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The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

(D.O.D.O. #1)

Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author),

Nicole Galland (Goodreads Author)

3.87 · Rating details · 25,687 ratings · 3,282 reviews

From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world.

When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, acciden From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world.

When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money.

Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace—the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world "jams" the "frequencies" used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why.

And so the Department of Diachronic Operations—D.O.D.O. —gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial—and treacherous—nature of the human heart.

Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterize all of Neal Stephenson’s work and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole Galland’s storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realized work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible, and take you to places—and times—beyond imagining. ...more

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Hardcover, 752 pages

Published June 13th 2017 by William Morrow

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· 25,687 ratings · 3,282 reviews

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Start your review of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (D.O.D.O. #1)

Apr 13, 2017 Will Byrnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, satire, fantasy

We seem to be living in a period in which time travel has captured a considerable portion of the public’s attention, its attention for entertainment at least. There are several TV series on at present (that I know of) that deal in temporal backs and forths, (I really loved Flash Forward several years back) and there seem to have been few extended periods in which the form was absent from the airwaves (and wires). It has long been an attractive concept for feature films. My personal favorites are ...more

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Aug 19, 2017 Philip rated it it was ok

Shelves: not-for-me, 2017-releases, sci-fi, fantasy, author-man

2ish stars.

D.O.D.O. is a tiny, shady government entity that introduces us to the awesome combination of time travel and witchcraft. The organization starts out small with a lot of promise but then becomes mired in bureaucracy, more or less undermining its original intent. In parallel, Stephenson’s and Galland’s novel starts out strong with an original premise but soon hits a brick wall and doesn’t go anywhere. For 500 pages.

As a satire of The System, the book is clever and often funny but it t 2ish stars.

D.O.D.O. is a tiny, shady government entity that introduces us to the awesome combination of time travel and witchcraft. The organization starts out small with a lot of promise but then becomes mired in bureaucracy, more or less undermining its original intent. In parallel, Stephenson’s and Galland’s novel starts out strong with an original premise but soon hits a brick wall and doesn’t go anywhere. For 500 pages.

As a satire of The System, the book is clever and often funny but it takes things entirely too far. It’s frustrating to have certain expectations foiled by rolls of red tape and this book does a good job playing on those frustrations. There are more acronyms than can be counted and even longer lists of potentially offensive terms to be avoided in a diverse workplace. But they’re thrown at us over and over again for hundreds and hundreds of pages like that one friend who sings the freakin’ Lamb Chop song because he knows it gets on your nerves so you roll your eyes and let him get it out of his system ha ha he’s such a dork but HE JUST GOES ON AND ON MY FRIENDS.

Within the middle, oh, 70% of the book there’s about one collective page in ten worth of relevant information. There’s another one page in ten worth of humorous content. Honestly this book could have been cut by more than half. It’s funny in concept, but I can’t help feeling like I wasted so much of my life on a gag. It goes absolutely nowhere until the last 10 pages or so, when the promise is rekindled and the important questions finally get asked... and then the book ends all of a sudden.

I didn’t love the characters, they were really all caricatures used for comic effect against Melisande’s straight man. And I didn’t ever feel the chemistry between her and Tristan despite us being assured that it’s there based on the tried-and-true principle of “if you say it enough it’s true.”

I guess the joke’s on me this time around.

Posted in Mr. Philip's Library ...more

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Sep 07, 2017 Bradley rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, 2017-shelf, sci-fi, history, satire

Who likes naked Vikings? Raise your hand!

I'm of two minds on this book. On the one hand, there are quite a few great ideas with the complications of surrounding witches with a humungous incompetent bureaucratic machine, especially when it turns out that they can do a lot of time travel. Not only that, but I was a huge fan of the acronyms and the lingo-speak, especially when a costume party gets told as if it's a major military-op or when a certain Lay of Wal-Mart is written. I was even mightily Who likes naked Vikings? Raise your hand!

I'm of two minds on this book. On the one hand, there are quite a few great ideas with the complications of surrounding witches with a humungous incompetent bureaucratic machine, especially when it turns out that they can do a lot of time travel. Not only that, but I was a huge fan of the acronyms and the lingo-speak, especially when a costume party gets told as if it's a major military-op or when a certain Lay of Wal-Mart is written. I was even mightily surprised at how much I enjoyed the day-to-day operations of D.O.D.O. as the entire bureaucratic nightmare went on op after op in the past, but what really stole the show was the labyrinthine plot that underlay the fabric of time and finance. Or chronofinance. Or let's just call them Fuggers and be done with it. :)

What didn't I like so much?

