4) had at least a basic course in linguistics (understanding of language trees) and preferably a working knowledge of at least one language besides English.

5) a good familiarity with Shakespeare and his most famous plays, as well as his contemporaries and their works.

6) a decent familiarity with Beowulf and the writing style employed by the poets of Old English -- and the great literary faker James MacPherson (author of Ossian's poetry)

7) slogged through James Joyce's Ulysses at least once.

8) read enough books by Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens to have a familiarity with the style and syntax used.

In other words, this book is dense reading, but for the bright and educated, it's hilarious and delightful.

It's not like Harry Potter, the classic "crossover" series which can be read on multiple levels (i.e. one can understand Rowling's plot without understanding her cleverness with Latin and numerous literary and historical allusions). Not at all. For DODO, the reader MUST have an IQ above room temperature, the ability to read for a sustained amount of time on a post-high school level, and the equivalent of an undergrad education.

I loved this thing. The ending leaves room for a sequel; I hope there will be one. :D

This is so disappointing. I wait for Neal Stephensons books with impatience. This reads as if it has been written by a beginning, unused to English 14 year old. Simple plot, simple sotuations, simple text. As I read it O gradually skimmed through more and more pages until I stopped hoping the end section would be more rewarding. It was not.

I'm not quite halfway through and I'm not going to finish this book. I would if it were shorter. but 700 plus pages is way more time than I'll spend wading through all the conjecture and quantum speculation.

I should have read the reviews and more importantly believed them. But now I must do my civic duty and at least pile on the negative reviews even though - and perhaps because - I am otherwise such a big Stephenson fan.

This book is a draft, plain and simple. It also has every indication of being written by committee, which is honestly disappointing because two people, come on! Why do a joint venture if it's going to turn out like this?

For starters, there are more plot holes than there are plot points (I dare say, quite literally). The first and hugest of them all is the entire premise of the book, the opening lines telling us that the narrator is one Dr Stokes and she is writing from the past where she has been marooned. We learn, after many hundreds of pages of tedium that she is in fact dangerously close to being stuck there for good... yet this plot point is literally resolved in the blink of an eye, at the bottom of a page near an unremarkable ditch somewhere in a field. The central crux of the book was resolved so clumsily that I literally had to do a double take and check that I hadn't accidentally skipped some pages.

Then there's the deus-ex-machina incarnate, Anasthasious Pompous beard... Then the fact that somehow, every excuse and promise we are given in the beginning of the book is simply forgotten: the "Magic Gap", we are told... "classified it is", we are told, but good reason for it. Dear Author, the premise of Checkov's gun must be news to you. When you prime the reader with the notion that "others must be doing it already", the reader expects another eventually. Same thing with the Boston Council company, whose motivation seems to vanish into thing air like mist on a sunny day.

Then there's the horrendous pacing. The first half of the book reads very much like Stephenson material, until the whole exploratory cooky story is transmogrified in a military operation with the Hammest of Fists.

My favorite subtle but *totally* lazy plot hole is how the first ODEC is initially tested using liquid nitrogen because it's cheaper, but we are informed that it will not work until liquid helium is used because only LH can create a Bose-Einstein condensate (well thank god someone did at least *a bit* of research). But then the ATTO works at room temperature because superconductors? It's magnets, dear Reader. F' off, already.

1 star because 0 isn't an option.

Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland can lead me into world varied from Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Neal's masterpiece, The Diamond Age--but I'm not prepared for a YA fantasy costume historical novel.

It is likely much my own limitation than Neal & Nicole's: I did like the re-interpretation of Many-Worlds & Heisenberg with a magical axis and the serious attempt to curb the misogyny without a lecture.

Overall, it was XANTH with Fescennine seasoning.

