THE RISE AND FALL OF D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland

Too Much YA Influence

I am gearing up to listen to Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (& Cryptonomicon) and so thought it wise to explore some of his other works. I am a great admirer of time travel stories so this one seemed right up my alley.

In the interest of time let’s cut to the chase. D.O.D.O. is a mildly entertaining time travel yarn with some engaging characters. But in the end it suffers from an add mixture of ingenuous plotting and insufferable inconsistencies. I chalk this up to, what I believe to be, an incompatible collaboration. There is a Young Adult thread throughout, accompanied by YA comments concerning the back-sides of the male characters. Going through these sections I felt like I was at the local mall on Saturday. Then there were some adult themed scenes involving a barbarian and a prostitute that would garner a NC-17 rating at the theater. Some of the time travel elements are interesting, and the whole magic element was ingenuous. But then other time travel elements were so contradictory as to cause me to loose my sense of awe. All in all, this is a muddled book at best.

The narration is geared toward teenage girls, it seems to me. Who, knows maybe the YA segment will love it? I hung in there to the end just to say that I did.