Well, it's not that I actually hated anything about this book, but the quality of the wit within the conversations was lacking for what should have been a straight satire/sf/fantasy full of half-successful bumbling alphabet-soup American agencies as they get into trouble with witches. The running gags could have been a lot more subtle. I felt like the intention behind this novel was to be more accessible to just about everyone, to have realistic everyday MC's with normal human failings and urges, to feel warm amidst all these cool ideas and the basic incompetence-porn of the bureaucracy, but my investment in Mel or Tristan wasn't that steep. I found myself treating the whole organization as the main character and in that regards, I had a great time. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O kinda gave it away. Who's the main character? D.O.D.O, of course. :)

Things really got interesting for me when we were in the minutia of the time-travel and the revealing of the strands of plots within plots that span over centuries, and I had a great time with all of that.

I think this novel is a hit and miss. As a satire, it tries a bit too hard, as a character novel, it lacks. As an idea novel, it starts with a decent premise and then it gets quite complicated and that eventually tickled me to death. Certain scenes were brilliant and laugh out loud funny.

But I've read a lot of time-travel books. I've even read a lot of time-travel-with-witches books. This one is only average.

That's not to say I didn't have a good time, though! Because I did! I just wouldn't dare rank this all that high among them.

Unfortunately, by the end, I didn't think this was quite as good as Stephenson's Reamde and that happened to be my least favorite of his works. (I'm a huge fanboy, too.) I can't say anything about Nicole Galland because this was the first of hers that I've read.

If I had to make a guess, though, the plot, the acronyms, and the nicely weird stuff as all Neal. I could be wrong. Probably am. But those felt like him. :) ...more

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Apr 25, 2017 Liviu rated it it was amazing

Shelves: genre-sf, read_2017, 2017_release_read, top_25_2017_books

Assuming you buy its premise and do not throw it away disgusted when it is - close but not quite imho though opinions may differ about that in quite a few places - jumping the shark (among many oddities, the novel contains a viking saga poem in verse cca 930's about the sack of an Walmart (!!) cca 2010's), this is a delight: funny (don't remember when i laughed out loud so many times when reading a book), zany, quite subtle on occasion (while it seems to start in our universe cca early 2010's, t Assuming you buy its premise and do not throw it away disgusted when it is - close but not quite imho though opinions may differ about that in quite a few places - jumping the shark (among many oddities, the novel contains a viking saga poem in verse cca 930's about the sack of an Walmart (!!) cca 2010's), this is a delight: funny (don't remember when i laughed out loud so many times when reading a book), zany, quite subtle on occasion (while it seems to start in our universe cca early 2010's, there is the Trapezoid rather than the Pentagon for example...) and with a format that adds a lot to the story-line - while most of the narrative is a first person Victorian-style (with modern annotations crossed out) from Melisande (see the blurb) who is marooned in London 1851 and wants to write a memoir and deposit it in a secure vault to arrive in our present and witness the creation of the D.O.D.O. and her role in that, there are narrations in many voices (Rebecca East Oda, descendant of Salem (!!) witches and New England aristocratic matron, whose genius physicist husband Frank Oda former professor at MIT, hounded from academia for alleged mistreatment of cats as in "the Schrodinger Cat" experiment, is the brain behind the time-traveling machine at the heart of D.O.D.O, and Grainne, Irish witch/spy in Elizabeth I England ~1601 are some of the more distinctive voices and powerful characters of the novel), transcripts of official documents (from debriefings after action, email exchanges between characters to the diversity policy of D.O.D.O - this one is a hoot, not to speak of the Halloween dress code official paper), the aforementioned Viking saga in verse and much more.