If you're looking for a typical Stephenson level of hard science fiction plot, strong character development, and engrossing story telling, then go back to your bookshelf and read one of his other books. I'm not sure if the co-author watered down what could have been a really awesome treatment by Stephenson, or if perhaps he was just used as an academic resource during the authoring, but this isn't even close to what one expects of such a legendary hard science fiction author. After such awesome titles as "Seveneves" and "Reamde", this was a real disappointment.

I grew up in the Air Force, and am retired from the Army, so acronyms are a fact of life for me. That said, I found the plethora of acronyms in this story maddening. The premise was fun and thought provoking, making time travel quite the sticky wicket. There is an abundance of action, and complex relationships. The story just has so much going for it.

It's a fun read, and may even get you thinking about what if.

I finished the audio version yesterday. I was surprised when I discovered the silly, madcap antics of the last four hours were a lead in to a series of novels instead of a conclusion to the one I have spent twenty four hours getting through. Just because you want to sell a series doesn't mean you can't have a proper ending to each installment. I won't be picking up the next book despite enjoying most of this one.

I liked this book- I love all near-fi, especially when the world where it operates is well built and interesting. Alas this book doesn't go beyond that- the setting is great, but the storyline is weak at best. I still enjoyed it but I have to recognize- this is no Seveneves, and no Snowcrash...

I loved this book. The acronyms are a little off-putting but they are easily solved. I wish that there had been more about the competition from "other sources" of time travel, especially the mysterious man warning them against their hopes and deeds. The science of magic and the multiverse, combined, offer the opportunity to think beyond HG Wells time travel from one spot and only one spot. I loved the Vikings and the fight to get maps and arms to find the world's gold. There is also the opening left for future stories based upon the greed of one and DODO trying to maintain life as we know it. It was a funny, thoughtful and entertaining read from one of my favorite authors.

I was really hoping for something creative, but got a weird mix of quantum mechanics and Luddism. What is up with most of the book being emails or weird epic poems that are just bad? Ugh...the vulgar sex scenes/descriptions don’t add anything to the story at all: so what are they there for? Again, ugh. I skipped at least a hundred pages and I don’t think I missed anything. Give me Agatha Christie’s “So many steps to death” (or PD James or Ruth Rendell or Dan Brown or...).

I really hate to give a book only one star especially if I read 472 of the over 700 pages of it. But I had to abandon this book. It starts off promising with the story of Mel, a historian and linguist who is writing her story while trapped in the past. She works for a shadowy government agency (the D. O. D. O.) of the title. She was hired to translate a bunch of ancient manuscripts which gradually reveal that magic was once real and practiced by witches. OK, perhaps not an original idea. They also find a real live which who had managed to work a spell on herself before magic disappeared in 1851 to keep her alive. And the organization figures out a way (never mind the explanation, it makes no sense) for said witch to work her magic. Then the plot gets totally bogged down in an attempt to time travel to the past (using the magic) to find and preserve an artifact worth nothing back in the early 1600s but priceless today. Complicating the attempt is a multi-worlds theory, they have to do make the same attempt on multiple 'strands' before it is successful. They're doing this in order to sell the artifact in the present to fund the organization. Problems with the book start to appear here. For example, it is never explained why a person "Sent" into the past has to arrive naked. Not only naked, but without filings or other artificial body. They clearly establish that the witch can work magic on inanimate objects (for example, she changes the color of a sweater in an early experiment). Although there is a lot of detail here, the consequences of being sent into the past and losing your dental fillings are barely mentioned.

As I said the story starts out as a letter from Mel to the future, thinking she is trapped in the past. After finally securing the artifact, the book really slogs to almost a complete stop. Other ways of telling the story are employed. Letters from a witch in the past who is working with the time travelers. Did I forget to mention, that after getting sent to the past naked, a time traveller has to find a witch willing to help, to get back? A journal being kept by one of the researchers, complete with weather forecasts and the fate of her herb garden. Memos. Emails. Bits of resumes. Congressional testimony (with parts redacted!). This goes on for 100s of pages! I started skipping ahead. I couldn't figure out if the story starts again so I gave up.

