Review: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Meh. Not one of Stephenson's best.

When Neal is on fire, he tells 13 different side stories about 47 different characters, and then ties them all together into a single coherent story. When he isn't, he does the former without the latter. This is that.

There's an interesting short story here about Mellisendre meeting Tristan, and discovering how to bring witchcraft back through technology. It has essentially nothing to do with the other interesting story about time travel back to colonial America to make money. Or the other interesting story about time travel back to Shakespearian London to prevent a business deal. Or the bit in the middle where the authors attempt to convey the mind-numbing boredom of government bureaucracy by telling their story through government memos (boredom successfully conveyed, I'm afraid.) Or the crazy chaos at the end of the book, that just stops making any sense at all. The levels of implausibility in the plot you could overlook if they _were_ short stories, but if you're going to drag me through 750 pages about it, it kind of needs to hang together a bit.

Thing is, even a disorganized Stephenson novel that doesn't manage the tie-together usually entertains me more than this one did. Because the various threads are usually marvelously well-written, so I enjoy the journey even if it is just doing donuts in the parking lot. This time he and/or Galland (his co-author) tried to tell large chunks of the story in the form of journals (as well as the aforementioned disastrously uninteresting government memos) and they come across as clumsy and amateurish - totally appropriate, given the characters who are supposed to have written them, but still not a lot of fun to read.

It's not an _awful_ book, but it's not even in the top half of Stephenson's best. (I haven't read any of Galland's solo work, so I can't comment there.)

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