"The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O." by Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland (BR)

[Mareike]

This is the discussion thread for the BR of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., which starts on April 25.
Can't wait to hear what everyone thinks!

[CBRetriever]

I've already read it, so I'm interested to see what others think about it

[Mareike]

CBRetriever wrote: "I've already read it, so I'm interested to see what others think about it"

Great! I don't quite remember who said they were interested in this, but I'm hoping for a good discussion.

Preamble and Day 33 (view spoiler)[I am definitely intrigued by this beginning and would read more if it weren't so late. It'll be interesting to see how Mel gets stuck in the past.
And the academic pain in the latter section is so real.... (hide spoiler)]

[Dawn F]

I meant to join but 20 minutes in the writing style annoyed me so I’m not going to spend another 24 hours on this one XD

[Mareike]

Dawn wrote: "I meant to join but 20 minutes in the writing style annoyed me so I’m not going to spend another 24 hours on this one XD"

Ah, that's a shame, Dawn, but perfectly understandable!

[M.L.]

I tried this when it first came out and didn't get too far. :) It felt like (view spoiler)[it would be unnecessarily long and drawn out (hide spoiler)]. It could have just been that it followed Seveneves which I really liked. But I'm interest to see everyone's thoughts.

[Maggie]

I found it humorous enough hat I enjoyed it. Thought Mel's relationship rang true to me, as well as the reasons for her getting stuck in the past.

[Mareike]

Days 57 - 221 (view spoiler)[Oh! I didn't expect a theory about the disappeaeance of magic so quickly!
And...I'm not sure I like Tristan. Is he meant to seem this patronizing? (hide spoiler)]

[Mareike]

Up to the end of part 1 (view spoiler)[I'm still not super invested in these characters, butcI definktely like Mel and Rebecca. I hope there'll be more excerpts from Rebecca's diary.
I've been listening to a podcast about the Salem witch trails called Unobscured this past week, so seeing it come up here was an interesting, if not entirely unexpected coincidence.

I'm not sure what to make of Erszebet yet. She's a bit....much. Which is probably what the authors intended. But her transformation into a "bombshell" (to quote Mel) had me roll my eyes a bit. (hide spoiler)]

[Mareike]

Up to Day 324.

I increasingly have issues with this. (view spoiler)[Mel travels back to the 17th c, is sexually harrassed/almost assaulted and then, after her return when it turns out that hiding the book didn't work, everyone decides she'll have to go back, probably several times, and do it all again? And no one minds? Not even her? Why can't Tristan travel back? Surely, he can learn the same things she did in preparation. Her language skills don't cone to play where Puritan New England is concerned. Maybe I'm being extra annoyed today, but it just feels like they threw some sexual harrassment in there for titillation. (hide spoiler)]

Also, it increasingly feels as if Rebecca (view spoiler)[ is just there to revolve around her husband & his interests. She all but ignores her ancestors számológép, clearly doesn't want anything to do with ir, but as soon as her husband is interested in one, she dashes off to fetch hers? (Again, maybe I'm just extra grumpy today, but increasingly, the way this book treats its female characters is annoying me.) (hide spoiler)]

Edit:

Also having your main character write (view spoiler)["But now the Mohegans were quarreling with the Narrangsetts. I had not educated myself as to where that feud would lead lest I inadvertently say something too prescient for 1640" feels awfully dismissive. (hide spoiler)]

[Mareike]

Through Part II and the first pages of Part III (view spoiler)[This book has not really hooked me so far. I'm mostly still reading because I want to know how Melisande gets stuck in Victorian London.

One thing that bothers me a little is that, so far, not one of the characters has seriously questioned why the US government is so interested in funding this operation. And what they might do with an organization like D.O.D.O. I mean, yes, there's the explanation that "other countries are doing it, too", but I'd kind of expected at least one of the characters (Melisande or Rebecca would be the best candidates, I think) to be a little more suspicious about all of this.... I mean, I find the idea of any government meddling in the past very scary. But maybe some of those objections are still to come.

I also have continue to have some quibbles with the worldbuilding. If witches were active and influential all throughout Earth's history up until the late 19th century, wouldn't history have gone differently? Wouldn't societies work very differently? It feels like the authors decided "we want time travel and witches", but didn't really think through how the presence of witches in the past might change societies. One possible explanation for why the "present" we see in the book is no different from ours might be if there had been a large scale cover up about witches, but so far, I'm not sure there's been lots of evidence about that? Mostly, we're told witches were forgotten after they lost their powers? And....again, if they were that influential beforehand, you'd think there'd be more memory of that.

On top of all of this, I'm still not sure I'm entirely comfortable with how the book depicts sex work. Especially Tristan's "The utter failure of this effort led us to conclude that we need an actual sex worker, or at least somebody capable of passing as one" during the Congressional hearing. That's not because I think that sex workers and sex work shouldn't appear in stories like this one, but more because I feel inherently uneasy with the notion of a top secret government agency using sex workers to further its goals. We don't learn a lot about the present in this novel, but it's supposedly a vaguely contemporary US. And one of the Senators in the hearing points out that sex work is illegal everywhere but in parts of Nevada. So under these circumstances, wouldn't that be a recipe for exploitation? Will D.O.D.O. start offering plea deals to sex workers stuck in the criminal justice system, more or less coercing them to work with them? Also, the only objections we see to this plan (very briefly because most of that is redacted, seems to be based on a Senator's moral objections to sex work, not any of the points that made me uneasy reading that. which, of course frames the story in a certain way. (After all, we as readers are clearly supposed to be siding with Tristan et al during these hearings, not with the Senators.)

At least we got Grainne's perspective on that part of the story and saw at least some of her agency, but I'm still not quite sure how believable I find the shift from "witches are powerful and held in high esteem" to "many of them are sex workers". Again, wouldn't society work very differently if witches are held in such high esteem? Would sex work (even in 1601) really be held in ill repute if many witches were engaging in it? (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Mareike reminded me we'd made a BR for this.

I'm 40% in--about 75% through Part 2:

(view spoiler)[ I already raged about the strong women = witches and prostitutes thing. I mean, come on. Don't belittle the many scrappy women who helped shape the world outside of the bedroom, and don't dare make sex workers a monolith!

But now I've gotten to the part where Erszebet agreed to send Les back without her device and I'm confused now. Is it or is it not critical to her work? It went from important to maguffin and I dislike that. Also, Les hasn't even had the basic training in language, dress, fighting, comportment...I mean come on. Be consistent, authors! (hide spoiler)]

[Mareike]

Oh man. Yeah. That bugged me, too. (view spoiler)[It felt a bit too much like "Of course the manly man doesn't need all this training a woman would"..... (hide spoiler)]

I really wonder what the writing process for this was like.