The only thing I'm sorry about not finishing it is that early in the book it is established that the US military is based in a building in Washington called "The Trapezoid". Which I guess is meant to indicate that the main story is taking place in a strand (or universe) not our own. But I guess I'll never know.

A super fun concoction of witchcraft, quantum mechanics, time travel, bureaucratic double-speak, and vikings.

A shadowy US government agency has collected a cache of historical documents which point to the possibility that magic is real. Or rather, it had been real, but ceased to function in 1851. A discredited physicist tries to patent a device which would function as a quantum faraday cage, allowing for a return of magic. With top brass worried about a potential "magic-gap" a new department is formed: the Department of Diachronic Operations.

This is a superbly silly story with very little substance and a whole lot of laughs. For fans of the lighter side of Stephenson's previous work, not for hard science fiction purists.

Wow, this book is about 400 pages too long. I am a big Stephenson fan but this book was ridiculous. I only got halfway through it and gave up. Waste of time, boring plot, unbelievable situations, boring characters, way too much description of every boring thing. Ugh.

This book has so much going on for it! Great concept, interesting and fresh narrative style, all the acronyms and inside jokes to make any nerd’s heart sing; however, there is just too much unnecessary and at times redundant details, which may enhance the comical effect, but definitely hinders the flow of the storyline; nevertheless, worth the read if you are not in a rush.

I loved this book. The acronyms are a little off-putting but they are easily solved. I wish that there had been more about the competition from "other sources" of time travel, especially the mysterious man warning them against their hopes and deeds. The science of magic and the multiverse, combined, offer the opportunity to think beyond HG Wells time travel from one spot and only one spot. I loved the Vikings and the fight to get maps and arms to find the world's gold. There is also the opening left for future stories based upon the greed of one and DODO trying to maintain life as we know it. It was a funny, thoughtful and entertaining read from one of my favorite authors.

I was really hoping for something creative, but got a weird mix of quantum mechanics and Luddism. What is up with most of the book being emails or weird epic poems that are just bad? Ugh...the vulgar sex scenes/descriptions don’t add anything to the story at all: so what are they there for? Again, ugh. I skipped at least a hundred pages and I don’t think I missed anything. Give me Agatha Christie’s “So many steps to death” (or PD James or Ruth Rendell or Dan Brown or...).

I really hate to give a book only one star especially if I read 472 of the over 700 pages of it. But I had to abandon this book. It starts off promising with the story of Mel, a historian and linguist who is writing her story while trapped in the past. She works for a shadowy government agency (the D. O. D. O.) of the title. She was hired to translate a bunch of ancient manuscripts which gradually reveal that magic was once real and practiced by witches. OK, perhaps not an original idea. They also find a real live which who had managed to work a spell on herself before magic disappeared in 1851 to keep her alive. And the organization figures out a way (never mind the explanation, it makes no sense) for said witch to work her magic. Then the plot gets totally bogged down in an attempt to time travel to the past (using the magic) to find and preserve an artifact worth nothing back in the early 1600s but priceless today. Complicating the attempt is a multi-worlds theory, they have to do make the same attempt on multiple 'strands' before it is successful. They're doing this in order to sell the artifact in the present to fund the organization. Problems with the book start to appear here. For example, it is never explained why a person "Sent" into the past has to arrive naked. Not only naked, but without filings or other artificial body. They clearly establish that the witch can work magic on inanimate objects (for example, she changes the color of a sweater in an early experiment). Although there is a lot of detail here, the consequences of being sent into the past and losing your dental fillings are barely mentioned.

As I said the story starts out as a letter from Mel to the future, thinking she is trapped in the past. After finally securing the artifact, the book really slogs to almost a complete stop. Other ways of telling the story are employed. Letters from a witch in the past who is working with the time travelers. Did I forget to mention, that after getting sent to the past naked, a time traveller has to find a witch willing to help, to get back? A journal being kept by one of the researchers, complete with weather forecasts and the fate of her herb garden. Memos. Emails. Bits of resumes. Congressional testimony (with parts redacted!). This goes on for 100s of pages! I started skipping ahead. I couldn't figure out if the story starts again so I gave up.