While 750+ pages long, the book ends way too soon (would have loved to read another 700 pages) and has a very useful glossary of the "alphabet soup" typical of governmental organizations (most common being D.O.D.O - Department of Diachronic Operations, D.T.A.P - Destination Time and Place, D.E.D.E - Direct Engagement for Diachronic Effect and K.C.W - Known Compliant Witch -) and a cast of characters in the various times and places the novel takes place (both have some spoilers so knowing the main acronyms above is probably enough to avoid needing read it until halfway through the book at least)

The ending is excellent in many ways (and has enough closure to make the book a fully satisfying read on its own) though it really reads like a stopping point with more to come in future volumes (which i would highly welcome)

Overall - fast, funny, some mind bending stuff and lots of ingenuity, close but not quite jumping the shark on occasion and the top novel of the year for me to date ...more

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Aug 05, 2017 Kemper rated it liked it

Shelves: spy-vs-spy, magic, time-travel, 2017, sci-fi

What happens when you put time travel, magic, quantum physics, witches, a top secret military operation, alternate timelines, Vikings, a family of shadowy bankers, and government bureaucracy in one book?

As you might expect, things get complicated.

The story begins with the written account of Melsianda Stokes, a woman from our present who has become stranded in London during 1851. Mel tells us how she’s an expert in ancient languages who was stuck in a dead end academic career until she is recrui ...more

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Jun 27, 2017 Paul rated it it was amazing

not a perfect novel but closer to five stars than 4

this story combined beautiful timey whammy

stuff and is driven by

overall a beautiful book and with an open end so we may get more.😁

please mr. stephenson and Ms. Galland may we have some more. ...more

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Dec 18, 2020 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, kindle-own, own, sci-fi, ha-group-tbr-challenge-2021

3.5. I really enjoyed my Audible edition!

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾 ...more

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Jul 21, 2017 Maureen Carden rated it it was amazing

Shelves: war, historical, wild-ass-adventure, just-so-damn-good, supense, fantasy, amusing, paranormal

Neal Stephenson-Cyberpunk King writing about witches and magic.
Neal Stephenson- Speculative Fiction King writing about time travel, witches and magic.
Neal Stephenson-Historical Fiction King writing about turning the thought exercise Schrodinger's Cat into an a

ctual experiment which leads to time travel, witches, magic, and the military.
Can it get any better? Oh yeah, there is an epic 10th century Viking saga about Wal-Mart. ...more

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Mar 15, 2017 Lina rated it liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Some general spoilers here, so that I am able to talk about what's troubling me with this novel.

Dear reader, I am ~~fucking heartbroken~~ disheartened.

Neal Stephenson is one of very few authors I drop everything for (quite literally). I dropped out psychology 101 to read the Baroque Cycle instead, I cram every book as soon as they arrive in the stores, and sometimes as an advanced reader copy. I can count on his books to be my reading experience of the year (well, maybe not the Big U...) and usuall ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Joe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is the most fun I've had reading a Neal Stephenson novel since SNOWCRASH. Co-author Nicole Galland brings a nice light touch to the proceedings so that it doesn't delve too much into technobabble. Witches, time-travel, and governmental bureaucracy all combine to deliver a thrilling read that I finished over a single weekend. GOOD STUFF! ...more

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Apr 28, 2017 Bentgaidin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I read an ARC of this with some bit of hope; Seveneves had fallen kind of flat for me, but I was hoping that a coauthor would help shore up some of Stephenson's weak points, and the idea of a time-travel story with witches was a good start. I do feel like Nicole Galland helped, but unfortunately, not enough to make up for some disappointing flaws.

Let's start with the characters -- this was where Seveneves lost me, with the first two-thirds feeling like I was reading about cardboard cutouts movin I read an ARC of this with some bit of hope; Seveneves had fallen kind of flat for me, but I was hoping that a coauthor would help shore up some of Stephenson's weak points, and the idea of a time-travel story with witches was a good start. I do feel like Nicole Galland helped, but unfortunately, not enough to make up for some disappointing flaws.

Let's start with the characters -- this was where Seveneves lost me, with the first two-thirds feeling like I was reading about cardboard cutouts moving towards their marked places in the plot. DODO was a marked improvement there, with several different characters fleshed out throughout the book. Unfortunately, a lot of their interaction had to do with a romance that never felt believable to me; despite how often other characters remarked that the main pair seemed like a couple, or how much the female protagonist wrote about the chemistry she felt with the male lead, it never seemed to show up during their interactions on the page. This wasn't helped by the creepy sexualization of all the women in the story; from the description of (always female) witches as 'independent, therefore likely prostitutes or mistresses' (there is an actual conversation about this, including one of the witches who agrees that it's a reasonable expectation) to the recruitment of time-travel operatives as 'Lovers,' to persuade people by means of sex... followed by the next line recruiting 'Closers,' described as 'what Lovers do, but without the sex.' There are also a number of scenes where (because time-travel renders people naked, for "reasons") men are admired for their physical attributes by the women, but none that I recall of the reverse; oddly, this does not feel like it's to avoid objectifying the women, but more because their status is 'people who would like to have sex with men' and so their objectification is already taken for granted. All told, even the characters who weren't _supposed_ to be buffoons or unlikable never rose to the level of 'people I'd like to chat with at a party.'

