Our Discussion of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson

When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidently meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the rather large sum of money.

Tristan needs Mel to translate some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. Magic stopped working altogether in 1851, at the time of the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace—the world’s fair celebrating the rise of industrial technology and commerce. Something about the modern world "jams" the "frequencies" used by magic, and it’s up to Tristan to find out why.

And so the Department of Diachronic Operations—D.O.D.O. —gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive . . . and meddle with a little history at the same time. But while Tristan and his expanding operation master the science and build the technology, they overlook the mercurial—and treacherous—nature of the human heart. -Goodreads

One of our members noted that her family is distantly related to Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen! Below are a sampling of our comments:

• I enjoyed the changing perspectives very much.
• The internal memos portion in the middle dragged a bit, but it was very realistic and fittingly stupid i.e. the acronym police.
• Also stupid, the general wanted witches to perform mind control and then they got into the ODEC where the witches could perform mind control on them…
• Each character's voice was very distinct.
• The audio version was great.
• Was this an alternate world? The Trapezoid – is that an actual name for the Pentagon?
• The book was very humorous throughout … St. Tristan, the Viking raid on Walmart and the resulting Google search, hair gel, tattoos, and fillings getting left behind, the strategic PowerPoint accidentally emailed to Rebecca, and much more.
• The quantum physics and the magic were well done (much better than Dr. Who), when those elements could have been absurd.
• The idea of the shear was good because it stopped drastic moves to rewrite history, as did the various strands of time that made people go back multiple times to accomplish their goals.
• Many books just skip over the need to know different languages, but here they hired a linguist and focused on details like how to put on old-time clothes.
• This story needed some warlocks.

Please add any additional thoughts or comments you may have about The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. We gave this title the codes TTL, MIL, BAC, ALT, LEL, MAG, & HOME with an average rating of 4.7.