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A review by maxed
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Nicole Galland, Neal Stephenson
2.0
Neal Stephenson does a Connie Willis impression. From the time travelling them, to the tone of the most of the book, I just keep feeling that I'm reading yet another story about intrepid historians from Oxford. Mind you, this book never gets as convoluted and hilarious as "To Say Nothing of the Dog", or as tense and dramatic as "Doomsday Book" or "Blackout/All Clear". In fact, it reads a lot like one of the weaker Connie Willis book, so I'd argue that while Neal & Nicole succeeded in emulation of Willis style, they failed at producing a good book.
It's hard to pinpoint a problem, but for me, for one thing, the change of tone between chapters was maybe a bit too jarring, going from first-person past-tense exposition to "official document", then to "personal diary" and back again. Another thing which spoiled the book for me was the "compression of time" that sped up as the book progressed: the first chapters are written as day-by-day description, then some months pass, then years. This disconnected me from the book, broke the immersion.
But that all is just something I can point my finger at, but probably not the root cause. Which, I think, has a lot more to do with the absence of elements that I'm used to seeing in Stephenson's books, like technical and historical details (why, yes, I love Stephenson's info-dumps on anything from cryptography to finance) and interesting action (of which this book has very, very little). I also didn't feel anything for the characters.
It's a real disappointment, because Neal Stephenson is one of my favourite authors. But this is the weakest book with his name on it since... Well, since "The Big U", I guess. It doesn't even have the saving grace of thrilling action sequences which salvage mediocre "Reamde" to a point. I can't help but wonder if it's a result of wrongly chosen collaboration, but it's an useless avenue of thought to explore, so I just hope that the next Stephenson will be a come back.
It's hard to pinpoint a problem, but for me, for one thing, the change of tone between chapters was maybe a bit too jarring, going from first-person past-tense exposition to "official document", then to "personal diary" and back again. Another thing which spoiled the book for me was the "compression of time" that sped up as the book progressed: the first chapters are written as day-by-day description, then some months pass, then years. This disconnected me from the book, broke the immersion.
But that all is just something I can point my finger at, but probably not the root cause. Which, I think, has a lot more to do with the absence of elements that I'm used to seeing in Stephenson's books, like technical and historical details (why, yes, I love Stephenson's info-dumps on anything from cryptography to finance) and interesting action (of which this book has very, very little). I also didn't feel anything for the characters.
It's a real disappointment, because Neal Stephenson is one of my favourite authors. But this is the weakest book with his name on it since... Well, since "The Big U", I guess. It doesn't even have the saving grace of thrilling action sequences which salvage mediocre "Reamde" to a point. I can't help but wonder if it's a result of wrongly chosen collaboration, but it's an useless avenue of thought to explore, so I just hope that the next Stephenson will be a come back.