So, setting aside the characters, how about the science? Stephenson always likes diving into the minutia of how the world works in his books, and this is often an enjoyable rabbit-hole to follow him down -- I just wish he'd done a bit less of it here. The basic premise is that magic works, because of hand-waving about collapsing quantum states. Unfortunately for witches, scientific developments in the late 1800s... I don't know, permanently collapsed some wave-states or something? Anyway, magic doesn't work anymore, except! Possibly our heroes can build a chamber where magic _will_ work, if it's sufficiently cut off from the rest of the world. The details that we're given are enough to make me (admittedly, not a physicist of any stripe) start to pick at things; I'm pretty sure the science doesn't, and can't, work like that. And worst of all, this is completely irrelevant to the story. After the first few info-dumpy chapters, we're at a generic state of 'magic used to work, it stopped, and now we can with special effort do it again.' The details of how that's supposed to happen, and the specific scientific developments that cause it, are never important, either to the characters or the plot. I feel like less would have been more, here -- it would strain my suspension of disbelief less to simply say 'somehow science suppressed magic, and now we've got a science that might bring it back.'

So setting aside the characters and the science, how's the rest of the book? Well, not much better. The individual scenes are good, and it's easy to keep reading to see what comes next. The overall effect, however, ends up landing like a lead balloon, and going nowhere. This is doubly unfortunate because it started out so strong -- the book starts with the female protagonist stranded in the past, with disaster looming in her now-unreachable present, as she writes this chronicle to explain how things came out the way they did. So we start out with the idea that time travel is just a bad, doomed plan to begin with. We see the characters build their first 'time machine' and recruit the first witch to operate it, and every complication and failure is resolved by something that turns out to lead to an even larger failure, or a greater complication. And always, we're reminded that even when they seem to be succeeding, that there's a grand doom waiting ahead of them. And so I read the book, as the stakes kept being raised, expecting a disastrous climax, a cataclysm of such magnitude that it could wipe the slate clean. Instead, it just fizzled -- the last chapters solved the one immediate problem, but then pointed out that this did nothing about all the larger issues they were worried about, and left a number of other mysteries in the air. I almost wish it had ended perhaps two chapters sooner, after the return of the heroine and her night of passion with the male protagonist, and no acknowledgement of their future difficulties at all. Then, it could at least be a book about how time travel brought these two together, instead of a book about time-travel without a real end, that happened to include a romance I didn't care about.

Meh, I say. ...more

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Sep 07, 2017 Trish rated it liked it · review of another edition

What is it with big idea novels having to be so looooong!
Seriously. I had this problem with that novel by Ada Palmer and I certainly had it with this one too. You have a big idea, we get it, no need to drag the damn thing out over more than 700 pages when half of that would have sufficed.

In this case we follow a government agent (he's Army Intelligence, supposedly) who recruits a linguist. They then proceed to translate certain scripts, recruit Dr. Oda (a scientist formerly from MIT) as well as ...more

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Aug 11, 2018 Petra rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This was fun. A real lark of a story.
Magic has disappeared from the world and D.O.D.O. want to bring it back. Time travel and witches will solve that. Right? What can go wrong?
This is an elaborate use of the Schroedinger's Cat theory. It works. But what happens when motivations get muddy?
This story is funny, interesting, blends science with fantasy & history. It's got a crazy mix happenings. It's hilarious at times.
Told completely in an epistolary way through letters, diaries, memos, email, ...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Nick Borrelli rated it it was amazing

To view my full review for Fresh Fiction please click the following link:

http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id... ...more

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May 29, 2017 Kate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: out-in-2017-and-read, favourites-read-in-2017

Absolutely superb! I loved every one of its 742 pages. So sorry to finish it. Fabulous!

