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The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. cover art

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

By: Neal Stephenson,Nicole Galland
Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard,Shelley Atkinson,Laural Merlington,Joe Barrett,Will Damron,Luke Daniels
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Publisher's Summary

You think you know how the world works? Think again.

From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller that questions the very foundations of the modern world.

England, 1851.
The Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace has opened, celebrating the rise of technology and commerce. With it the power of magic - in decline since the industrial revolution began - is completely snuffed out. The existence of magic begins its gradual devolution into mere myth.

America, 21st century.
Magic has faded from the minds of mankind, until an encounter between Melisande Stokes, linguistics expert at Harvard, and Tristan Lyons, shadowy agent of government, leads to the uncovering of a distant past.
After translating a series of ancient texts, Melisande and Tristan discover the connection between science, magic and time travel, and so the Department of Diachronic Operations - D.O.D.O. - is hastily brought into existence. Its mission: to develop a device that will send their agents back to the past, where they can stop magic from disappearing and alter the course of history.

But when you interfere with the past, there's no telling what you might find in your future....

Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that characterise all of Neal Stephenson's work, and steeped with the down-to-earth warmth and humour of Nicole Galland's storytelling style, this exciting and vividly realised work of science fiction will make you believe in the impossible and take you to places - and times - beyond imagining.

Full cast of narrators includes Robert Fass, James Foster, Tavia Gilbert, Arthur Morey, David Stifel, Charlie Thurston, and Kate Udall.

©2017 Neal Stephenson; Nicole Galland (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic Reviews

Praise for Neal Stephenson:
"Genius." ( Time)
"He makes reading so much fun it feels like a deadly sin." ( The New York Times)
"Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the 21st century." (William Gibson)
"[Stephenson is] the hacker Hemingway.' ( Newsweek)

What listeners say about The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

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    1 out of 5 stars

Slow slow slow. I just couldn't get into it.

Very long and slow. It just seemed to go around in circles and was predictable. Yawn

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3 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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  • B
  • 26-09-2017

Boring

An excellent and very interesting idea and a very creative way to deliver the story (as extracts from personal journals, email, corporate memo etc)... but my oh my is it boring because the story is drawn out over an excruciatingly long time, which is Neal S’s style I guess. If you listed to it at 1.5 speed it is easier to get through.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Best Vocal Performances Yet!

A lot of thought and effort was placed into this publication and its voicing. An interesting story carefully, produced craftily to bring it to life unlike any other audio book I've heard thus far

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Lee
  • 04-07-2017

Brilliant book

Love the performance, accents and characters, great story can't wait for the next book, when???

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!

Awesome story and loved the narration. A great mix of science and witchy stuff! Hoping for many more.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

I wanted a story not a chain of emails.

The story is interesting and for a while engaging. But the plot begins to bog down in a “chain of deals” and then really grinds with endless exposition via time stamped emails.
Stellar performances by the narrators.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Listen to your editor

An embarrassment of ideas, quite amusing, but needs tightening up.
I cannot read recent Stephenson. But I seem to have more patience with the audiobook.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fun and thought provoking

I love Neal Stephenson books - I always feel as though I’m getting better educated while thoroughly enjoying myself. He has a remarkable ability to follow ideas of what science could easily be capable of and where that could lead. This book co-authored by Nicole Galland added even more enjoyment - the personalities of the characters were beautifully developed and I loved the extra focus on interpersonal relationships in particular. The ending left me sad to have finished and wanting to know how the story continued, although I’m not sure that it’s the sort of book that could have a sequel. I also loved the little details that showed where our “strand” fits into the story.
I read some parts as text and others as audio and found the transition smooth, and advantages/disadvantages with both media for this book: because of the log/diary nature of the work, there are “formatting” type details that slow down the flow in audio format (as text, you would skim these to concentrate on the content), but the voice acting really brought the characters’ personalities to life, particularly with the different genders, ages and accents of each character. It was also nice to know the pronunciation of names and words I’m not familiar with such as Gráinne and számológép.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A wonderful experience, questionable performaces

A great long ride of a listen, a lot to take on board, and a lot of relistening back a minute or two when you space out a bit. Some of the bad guys were so one-dimensional that I was definitely expecting a redemptive twist that never came. Flat side characters abound, many just strangely ham-fisted stereotypes given that other seemingly unimportant details are included.

Many grating accents throughout, like terribly bad, and yeah, again, stereotypes. Why a halting, laboured Eastern European accent when a character is writing a narration in their native language?

The story is a lot of fun though, an odd mix of "turn your brain off" and don't overthink it kind of fun, but if you do turn your brain off you'll miss a ton of what's going on, found myself rewinding a lot. The main core of characters are all very likeable, and I'd love to catch up with them in the future given it's all very open for a sequel.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story

Even though I loved the story I struggled with the narration. The different narrators were also confusing.

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