The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
The D.O.D.O. series, Book 1
Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
William Morrow
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Expert linguist Melisande Stokes never expected to find herself stranded in 1851 London, more than a century before she was born, but that's what happens when one signs on with a classified government project like D.O.D.O. In her defense, she had no idea about the true scope of the job when she met Tristan Lyons, who recruited her from the university where she'd been working as a lecturer. All she knew was that they needed someone versed in ancient languages and historical cultures, and that they offered a better wage, more job security, and (a definite plus) actual acknowledgement of her education and contributions, all things notably lacking under her old boss Professor Blevins. (The fact that Tristan was very easy on the eyes, in addition to taking her seriously as a scholar and a person, also admittedly factored into her decision.) It was only later that she learned the truth: the Department of Diachronic Operations was dedicated to resurrecting the lost art of magic, which went extinct somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century, but which would be an immeasurably powerful asset to national security and special operations if it could be revived... particularly if it was true that witches used time travel to alter reality. More amazingly, the reason Lyons and others consider this a feasible goal is that they have reason to believe other governments are already doing the same thing. And that was before Mel met her very first real live witch: Erzebet Karpathy, who insists Mel herself recruited her to the D.O.D.O. cause when she was a young woman - in 1851 London, just as magic was dying around the world.
When Lyons and his team, assisted by the retired physics professor Frank Oda and his wife Rebecca, succeed in their first-ever modern magical experiments, it triggers a whirlwind of activity across various Strands of the space-time continuum, with Mel herself traveling to times and places she only ever read about in historic records, pulled into a secret network of witches. But neither magic nor time travel are simple things to control, despite what the military seems to think, and the more they meddle, the more they risk a catastrophe that could utterly rewrite the world as they know it.
REVIEW: I obtained this free-to-me copy as it was on its way to the trash bin due to a partially broken binding, on recommendation that it was a good read. This is part of why it lingered so long on my Currently Reading list; part way through this thick volume, I had to pause to attempt repairs lest I cause further damage. The other part of why it lingered so long is what ultimately brought it down a notch in the ratings. For such a large book - north of 700 pages in hardcover - it felt too long for the story it contained.
The book kicks off on a strong note with Melisande Stokes stranded in Victorian London, relating how her dire circumstances came to pass in a memoir peppered with modern vernacular (often crossed out, to be replaced with more period-appropriate allusion and terminology) and humor, and along the way often switches to other formats and points of view: interoffice D.O.D.O. memos from staff members and superiors, diary entries, excerpts from incident reports and interviews, and so forth, filling in more details about the characters, organization, magic and time travel in general, and the missions. After the initial burst of entrepreneurial excitement leading to the proof of concept, however, the story bogs down and meanders about as D.O.D.O. becomes increasingly burdened by bureaucracy and people who generally don't really understand what they're doing but are determined they know better than anyone how to do it anyway. Being rooted in the military, it's a very male-dominated power structure (including the recruitment of Professor Blevins, the condescending ex-boss of Mel who shamelessly ripped off her translations of obscure texts and passed them off as his own while stifling her career) bent on manipulating a heavily matriarchal power. This sets up a weird, vaguely uncomfortable vibe that persists through much of the book and isn't really addressed by either author in any meaningful manner. Things inevitably get out of hand when pig-headed men don't listen to the warnings of the women who have been working with magic - itself rooted in an innate understanding of the quantum entanglements of multiple realities, pasts and presents and futures, which are ultimately the source of a witch's magic - all their lives... and when one particularly cunning and crafty historical witch realizes she can turn the tables on D.O.D.O. and outmaneuver them to create a future better suited to her own needs rather than theirs. All of this is overburdened with extraneous characters and pointless, vaguely humorous (or attempting to be humorous) tangents, and enough annoyingly "clever" acronyms to make me give my keyboard the side-eye even as I type this review. I also had a sense that the two writers had different visions for what this book was supposed to be about, the overall vibe and direction, and they never quite met in the middle, pulling one way and then another in a weird tug-of-war with no real winner. The ending sets up the next book in the series but left me vaguely unsatisfied; for all that it overexplained some parts of itself, there were other pivotal things that it seemed bound and determined to underexplain.
That's not to say there were no good points. I generally enjoyed Melisande Stokes and a few other characters (even if I never quite bought the chemistry with Tristan, for all that everyone insisted it was there), though others felt more like caricatures and still more just vague sketches on the page. There were some interesting ideas explored and some decently immersive time travel moments. It also generally avoided the old "everyone from before the twentieth century was a mindless superstitious buffoon, easily manipulated by sophisticated modern minds" stereotype and other ways history can be flattened or diminished. Now and again the humor worked for me. But those moments were inevitably weighed down by the other baggage, and the overall, dragging length of the book turned the reading experience into a slog by the end.
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