The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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. :)

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