The only thing I'm sorry about not finishing it is that early in the book it is established that the US military is based in a building in Washington called "The Trapezoid". Which I guess is meant to indicate that the main story is taking place in a strand (or universe) not our own. But I guess I'll never know.

A super fun concoction of witchcraft, quantum mechanics, time travel, bureaucratic double-speak, and vikings.

A shadowy US government agency has collected a cache of historical documents which point to the possibility that magic is real. Or rather, it had been real, but ceased to function in 1851. A discredited physicist tries to patent a device which would function as a quantum faraday cage, allowing for a return of magic. With top brass worried about a potential "magic-gap" a new department is formed: the Department of Diachronic Operations.

This is a superbly silly story with very little substance and a whole lot of laughs. For fans of the lighter side of Stephenson's previous work, not for hard science fiction purists.

Wow, this book is about 400 pages too long. I am a big Stephenson fan but this book was ridiculous. I only got halfway through it and gave up. Waste of time, boring plot, unbelievable situations, boring characters, way too much description of every boring thing. Ugh.

This book has so much going on for it! Great concept, interesting and fresh narrative style, all the acronyms and inside jokes to make any nerd’s heart sing; however, there is just too much unnecessary and at times redundant details, which may enhance the comical effect, but definitely hinders the flow of the storyline; nevertheless, worth the read if you are not in a rush.

Foul language abounds. Author works hard to add it even by using names mispronounced as foul words.

Narrator.... did well except when doing male voices.... in some cases it sounded like she was talking while holding her nose shut.... drove me nuts.

Every time I decide to read or buy a book I will look at the reviews, after reading some; I ask myself why I read these reviews. Most of the time(there are exceptions to this) I wonder if everyone is reading the same book. This is true with The rise and fall of D.O.D.O. I am about 300 pages in and find it to be a very good story. Does it rank with Dickens or Bronte' ? Probably not. None the less it is a fun and entertaining story. In the future I am staying away from these reviews and understand if you skip this review and do the same.

This one's unique. Not just another hi tech Sci Fi thriller. DODO's a blend of history and tech that adds a completely new dimension to time travel, written in narrative banter that keeps you laughing, guessing and ultimately wanting more. Great collaboration--Stephenson's good at that.

I only give it four stars because I found some of the story prose presented as a handwritten note graphically with poor contrast hard to read.
I like the completeness of a far fetched tale. Gallard and Wilson bring a voice to the characters that reads clear. Written in the first person you wonder which author is leading the scene.
If you like Stephenson you'll enjoy this.

Another big tome by Neal Stephenson, abetted this time by the writer of historical novels, Nicole Galland. I have not read Ms Galland's work so cannot really speculate whether it's her influence which has lightened up Stephenson's often ponderous prose-style.

In any event, the result is an amusing YA time-travel cum magic tale. It starts slow, introducing characters gradually but sustains interest, gradually approaching genuine excitement. Yes, reader, it's worth the ride.

The main point of view is that of Melisande Stokes, a young Harvard bluestocking linguist. Her drab existence is upended one day when she collides with Tristan Lyons, a handsome young, straight-arrow military type who has just been ejected from the office of her unpleasant boss, Dr Roger Blevins.

Tristan, on what seems almost a whim, decides to recruit Melisande instead. The black-ops military organisation Lyons is heading is called D.O.D.O. A running gag is that the meaning of the acronym is itself classified. But .. it's to do with magic: magic that used to work but has terminally ceased to function since the introduction of photography c. 1851 .. (blah blah collapses wavefunction blah blah).

It turns out that magic can be restored.

