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A review by pixelthis
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Nicole Galland, Neal Stephenson
2.0
When I read the book jacket for this story, I wasn't impressed. It sounded hokey and like a forced mashup of things that won't really go well together (like peanut butter, mayonnaise, and coffee grounds)... but I found myself in B&N with a gift card, this book was on sale and if nothing else I've always enjoyed the characters in Stephenson's novels (Hiro Protagonist, YT, Nell, Dinah & Ivy, et al) so I went ahead and bought it.
The basic plot boils down to the fact that magic waned as technology became prevalent and finally vanished completely in the mid 1800's. A super-secret government program (obviously put together but someone who knows nothing about such things) is created to investigate this and figure out how to bring magic back (or something). Time travel ensues, lots and lots of really stupid things happen, and the story ends.
The characters were so stereotypical they could have come from central casting... there was really nothing memorable about most of them. We have the gung-ho young soldier, the plucky young (cute) historian, the befuddled professor who invents the "thing", the femme fatale, the blow-hard general, the self-important bureaucrat, the HR manager, the hooker with a heart of gold, the hipster barista, etc.
And oh my god... the acronyms. Someone, somewhere, decided that because this was a "government" program (funded by the equivalent of an employee bake sale) there had to be acronyms and acronyms of acronyms and then memos and senatorial budget hearing transcripts. Maybe it was meant to be satirical, but it was mostly annoying and boring.
I wish I had a time machine so that I could go back and not buy this book.
The basic plot boils down to the fact that magic waned as technology became prevalent and finally vanished completely in the mid 1800's. A super-secret government program (obviously put together but someone who knows nothing about such things) is created to investigate this and figure out how to bring magic back (or something). Time travel ensues, lots and lots of really stupid things happen, and the story ends.
The characters were so stereotypical they could have come from central casting... there was really nothing memorable about most of them. We have the gung-ho young soldier, the plucky young (cute) historian, the befuddled professor who invents the "thing", the femme fatale, the blow-hard general, the self-important bureaucrat, the HR manager, the hooker with a heart of gold, the hipster barista, etc.
And oh my god... the acronyms. Someone, somewhere, decided that because this was a "government" program (funded by the equivalent of an employee bake sale) there had to be acronyms and acronyms of acronyms and then memos and senatorial budget hearing transcripts. Maybe it was meant to be satirical, but it was mostly annoying and boring.
I wish I had a time machine so that I could go back and not buy this book.