Nicole Galland (1)Critiques

Could have been better about 200 pages shorter.

Zeitreise at it's best!
Wenn es jemals eine Fortsetzung geben sollte, werde ich die auf jeden Fall auch lesen!

DNFing this not because it's bad but because I find it weirdly uncompelling despite hitting a lot of my favorite tropes and basically being a Connie Willis book. I have a lot of other shit to read rn; SPX 2018 just happened!

This book is completely crazy. I put it on my library hold list because I loved the cover and I had faith that Stephenson would not write an awful book but I really had no idea at all what I was getting into.

It's about science, magic, time travel, bureaucracy, a little bit of romance and history all mixed together in a fast paced novel told via historical documents, diary entries, email, message board posts etc.

It's weird but it's fun.

Nothing super original but interesting combinations of tropes.

see-through fabric of reality: best to keep it covered

I liked it, but didn't love it. First off, the elephant in the room, the main characters from book 1 were barely here, and some of them were done wrong. For example, how dare you treat Frank that way? It was a good hook though, but didn't pay off in this book. Maybe book 3 but who knows. Also, Tristan is barely here, and I had less of a problem with that because I found him to be a little too straitlaced and uptight. We did get a few Mel POVs but otherwise we spent time with a new character, Robin, who was not bad, but was written as an excuse so that the author could seriously geek out about her Shakespearean knowledge. Which, if you got it, flaunt it. The story was interesting, but somehow felt smaller in scale than book 1. We barely got hints of what the other secret organizations around the world were up to, or what the other ramifications of these events were around the world. There could have been more explored here. I will still probably read book 3 if it is published.½

4.5 stars. Please please please let there be a sequel.

I wrote a glowing recommendation of this book somewhere. Just, five stars. Fantastic book. It's a hard task to take 3 main characters who are all unlikable but still keep a reader invested in the story. In all 3 cases their unlikability is entirely understandable - they have views, opinions, and actions that are annoying now but make total sense for the setting, or else they're just being stubborn and refusing to understand the other person (for instance, Isabel can come off annoying because she's refusing to do anything to try to fit into the Welsh kingdom she is now the queen of; but on the other hand, "Noble" comes off obnoxious because he's making absolutely no effort to make his new wife and queen comfortable in this new setting).

Great book, 5 stars, glowing recommendation, no complaints.

Godiva by Nicole Gallant is a novel of historical fiction that the author based on the legend of Lady Godiva and her naked ride through the village of Coventry. I really enjoyed this story and admire how the author was able to place prominent people of the day in such a way that the drama that played out was realistic and had purpose.

Although historians now believe that this ride never took place, it is firmly planted in our minds. In this story, the author depicts Godiva, Countess of Wessex as a powerful, politically astute woman who has received the displeasure of King Edward for her meddling ways in the affairs of men. He is not strong on his throne and in an effort to gain some control of Godiva and her husband, Leofric, he demands they turn the village and lands of Coventry over to him, when they refuse, he then demands that Coventry pays a severe tax and when they again refuse, he, wanting to humiliate both Godiva and her husband, demands that she rides through the town naked. When she successfully does so, Edward has one more trick up his sleeve, and tries to have Godiva excommunicated.

Although the author freely admits that much of this book was taken from her imagination, she certainly breathes live into the legend by making Godiva a believable person who is independent yet secure in her love of Leofric. She and her husband are opposing the payment of an unjust tax imposed by an insecure king who had a personal vendetta against this couple. I was captivated by the story and will certainly be on the lookout for more historical fiction by this author.

The multiverse concept has been really popular lately, from books like The Long Earth and The Kaiju Preservation Society to blockbuster Marvel movies, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. This book plays with the idea of the multiverse, but presents it at first as time travel. The main government organization, D.O.D.O, is trying to bring magic back into the world after its departure in the mid 19th century. But of course, magic is really just physics that haven't been explored widely in the modern world. So this government organization figures out a way to perform magic in the modern world, but mostly use it as a way to send people backwards in time, in order to try to alter the past slightly to give them an advantage in the future. However, its not just one timeline they have to affect, its multiple "strands" of similar worlds. If you can affect change in multiple similar threads of time, than you're more likely to get the outcome you are looking for. This was an interesting concept, and I liked the way it all played out.

This book is also funny. Like a lot of other Stephenson books, there are jokes, and this one is filled with puns and funny acronyms. I feel like this book could have been a little more subtle with the jokes, but they were still funny, nonetheless. The characters were probably the weakest part of this book. Tristan is your typical military go-getter, with not much personality other than rah-rah-go-military. Melisande has slightly more personality but is still kind just there. Erzsebet is interesting, somewhat tragic, but she is written as largely one note, which is obstinate. Some of the other side characters could be interesting, but they are introduced towards the end, so we don't get enough time with them.