Stephenson here throws in a QM-multiverse substrate for magic - which pretty much falls at the first hurdle since it can't explain how witches could effect time-travel, which they can. Anyhow, magic today can only be restored within a 'Schrödinger cat box' which 'suppresses decoherence', The main characters don't seem to understand how this would work, something probably shared with the reader.

But the authors really don't care about that. They are much more interested in the culture clash between the young activists (Melisande, Tristan, the computer geek guy and a few others) and the military bureaucracy brought in to run the show as it becomes more successful. The novel has an unerring feel for management speak (witches are reclassified as MUONs - Multiple-Universe Operations Navigators) and the impact of political correctness, particularly on historical figures brought to the present ('Anachrons'). Much opportunity for knowing humour.

The plot, such as it is, involves attempts to secure rare artefacts from the past to raise money for the cash-strapped D.O.D.O, a strangely well-informed bank which straddles the centuries, and a plot to restore magic by changing the past. Let us just say that the principal-agent problem looms rather large.

The bad guys (senior military and academics) are convincingly-hissable villains and the heroes winsome and decent. There is also a hint of chemistry in the air, dear reader.

Buy it. You won't be disappointed.

I love Neal Stephenson and while this is not my favorite book by him it's certainly worth reading. It's imaginative and well researched on the historical facts. It is an interesting look into witchcraft as it relates to quantum theory. In that way it's somewhat like Anathem which looked at quantum theory, consciousness, philosophy and the multi-verse.

... But the book itself just dragged and dragged along. When I find myself looking to see how much of the book I have read, it's pretty much over.

Two stars. One for the p!otline, one for the location; Cambridge was an old stomping grounds some 50+ years ago.

Wow what a fun book! It's long so seems a bit intimidating at first, but it's a lot of fun and explores the intersection between science fiction and magic/fantasy... I loved the epistolary style and the "found" nature of the documents that makes up the text, like corporate policies, journal entries, emails, even a PowerPoint presentation! It's not afraid to make fun of itself and the characters are great, if you're a science fiction or fantasy geek, you should read this book!

I've read most of Stephenson's books, so I'm used to his barrage of verbiage.

This book, though, is too long by half. It became a chore to work through it, with the middle sections being a downright slog.

I dont recommend reading it.

Stephenson et al. has produced yet another unique, enjoyable work of fiction that combines the mysterious with the real, theorizes on popular themes such as the multidimensional theory in ways nobody else has yet, and entertains with a relatable and complex cast of characters.

Stephenson's best novel in at least a decade. If you could barely get through Reamde, Anathem and Seveneves, but you haven't given up, this is your book. Fun, readable, enjoyable, it has real characters (!) who develop and everything. Lots of good plot. Nice going, Galland; I've never read your books, but your work here is greatly appreciated.

Hardcore Stephenson fans will initially feel that there is an insufficiency of geekiness. Keep reading, you'll feel better. Think of this book as a guilty pleasure.

If I were a publisher, I'd give this pair some cash to see if they could do it again.

Fun story by Stephenson: a small band of plucky adventurers explore the edges of science, competing against the military industrial complex, a shadowy bank, and surprising foes from the deep past.

Actually, it's better than my silly description, with some strong characters, an interesting premise, and a solid plot. I read it on vacation in about three days.

A truly fun read. With books by Neal Stephenson, I either love them (Anathem, Reamde) or hate them (Cryptonomicon). I'm glad to say that this is in the first category.

Characters: 4.8*
Universe: 5*
Plot: 4.8*

This is a fun book that has a lot of twists and turns (as do many of Neal's books), but it also has a lot of heart and even (gasp!) a sense of humor! The characters are enjoyable and reasonably complex (and I even enjoyed the antagonist).

The universe is fascinating and you can truly suspend disbelief to imagine a world where magic is actually real as you read through it.

My only quibble (as I have with a few other books by Neal) is the ending. If you need to have every loose thread cleanly handled by the end of the book, this may not be the book for you. It is a satisfying ending, but it leaves things in such a state that there might just be a sequel in store someday.

