Another review of Brasyl . . . Posted 08 December, 2008

Brasyl by Ian McDonald Gollancz, ISBN 978-0-575-08050-8, A$32.95 Reviewed by Adam Bales Book reviews index

It's 2006 and Marcelina Hoffman is trying to produce a television show about the most important football (soccer, for the uninitiated) match in Brazil's history. She wants to parade the goalkeeper who is widely seen as responsible for the loss in front of the viewers and let them vote on whether to forgive him. To do so, she first has to find the goalkeeper.

It's 1732 and a Jesuit priest, Luis Quinn, is sent into the Amazon in search of one of his brothers who is bringing the church into disrepute. His search takes him into a world that he does not understand and to a battle that he may not be able to win.

It's 2032 and Edson makes the mistake of falling in love with a rebellious quantum hacker. In a world of perpetually surveillance and one where quantum computers are strictly controlled, this puts him in the firing line.

These are the three different stories that Ian McDonald begins his novel, Brasyl, with. The 1732 and 2032 storylines are much stronger than the 2006 are but they all enthral you, despite the occasional annoyance of switching to a different storyline when things are starting to happen.

I've never read one of Ian McDonald's books before and I was impressed enough to want to read some of his other works. To some degree, having just read Anathem, I can't help but see similarities between Neal Stephenson's writing and this work. However, McDonald avoids the overly intricate descriptions of ideas that characterise Stephenson's work. Mostly this is a good thing although some times the name dropping of ideas in Brasyl feels a little pointless when half the people will miss them and the other half will already know the idea and so won't gain much from the brief reference.

More broadly, this book is enjoyable. I know nothing about Brazil so I can't comment in detail but the setting felt realistic and exotic to me. I also liked the sense of shared culture that connected the three threads of the story. The characters weren't particularly original but you came to sympathise with them (though I found Luis a little disturbing by the end of the book). On top of that, the ending does a good job of tying the stories together and I think that this is the strongest section of the book. I felt that an interesting explanation was offered for the events of the story and I thought the conclusion worked well.

Still, the book is slow at some points and the stories seem too disparate in the beginning. Combined with the weakness of the 2006 storyline, this means that I was less impressed with this book than some other reviewers were.

If I had to summarise my opinions in a line, I would say that I think this is a book that's well worth reading but I don't feel that it's one that would blow anyone away.



Reviewed by Adam Bales