Overall, I liked this concept and the story, but I feel like the magic use could have been a little more diverse(hopefully in book 2), and the characters could have been written with more depth.

The first part of the book moves along nicely, but then it bogs down in the middle due to use of extremely long letters which take away from the story. A fan of Stephenson's writing this one moves to the bottom of the list; at least for me!

This book was a lot of fun! I'm a longtime Stephenson fan and think co-author Galland has lightened his tone a bit and made the story more accessible. My one complaint (okay, one of sort of two) is that this book is a lot longer than it needs to be. I'd have enjoyed it more at half the length, especially since it ends with a cliffhanger anyway. Or at least a lead-in to a sequel.

I might not have picked this one up if I had realized it was an alternate-universe and/or time travel story. I've been disgruntled with those in general because (1) you can kind of change anything you want to make the story work out, and (2) changes in the timeline eventually mean that the world the characters in are not my world, and finally (3) I lose track of the sequence of events. However, I was quite pleased by the way they circumvented #2 by with the Pentagon angle: no, this really IS a spoiler starting out in a world that is NOT our world and the changes move it closer to our world .

After reading several reviews of this book I’m convinced I can make a useful contribution. Even allowing for ‘suspension of disbelief’, in all my many years of reading sci-fi/fantasy I can’t remember ever coming across time traveling as being associated with magic—longevity, yes—but not time travel. And the rules are obviously tinkered to aid the story line: you can’t send yourself in either direction, so someone else has to do it for you….and there are more such ad hoc rules to the game to further the plot.

The book contains 5 parts:

Part 1. Magic used to be real and disappeared over time; the question is how/why? This Part solves that riddle by blaming science, in general, and photography in particular. The authors’ logic almost made sense—until they absolutely blamed photography. Of all the causes for the disappearance of magic, what has taking pictures got to do with anything? Is it somehow connected to the fear of having your soul captured on paper? Anyway, this Part is mediocre, but not bad.

Part 2. Now they have to find a way to construct an environment that will block out the effects of science and allow magic to function again, inside this restricted zone. Now we’re talking heavy science: quantum theory, super magnets, near absolute zero temperatures, etc. And they do it…all by themselves. And this is where the authors assume that we enjoy watching really powerful bureaucrats strut their stuff and demonstrate stupidity in action. I’ve been in the military and I accept the premise that there are stupid people there—but not in charge! When they’re killed off in this story, not only I, but all other characters seem to accept the situation with a savoir faire that verges on insouciance. I also was not entertained by the authors’ assumption that bureaucrats love catchy acronyms. There are plenty of words available for nicknaming the people traveling from one source time to another without making up confusingly un-cute acronyms. I tried ignoring them, but found that the authors were determined to force the issue on almost “every” page.

Meanwhile, the only exploit that they conceive of attempting for proof of concept is to go back in time, steal a book and bury it to be found several hundred years later in someone’s backyard in order to make enough money—from the sale of a literary artifact—to self-finance their projects.

In sum, this Part reads like the old TV series, “Get Smart”, “McHale’s Navy” and “Hogan’s Heroes”, with slapstick, smart aleck, pseudo erudite politicians and generals dictating who does what, when and how in order to maintain some statutory concept of government/military(?) “discipline”. I almost gave up the book here. And, with all this cumbersome (and silly) give-and-take as they try to create an organization to employ magic, all they can think and do with magic centers around time travel.

Part 3. We continue with the construction, and improvement, of the “magic” environment—scientifically constructed to be free of the influences of science—we see the “time police” being formed. This perked my interest some. Not so much dwelling on what these stereotypes do here, so much as realizing that, in all the really good sci-fi “time patrol” stories, the construction/formation of the time police is never described [check out Andre Norton’s various episodics, like the “Russ Murdock/Time Traders” series; or Fritz Leiber's truly outstanding "Change War" saga ].

I can see this book being made into a Netflix sit-com.

Part 4. We see the organization falling into place; and we watch the anti-hero villains growing their plans, and manipulating their dupes, in preparation for a) making their own fortunes; b) stopping science in its track to maintain magic “in the air”.

We might note here, that references are scattered throughout the book concerning other countries experimenting with this magical time travelling…but we never actually encounter them. Which makes me wonder if they really exist—or if the authors just conveniently ignored them in order to set up the current list of bad guys, who will surely return in further books.