Good book. If time travel were real, this is how it would be managed at scale; this is how or why you would do something practically with it. One change, I think the title would be stronger as just "DODO" --then authors admitt

...a little seltzer down your pants.

Lovely complexity, baffling and believable bureaucratic shenanigans, A. C. Clarke’s third law and lots of pages on which to fiddle with it all. Very satisfying.

Couldn't finish...just boring. They take so much time getting to the meat of the story that the characters just got annoying. Watching the characters spin their wheels is terrible if there are no stakes.

Any of who has ever worked in a government bureaucracy will immediately recognize the absurdity of the situation the characters find themselves in. The imagination and artistry that has gone into the telling of this sci-fi/fantasy is enthralling. Great literature it isn't, but a fun ride for sure.

This book starts well and does usual exposition but then gets stuck in the middle. Listening to the audiobook, nothing happens for hours. The characters are well presented and good reader that try to enliven the dull bits.

This was a really fun book, combining both science fiction and historical fiction. Can you say time travel? Enough said. Otherwise: spoilers. It is also almost (but not quite) a parody on office politics and the damage done to people and organizations by cronyism and the egos of powerful men. The authors, I think, collaborated well and brought out some of the best in each other.

This was my summer read 2018. A nice little romp through Neal Stephenson territory, but not as much fun as the Baroque cycle. The story as told through blog posts, logs and epic poem format wore on me a little and the ending leads me to believe that more is to follow.

Its been done before, and not much new in the thinking. Changing stuff in the past changes the present. And the multiverse, which Stephenson has written about. I suppose the vector about bureaucracy would be amusing if you haven't been subjected to it..or maybe because you have.

Stephenson phoned this in, possibly as a way of cashing in on research he did for other projects. No zing. I'm not one to give up on a book, but with this one I've stopped on page 256/742. I bought it for his name because I enjoyed his earlier work. Mr Stephenson owes me a good book.

Right out of the gate, I fell for this book and its characters and could not put it down. Such a fun read - I binged it like a Netflix series, couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next. Thanks to both authors for a wild, whimsical ride! Can’t wait to read the sequel!

I've read everything by Neal S. and I'll continue to do so. This book lacks something that is present in all his other works, a reason why. The promise of the first chapters got me excited about something akin to the depth of the Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon. This just didn't have that same narrative and detail I love about his novels.

The prose itself is still top notch but it's lacking in many other ways

Magic once existed in this hilarious novel about how bureaucracy ruins everything; even time traveling witchcraft. Is there a family of Fuggers deciding all of history? Is it the Pentagon or the Trapezoid? Truly all one really needs to know in order to make a decision to read this book are these words: Vikings Raiding Walmart.

Good book with some very funny parts. I really enjoyed reading it, but many moments felt tedious. It is written as a series of documents and there were too many times it felt monotonous and slow. I listened to the audiobook.

I listened to nearly the entire audiobook (incredible production: different voices and accents for all the characters) as I commuted from San Francisco to Oregon for the 2017 lunar eclipse. It made the drive bearable!

I very much enjoyed this book - especially the various ways the story was told from the viewpoints of the characters.

I tend to rely on my good friend to supply be with books to read as I rarely bother to spend money on books for myself. . . I will pretty much read anything in front of me if I am in the mood to read. This is a fun book to read.

What an awesome adventure!! Pirates, vikings, geeks, soldiers, connivers, and of course, witches~ Combine those with time-travelling jaunts to historical epochs and you get a wonderful and entertaining book~ Many thumbs up!!

Fun send up of fantasy, time travel sci-fi and superb mockery of modern corporate/government management culture. A little too long for a spoof. Would have gotten a fifth star, but the joke wore thin before the finish.

Decent enough. Well worth getting from the library - not worth paying real money for. Despite the hopes raised by Seveneves Stephenson still can't end a novel. Does he just get bored around the 80% mark?

