Brasyl
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Be seduced, amazed, and shocked by one of the world's greatest and strangest nations. Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling.
Three characters, three time periods, three stories that bind together.
Sao Paulo 2031: Edson is a self-made talent impresario one step up from the slums. A chance encounter draws him into the dangerous world of illegal quantum computing, but where can you run in a total surveillance society where every move, face, and centavo is constantly tracked?
Rio 2006: Marcelina is an ambitious Rio TV producer looking for that big reality TV hit to make her name. When her hot idea sets her on the track of a disgraced World Cup soccer goalkeeper, she becomes enmeshed in an ancient conspiracy that threatens not just her life, but her very soul.
The Amazon 1732: Father Luis is a Jesuit missionary sent into the maelstrom of 18th-century Brazil to locate and punish a rogue priest who has strayed beyond the articles of his faith and set up a vast empire in the hinterland. In the company of a French geographer and spy, what he finds in the backwaters of the Amazon tries both his faith and the nature of reality itself to the breaking point.
Three characters, three stories, three Brazils, linked across time, space, and reality in a hugely ambitious story that will challenge the way you think about everything.
Praise for Brasyl
"McDonald's outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America's largest country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all… Chaotic, heartbreaking and joyous [a] must-read…" —Publishers Weekly
"BRASYL is classic McDonald: a deep thinking, high-paced adventure story, exploring the quantum universe, combining sassy, believable characters with a captivating delight in language and storytelling. McDonald inhabits the Brazil – or rather, the Brazils – of this world and sweeps you along as no other writer in the field could manage." —The Guardian
"A beautiful story, one that cries out to be read again and again. McDonald's light is still shining brightly, and considering the consistent quality of his titles, we say long may it burn." —SciFi Now
"Ian McDonald's BRASYL, with its three storylines, is as close to perfect as any novel in recent memory. It works because of great characterization, but also because McDonald envisions Brazil as a dynamic, living place that is part postmodern trash pile, part trashy reality-TV-driven ethical abyss… and yet also somehow spiritual… McDonald's novel is always in motion. This movement extends through time and alternate realities in ways both wonderful and wise, as the three storylines interlock for a satisfying and often stunning conclusion. McDonald has found new myths for old places; in doing so, he has cemented his reputation as an amazing storyteller." —Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author McDonald's outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America's largest country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all. McDonald sets up three separate characters in different eras a cynical contemporary reality-TV producer, a near-future bisexual entrepreneur and a tormented 18th-century Jesuit agent. He then slams them together with the revelation that their worlds are strands of an immense quantum multiverse, and each of them is threatened by the Order, a vast conspiracy devoted to maintaining the status quo until the end of time. As McDonald weaves together the separate narrative threads, each character must choose between isolation or cooperation, and also between accepting things as they are or taking desperate action to make changes possible. River of Gods (2004), set in near-future India, established McDonald as a leading writer of intelligent, multicultural SF, and here he captures Latin America's mingled despair and hope. Chaotic, heartbreaking and joyous, this must-read teeters on the edge of melodrama, but somehow keeps its precarious balance.
Customer Reviews
Three Convergent Tales of Brazil
“Brasyl” is one of Ian McDonald’s novels where the place is as important to the work as any of the characters. However, there are really three Brazils, or maybe an infinite number of Brazils. It’s difficult to explain…
The story itself is set in three different time periods, and with three casts of characters that rarely overlap. First, we have the Brazil of the past, specifically 1732-33. In the jungles of the Amazon, Father Luis Quinn, a Jesuit Priest, has come to admonish a member of his order who has went too far. Then there is the Brazil of 2006, where Marcelina Hoffman seeks fame and fortune as a producer in the reality TV business. Then there is the Brazil of the future, 2032-33, where Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas hustles under the nearly all-seeing eyes of the surveillance state.
As one reads each of these stories, one begins to see that there are things that are not quite right in these tales. Then the various characters begin to understand that there is much more hiding behind the curtains of reality than they had imagined. The three stories eventually converge, as the characters choose sides in a war that will determine the future .