Part 5. Here we see all the action come to fruition: all the bad guys masterfully execute their plans and appear to succeed enough to apparently destroy D.O.D.O. ----but don’t. And yet, they’re not caught. In fact, the only people left standing are the bad guys, and the small coterie of the original D.O.D.O. personnel who vow to stop the bad guys “whenever” they appear, and without the help of the government or its funds.

In summation, there are some exciting scenes that are well worth the reading—but only a few. My guess is that, if you’re under 20 you’ll really like this book. But if you’re over 50, you will easily find it unsatisfying. It’s all too silly for me.½

Kind of fun. But at the end of the day, a bit overdrawn.

Excellent book! I love the combination of sci-fi and magic...time travel and witches! A well-written page turner.

I'll give it 3.5 stars.

I'm not sure what to think about this book. I liked it, but it seemed to me that the middle part of the book was a bit bloated, and I started losing interest, causing me to lose track of some of the characters. Much of the story was made up of bits from memos talking about what happened, and a whole lot of acronyms throughout. Perhaps this was just to be funny, or to give it a governmental flavor.

The story was pretty complicated, but also somewhat novel. I think time travel can get pretty complicated anyway, but this one was a bit different. The main twist was that you could not take anything except your body when you did a time jump; this is somewhat inconvenient, as it includes clothes, so you land naked. The other twist borrows from Quantum physics, and there are multiple "strands", so something you do in the past may not affect your present (future?), and you often need to repeat backward jumps until you get the result you want. Also, if you make a major change to the past, you may cause catastrophic result (diachronic shear), since time seems to want some sort of order, and only allows minor changes.

Perhaps my problem was the audiobook version, which made it a bit harder to follow the jumping around in time. It was well done, but it's hard to keep things straight.

West Pointers, witches, Secret Service, DNI, black budget funding, linguists, weapons, international bankers, magic, quantum physicists, dodos, time travel, protocols, Cambridge MA, decontamination regimes, out of touch bosses, system admins, container ships, coffee houses, William Shakespeare, bureaucrats, generals, cryogenics, The Pentagon, code words, The Crystal Palace, China, encrypted messages, sexual tension, the Internet, swords, London, Schrödinger's cat, costumes, dodos, photography, four degrees Kelvin, after action reports, security cameras, crusaders, strike through text, archives, beer, conspiracy theories, rivalries, graffiti, sainthood, CAD/CAM, religions, emperors, mind control, art auctions, tattoos, motorcycles, prostitutes, HR, Walmart, nudes, the dark net, Vikings, superconductors, SUVs, little old ladies, text messages, epic poems, miracles, cats, Harvard, dodos, lidocaine, Constantinople, …..what could possibly go wrong? Regardless how high the rise, there must be a fall in there somewhere. Strap in for a wild ride. Fortunately it's fiction. Not clear why they left out aliens and UFOs.

There's tons of word play, the title of the book starts it off. D.O.D.O. It immediately sounds like the ignominious extinct bird but slowly we learn it's an abbreviation for Department of Diachronic Operations, only after contemplating numerous conceivable alternatives. Much of the wordplay is military sendup, like saying "conduct operations" rather than "get things done". A unit's name makes some sense until you realize the abbreviation has another meaning like DOSECOPS or DORC. There is no central narrator. The entire storyline, all 770+ pages of it, is laid out from alternating points of view, each with their own typographical style, font, shading, marginalia, etc. We know who the author is just by seeing the appearance of the page. The author is never secret, they're always identified explicitly and the sections are often time stamped. Since they may exist in a different time period we're instantly alerted a shift is happening. Many of these sections are set off by an image of a dodo. After a while these dodos seem to be just adding space to a long book without telling us anything. I could have done without them. They are always a depiction rather than a picture which is probably appropriate for an extinct species

One surprising feature is the adoption of a "normal" time traveler motif that we've seen or heard of in other books or movies. Like time travelers we've seen before these arrive somewhat disoriented, are nude, have to find clothes, often involving stealing, they have no cash, they can take nothing with them, and sometimes they need to defend themselves. What is somewhat unusual is here they are sometimes prepared. Since they usually know where they are going they have had language training, have been taught behavior in a period appropriate manner and even taught to use the weapons that are common where they are going. What is more novel is they put together room maps and clothing drops since they are repeatedly sent to the same place and time. They repeat their actions in multiple "strands" to increase the likelihood that what they do will in some sense, stick. And that's the whole point. They want to go back in time to minimally change the course of history. They have to keep it small since any major change causes disastrous shears which help no one.

