From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically
acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist
Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-
future thriller combining history, science, magic,
mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very
foundations of the modern world.
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.
Written with the genius, complexity, and innovation that
characterize all of Neal Stephenson’s work and steeped
with the down-to-earth warmth and humor of Nicole
Galland’s storytelling style, this exciting and vividly
realized work of science fiction will make you believe in
the impossible, and take you to places—and times—beyond
imagining.
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