There are some very entertaining parts, but too much time is spent on the development of a small start-up company through growth into a multi-headed hydra...and it really didn’t seem relevant to the plot...

Weaving universes together is not easy. Both authors have broken through a barrier by getting out of their comfort zones. The result embodies the deepest understanding of two universes and will serve as my default recommendation for such folks that love fantasy but hate sci-fi. I’m looking forward to where we go from here, in the dimension where high technology and witchcraft co-exist in harmony. I hope these two write a sequel to Anathem together.

My first review of this book was harsh. After reviewing it, I would like to amend it.
This book was long and not of interest to me. I think it suffers in comparison to
many of Stephenson's other works which I recommend strongly.

I started reading this and had a bit of deja vu. Then it hit me, this is a novelized version of Time Cop (staring JCVD). While the addition of magical elements and far more historical context makes this a more interesting read, the basic structure is a rehash of the movie Time Cop. The book kept me compelled, but overall it could have been better.

While the whole premise is fascinating and the characters are wonderful, I simply could not get past what is either a terrible job of formatting for Kindle, or a really odd intentional format artifact At frequent intervals, a page simply ends mid sentence and the next page is either blank or begins a new thought. Highly distracting, as the reader is clipping right along when suddenly this unexpected interruption occurs. Since I got this as a library book through Overdrive, there is no real recourse. If you buy the Kindle version, be aware of what you might encounter.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors because the way he writes paints a vivid picture of the world he is immersing you in.

Plenty of twists & turns in this book to appeal to mystery fans as well as the obvious sci-fi appeal of the story. Eagerly hoping for a DODO 2 ?

It's Neal Stephenson. Of course it's fantastic. I'm really not sure how much is him and how much is Nicole Galland, what their contributions were in this book, but the voice is consistent. They have prior experience with the Mongoliad books. I'm not giving anything away to tell you it's a time travel story, so that's always a challenge, which usually requires a lot of suspended disbelief on the part of the reader. They have really thought this one out, and have answers for the major questions which always arise. Neal Stephenson always makes sure he's thorough when he writes a scenario, and this one does not disappoint. He deals with time travel with as much seriousness as he dealt with epic disaster in Seveneves, to the point that you could almost believe that science has it worked out. I was constantly imagining him and Nicole hashing out solutions as each problem cropped up, most likely having to storyboard it extensively before writing. It's not as heavy as the Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon, and not as poetic as The Diamond Age, but this story will hold your interest on the strength of its likeable characters, interesting topic, and momentum.

Imagine being recruited for a job that allows you to put to practical use knowledge of dead languages, ancient history, antique fighting skills, and anthropological experience. Granted, it's a government gig, but it involves saving Magic--for government uses, but okay, it involves Magic AND time time travel!

This book is, by turns, droll, thoughtful, exciting, nail biting, hysterical, frightening, and amazing. A good read that is hard to put down.

It's a big book in many ways, but that is good. It deals with a lot of big ideas and that, along with the incredible story telling, lets you sink your teeth in and chew it up. I hope there is another one.

I bought this book impulsively because I’ve enjoyed all the other Neal Stephenson I’ve ever read. This one was the first regret. The plot starts off strong but fails to develop. A series of chapter style vignettes that only loosely hold the story line. Cleverly done at times, but the humor that jabs at the inefficiency of the military and bureaucracy in general through inter office memos, bulletins, diaries, and personal letters repetitiously fails to hold the plot together. The main characters fade in and out of the book. After patiently reading the first 439 pages, I have low motivation to pick it up again for another 300.

I got this book because Seven Eves (also Neal Stephenson) was such a good read. Lots of science in the science fiction, but also thought-provoking questions about humanity, leadership, politics, war. This one is just silly and overly nerdy. It has a few hilarious moments, like a horde of berserkers using time travel to sack and pillage a present day Wal-Mart (oh, yes, marvelous), but way too long and verbose for something that's just goofy.