Spoiler alert - even though this book is full of imagination the ending has…..none. It's lame and predictable. Armageddon is avoided. Boy gets girl. The patient girl is rewarded by getting what she's always wanted. The danger is still out there. Somebody's got to do something. They decide to get the old team back together. Who knew……everybody. Sheesh.

I won this in the Early Reader program way back in 2013, but it never arrived. I was very disappointed, because I loved the idea of the book. When It showed up as a sale eBook recently I paid the $1.99 and jumped it. It was an OK book, but not the in depth character exploration I was expecting. I generally like bold women in history and historical fiction, but this Godiva didn't grab me. There was enough plot to keep me reading, but the characters felt a bit on the stereotyped side.

I absolutely love it when magic becomes science and this book did it so well. The second half of the book however did not do it for me, it felt like it was dragging on a bit, as if it was pre-emptively being written for a TV series adaptation. I think owuld enjoy the second half of the book much more as a TV series.

Didn't enjoy this one, and I think the editor might be to blame. Telling the story through after-action reports is a nice idea, but the execution poor - nobody would write their after-action report so prosaically, and the attempt to give different characters a distinctive written "voice" felt forced, especially Robin. The other real irritation was the constant reminder of what characters were trying to achieve - every seven or eight pages, the author would make sure you're still following along, which - yes thanks, I was, but also now grinding my teeth. Many of the plot devices felt seriously forced - the Fuggers' "influence"(?) as the reason why characters are somehow unable to interfere with one another in the present day, but fine to be at each others' throats in other eras (wouldn't an investor be much more concerned about the past changing from under their feet?). I think the missions chosen were also a bit odd - if Leonardo is a problem, for example, why not just go and kill him - with the spell that we learn (right at the end) wipes someone from all strands - before he came up with whatever invention; why go after his ancestors? Why wasn't that spell ever used on Robin? Meanwhile, why does Tristan just turn up to the okay at the end, how, and without prior contact with W.S.?

A fun read for my fiftieth and last book of 2018!

Compelling story at the time of the height of the Mongolian invasion of Europe, with loads of action and wonderful period detail. Told from multiple points of view; within the Mongol court, Christian warrior monks and cardinals trapped in Rome trying to elect the next Pope. Brilliantly read by Luke Daniels.

Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, but this was very disappointing. While the premise was interesting enough for a summer read, the characters felt flat and the whole thing was predictable and anticlimactic. I enjoy Stephenson for the denser science and philosophy he builds stories around, paired with over-the-top action. But this felt like Hollywood screenwriters scribbled a plot down on a napkin with the increasingly common unexplanation of quantum-mechanics-multiple-dimensions-don't-worry-you've-heard-this-all-before. And even then the action was pretty boring, with a few small exceptions. Any historical or technical details felt shoehorned in to give it a lazy "Stephenson flair," without really contributing to the plot in any intricate way.

Also, I'm not one to often comment on gender issues, but as other reviewers have noted the female characters are embarrassingly stereotyped with little individual agency if they aren't evil. Sometimes I actually cringed, and I'm a pretty forgiving reader when it comes to that stuff. I was surprised by this, because Stephenson has had some pretty strong women in previous novels, though internal character development generally comes second to his plot. I'd assumed a woman cowriter would only improve things. Bizarre.

It's a page turner, but I sincerely hope this writing duo does not reunite for a sequel. As far as my reading tastes go, I don't think their styles mesh well.

To be fair, Reamde was also pretty flash-bang without as much substance, so maybe Neal is just getting lazy? But then there's Seveneves, which was great. This leads me to hope that it was mostly Galland's hand at play here. It doesn't inspire me to look at her work, but I do look forward to Stephenson's next solo effort.

Listened to this one on audio with a whole bunch of narrators. Not quite a full-cast performance, but a bunch of different people reading different parts. This was a fun read. Hard science fiction with Stephenson's obsession with life in ancient times. In this one, a mysterious black ops government type hires a linguist to translate many different documents throughout time to uncover what happened to magic in the world and why it disappeared in the mid-1800s. Then thru the "magic" of scifi macguffins, they uncover time-travel with the use of quantum mechanics and the one remaining true witch left in the world. They set about going back in time to bring magic back. It sounds contrived and hokey, and sure it is, but I felt it worked really well and the authors came up with some interesting ideas about the how and why and where of time travel might work. It's a fun read, where they switch back in forth between narrators and different writing styles/methods, from found journals, to chat logs, to interviews. I suspect that Galland did most of the writing, as she has apparently written a sequel (Master of the Revels: A Return to Neal Stephenson's D.O.D.O) that I'll have to look out for.