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May 24, 2017 John Sundman rated it liked it · review of another edition

Full disclosure: one of the authors (Galland) is a friend. In fact she & I went out yesterday for a cup of tea. Because Nicki's a friend I really wish I could give the book 5 stars or even 4. But if I'm going to stick to my Goodreads grading curve, it comes in as a solid 3. There are parts that I really liked, and parts that I really *really* liked. But also there are whole sections that made me want to throw the book against the wall. (This is a not uncommon experience for me when reading a boo Full disclosure: one of the authors (Galland) is a friend. In fact she & I went out yesterday for a cup of tea. Because Nicki's a friend I really wish I could give the book 5 stars or even 4. But if I'm going to stick to my Goodreads grading curve, it comes in as a solid 3. There are parts that I really liked, and parts that I really *really* liked. But also there are whole sections that made me want to throw the book against the wall. (This is a not uncommon experience for me when reading a book by Neal Stephenson.) I sum, I liked it. I recommend it. But it didn't light my world on fire.

On the positive side, this book is a wild yarn. It's not afraid to be outlandish, over-the-top. It's about as subtle as a Mel Brooks movie, like Young Frankenstein or Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It has about 100 characters and a few dozen sub-plots. Moreover, because the story concerns time travel the plots and characters get jumbled up in all kinds of paradoxical ways, some of which are laugh-out-loud funny and others of which are like Rubics cubes that get resolved (or sometimes don't) before your eyes. Much of the book is a send up of bureaucracies -- military, governmental, academic and other. It's meant to be fun, and it is fun.

The premise of the book, that "magic" is a form of technology for locally manipulating space-time that is transmitted both genetically and culturally through maternal lineages of witches and which allows witches to send regular folk short-distance hopping between nearby alternative universes, has a bit less of the scientific plausibility that characterize most Stephenson books, but a lot more than most fantasy/time-travel books have. Sure, there's a lot of hand-waving. But it's of the kind that even readers of "hard" SF are likely to go along with. As you would expect in a book by Neal Stephenson, there is serious geekery within.

A few of the characters are very finely drawn. The old/young witch Erszebet is my favorite, and my desire to learn more of her story was what kept me going through some of the weedier patches, when she would be mostly off-stage for 100 pages or more. Some of the characters who inhabit exotic places in the past are also nicely done, even though their roles often are small.

But, alas, the book is full of gimmicks that don't really work (The novel is presented as a collection of letters, diaries, email archives, etc, with no explanation of how they came to be gathered into a thing. This artificiality drew attention to itself at every turn. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I had a hard time getting past it.)

And the info-dumps. My gracious, the info-dumps. The bane of every SF writer. How do you convey all kinds of information to the reader about an unfamiliar world without making her feel like she's reading a textbook (a really old, dry textbook)? There are lots of ways to tackle this problem (see, for example, Frank Herbert's DUNE or Orwell's 1984 or anything by Ursula LeGuin, or . . .). Unfortunately The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. mostly relies on a lot of "As you know, Bob, . . ." type presentations where one character explains to another the workings of some gizmo or whatever in excruciating detail. For example, there's a multi-page memorandum on the evolution of styles of swords and sword fighting told in self-conscious hacker-speak. Please.

And finally, although the main present-day story takes place over 5 years (and the book is over 700 pages long), there doesn't seem to be any human connection, or drama, or growth between or among any of them -- the main, present-day characters (except the aforementioned Erszebet). No arguments? No sadness? No betrayals? No family troubles? No qualms about their work? No soul-searching? No particular intimacies? Office romance? Do any of these people have sex lives? Over 5 years these people work with each other every day -- where "work" involves highly secret and astounding things like time travel and magic -- yet we get no sense of wonderment, and all these people ever talk to each other about is the mechanics of the job. (It's kind of an inverse of the Harry Potter novels, where magic is just presented as is, and it's the interaction between the characters that keeps you flipping the pages.)

Stephenson's books are rightly praised for sheer inventiveness. He's a guy with a remarkable ability to think about the implications of technology and to write stories that explore those implications. He's not really known for creating memorable characters. Galland on the other hand really likes to explore character. For example, she wrote a novel called "I, Iago", imagining the story of Othello from the villain's point of view. She's all about character.

