A review by avalinahsbooks
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Nicole Galland, Neal Stephenson

4.0

How I read this: borrowed through Scribd free trial

This book is:
- imaginative and convoluted, as is usual when Neal Stephenson is involved
- whimsical and quirky, but smart
- mostly about puns and acronyms
- very well fleshed out
- entiiiiiiiiiiiirely too long and too detailed

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O had the wildest premise which I don't want to summarize cause I'll bet other reviewers will have done it already. So I'll just imagine you've already read those reviews and know what I'm talking about. But basically, I'm not sure I've ever read a book where magic and science was sort of part of the same thing in this kind of way! D.O.D.O takes the idea of historical witches and makes it fit into the idea of the scientific world so neatly and nicely. I also love it how they dealt with the whole witch phenomenon on the cultural side too - brooms are fancy multiverse calculators, attitude is just something that comes with the job. And the whole

"you may be a witch if you're different, it's just that magic has gone extinct"

bit is also nice, because it makes you feel that you belong if you're unusual, just on the off chance this book's premise is.. true.

But... The book is also ridiculously long and way too detailed. It could have been shortened. And I'm not quite sure about the ending?

This is one of those books where it seems it should have a book 2, but nothing points to the fact that it will..? So I don't know. The ending felt like it was cut short. Which is ridiculous, when you remember that just a few sentences ago I said that the book was too long!

I definitely liked reading it, but it was also a bit of a chore at times. I feel like maybe it's best to read The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. alongside other books, cause you're going to be laboring at it for A. LONG. TIME. And if you're one of those people who can only read one book at a time, you may become a little bit overencumbered by this story (I say this even though I'm a fan of chunky books myself.) So it really depends on your reading habits whether you'll enjoy it I think.

Meanwhile I still can't give it less than 4 stars because while it was a little bit of a chore, it was still a good story, and it was definitely amusing and got me involved.

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