The rise and fall of dodo

When magic meets science

released 15 June 768 pages | Hardback/ebook

Authors neal stephenson, nicole Gallano

Publisher The Borough Press

it’s 1851 and witchcraft is about to die out, unable to endure in a technological world. But one sorceress will keep the flame alive and carry it forward to the 21st century, from where she will, with the aid of modern-age physics, send the travellers of the Department Of Diachronic Operations (DODO) back in time.

Pretty soon, with the injection of large amounts of covert ops cash from the US government, DODO grows to be an organisation bringing historical figures forward. Which is when the trouble really starts, as academic Melisande Stokes finds herself unwillingly deposited in Victorian England.

If the set-up to this co-written book sounds huge fun, that certainly carries through to the book itself. We’re not dealing here with the Neal Stephenson of Anathem, a science fiction novelist who explores big philosophical ideas and dares you to go along with him, so much as the airport technothriller writer of Reamde.

The early chapters move at a crisp pace as we see how Stokes meets dashing military intelligence man Tristan Lyons, and follow the duo’s early adventures in the past. As the book progresses, though, the tone changes. To show the different perspectives of a growing cast of characters, the story is increasingly told via such devices as email exchanges and journal entries. Sometimes this works, but too often it merely serves to slow the story down. The book also starts to read progressively more and more like the set-up for a series rather than a self-contained volume.

More positively, this is a book of memorable characters – the haughty Hungarian witch Erszebet Karpathy is a particular delight – and any novel that draws on Stephenson’s ideas is never going to be a total waste. But if there’s a next time for these characters, tighter editing is in order. Jonathan Wright