The Rise and Fall of DODO feels to me like a book that's 2/3 Stephenson and 1/3 Galland. ( I have no idea if that's true, by the way. It will be interesting to see how the authors handle that question when they go on book tour next month.) If it had more of the feel of a 50-50 collaboration I think I would have liked it better than I did.

On the other hand I won't be entirely surprised if I find myself reading it again a year or two from now, as I've done with Cryptonomicon. There's a lot of heft to this book. Time will tell how much of a pull it has on me. ...more

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Jul 11, 2017 Denise rated it it was ok

Rounding up. What a shame! Why did Stephenson partner with another writer? Doesn't sound like his work at all. Too long and bloated-s story that could have been half the length and be much more interesting. ...more

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Apr 19, 2020 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook, science-fiction

Some people are put off by the sheer volume of Neal Stephenson's books--they tend to be big, and useful as doorstops. But, I think they are all fantastic. This book is just as good as any of Stephenson's other books--and I have read almost all of them, including the incredible The Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon. Without giving away any spoilers, this book is about magic and time travel, and handles both in a very logical, almost scientific manner. A few time travel paradoxes are mentioned, and ...more

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Nov 02, 2018 Carolyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, 2018, paranormal, time-travel

There have been a lot of novels with a time travel theme of late, and even novels like this one invoking the multiverse. This is one is complex and fun at the same time with the ultimate point of time travel being to bring magic back into the world. Magic is thought to have vanished from the world with the increased use of technology around 1851 and a secret government body (D.O.D.O) is working on a Schrodinger's Cat type experiment that will allow witches to perform magic again.

The book was ov ...more

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Feb 26, 2020 Cynnamon rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: kat-fantasy, kat-history, kat-scifi

Well, what can I say? This was not my cup of tea? I guess this would be only half of the truth. The other half might be the clash of expectations vs. reality.

I expected to read a Neal Stehpenson-style scifi-novel with lots of action, cool protagonists, futuristic environment and a weird plot. I expected a crazy mixture of fantasy and scifi, of witchcraft and time travel.
Obviously I completely forgot to consider that Stephenson wrote this book with a co-author and that this co-author might have s Well, what can I say? This was not my cup of tea? I guess this would be only half of the truth. The other half might be the clash of expectations vs. reality.

I expected to read a Neal Stehpenson-style scifi-novel with lots of action, cool protagonists, futuristic environment and a weird plot. I expected a crazy mixture of fantasy and scifi, of witchcraft and time travel.
Obviously I completely forgot to consider that Stephenson wrote this book with a co-author and that this co-author might have some impact also. I have no idea, though, if the cooperation with Galland is the reason for the result.

So what did I get? The cover of my edition looks like a pretty old-fashioned and boring envelope folder. In this case you may judge the book by its cover. The whole novel is a collection of diary entries, mail exchanges, intranet communication, letters, transscriptions of interrogations, various memoranda, work process descriptions, Power Point slide decks and -as a notable exception – a Viking poem.
You might say, that is a completely legit and innovative way of presenting a story. True, but not if the documents read like a bureaucratic administrator’s handbook. We struggle through work procedures, acronym catalogues, diversity policies etc. The fantasy/sci-fi elements I expected showed up as a meager topping only. Even witchcraft can be boring, if you press it in a folder.
So in my eyes this is rather a satire on bureaucracy with focus on the military, but written like an office report.

Also the book was spiked with acronyms. Yes I know, they were meant satirically. But they showed up in such abundance, that pretty soon I lost the will to figure out what they mean. (Yes, there is a glossary. I also lost the will to look them up).

I noted positively, though, that there was quite a bit of historical information due to the DEDE (Direct Engagement for Diachronid Effect = time travel activities^^).

Now the plot: this could have been interesting for a 300 pages novel, but for 700+ pages it was definitely far too skinny.

I feel sorry (mostly for myself^^) that I couldn’t find the enjoyment in the book like many other readers, but for me it is only a 2 star, hardly okeyish read.
...more

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Aug 13, 2017 Lata added it

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, time-travel, x2017-read

Light and meandering, anda surprisingly fast read. I have to admit I actually enjoyed reading how the DODO bureaucracy ballooned, hampering the ability of the core group to maintain control over the various DEDEs at DTAPs. (The number of abbreviations and acronyms in use reminded me of my time at a variety of corporations.) And watching the smarmy and condescending Blevins at work -- blechhhhhhh!
I liked Melisande Stokes a lot and Erzabet frequently had me grinning.

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Jul 27, 2017 Lori rated it liked it · review of another edition

Time travel is possible by witches performing magic, although Mmes. Who, Whatsit, and Which do not make an appearance. A shadowy defense agency of the US government wishes to control and use the magic and witches. This bureaucratic encumbrance is not to be confused with the Ministry of Magic, nor, any other magical governance. Although, the Viking hoards invasion of Wal-Mart reminded me a lot of Genghis Khan’s trip to the mall in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. ...more

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Apr 10, 2017 Loring Wirbel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Neal Stephenson proceeded directly from one of his more serious and technically challenging works, seveneves, to a rollicking multi-century spoof co-written with historical fiction author Nicole Galland. Stephenson and Galland had worked together along with five other authors on The Mongoliad Trilogy, though I'll admit I'm not familiar with the series. Funny that trilogies are involved with the Stephenson-Galland resume, however, because this book resembles nothing so much as the high-humor and ...more

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Sep 16, 2017 RG rated it liked it

3.5*

I usually enjoy Stephensons work and having read positive and negative reviews on this I was hesitant to start. It deals with an entire host of ideas. Quantum physics, time travel, history, witchcraft/magic, administration politics foundations just to name a few. The novel was divided into 5 parts and I thoroughly enjoyed Part 1 introducing the 2 main protagonists. It introduced the foundation for why magic was lost and what DODO briefly was. From there it became alot of backlog and info dum ...more

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Oct 13, 2017 Stephanie *Eff your feelings* rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2017, abandoned

Technically, I haven’t abandoned this yet.... but I’m about to.

I’m listening to the book and I was following it just fine and was actually enjoying it, that is until the book turned into a bunch of email/messages being read. I’m trying to follow it, but I have found this so tedious and I don’t have any idea what’s happening at this point. I don’t have any desire to go back and re-listen to the parts that I hated.

I’m on the last third of the book, so I did give it a serious try.

But I can’t do thi ...more

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Nov 15, 2017 Sonja Arlow rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, sci-fi, 2017-read, funny, recommended

3 ½ stars

Take time travel, witches, Schrodinger’s cat, dwindling magic, a shadowy government entity and naked Vikings and you have some idea of what to expect.

Magic had disappeared from the world in 1851 because of the development of science and technology, particularly the photography of an eclipse. The story follows the exploits of a government agency that tries to restore magic by any means possible.

The story idea was fantastic and fun but also frustrating at times. I think the time travel co ...more

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Jul 03, 2017 Rachel (Kalanadi) rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

Close to 4.5 stars. Some of the plot is ludicrous, but it is so much fun!

(view spoiler) ...more

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Jul 10, 2017 Tim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, reviewed, science-fiction, 2010s

“You have an agreeably uninteresting existence. Let’s see if we can change that.”

Before I start this review, I just want to say that it took me way longer to read this than planned. That has nothing to do with the quality of the book (which as my rating above already indicates, I quite enjoyed it) and everything to do with life changes. I will no doubt always look back at this book fondly as the one I was reading when my daughter was born… which is quite delightful, but as one goodreads friend s ...more

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Jun 23, 2017 Breinholt Dorrough rated it it was amazing

This book is one wild ride! Told entirely in epistolary form, D.O.D.O. works, shall I say, uniquely - the reader becomes intimately acquainted with all the characters because he learns about said characters from the perspectives of all the other characters in the story.

These are characters who remain memorable. Not once did I have to pause and ask myself who somebody was.

While D.O.D.O. is certainly the "least sciency" of all Stephenson's works, that is exactly the point. It in no way detracts fr ...more

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Nov 08, 2018 Kaora rated it liked it · review of another edition

Overall I quite enjoyed this book.

I have tried Neal Stephenson a few times before with no luck but this one just really appealed to me and I'm glad I picked it up.

I really enjoyed the characters, the premise and how the book was laid out having snippets of documents and diaries to back up what the narrator was saying.

So then why 3 stars?

This is a monster of a book. At 750+ pages it is quite an undertaking. I don't mind that at all if I feel the 750+ pages are necessary. However, some parts of ...more

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About Neal Stephenson

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Neal Stephenson is the author of Reamde, Anathem, and the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), as well as Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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