Brasyl - Ian McDonald

Mistah Kurtz, he quantum entangled

I loved this book, for so many reasons!

First off, I'm a native Irish speaker, from Galway, so when Quinn launched into the commentary of how language shapes mind, I was in complete sympathy.

Next, it seems like a bunch of authors (like this one) are jumping on the "multiverse" theme these days. Good for them. It's a fun thing to explore, and I enjoy what's coming out of it. Having earned a degree in physics, and having heard about the devil creating the interface, well, I just love the Q-blade.

Beyond that, well, I've been to Rio, love the city, and the chase scenes play out very true to life. I'm sure the author does Sao Paulo equally well.

Reading this book, and "Anathem", I am filled with hope that we'll have languages strong enough to describe (flip side: solve) NP-hard problems within the next 20 years. How *that* will change us!

What a great world we live in. What a great book.

Brasyl. Sassy, imaginative, thought-provoking. SF at its best.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DMWT3JAKIWSV An imaginative and well thought through book with attitude and street grit.
Brain teasingly engaging as we journey through multiple quantum realities in this fast-paced and colourful SF novel.

Wanted to like it... but couldn't :(

tried to read it twice but had to put it down twice. Would have given it 3 stars if I could have finished it. Would have given it 1 star if it didn't interest me at all.

The writing is pretty bad. It's overly flowery. He uses a lot of portugesse words in his descriptions and character interactions while rarely giving context to the words. This would be fine if he repeated the context so overtime the book built up its own internal lexicon but it doesn't. So it fails.

I am a science fiction fan so for me ideas come first and writing second. Writing style is a poor cousin of the idea in my mind so it is unusual for me to comment on the writing. However in this case the writing got in the way of some potentially very interesting ideas. So I wanted to like this book but the writing is so bad it clouds the ideas and makes reading the thing pointless. Twice!

I think what irked me most was when his clumsy ham-fisted research showed, and it showed a lot. Science Fiction fans are used to being treated with unfamiliar terrain. It's one of the appeals of sci-fi. Most good writers will let the world subsume the reader. The world gains reality and internal logic. Good examples are books like ON or FEERSUM ENDJINN. Bad examples are books like Brazyl. In Brazyl he TELLS rather than SHOWS you the world. It constantly feels like you are being TOLD what the author learned in the last year. Each new phrase, sentence, lingustic flight of fancy rather than being deeply immersed in the world of the story reads like the skin deep school boy research it is.

A bit harsh I guess... ymmv

Riveting stories perfect for science fiction collections

Three very different Brazils are presented in Brasyl, a book that blends science fiction, history, mystery and more in three separate stories. In one, a self-made man in a near future Sao Paulo of riches and poverty finds himself immersed in a dangerous underworld; in the second, an ambitious Rio TV producer seeks a different kind of reality show and finds herself involved in a dangerous conspiracy; and in the third, a Jesuit missionary sent into 18th century Brazil to locate and punish a rogue priest finds himself in a dangerous Amazon world. All are involving, riveting stories perfect for science fiction collections.

Brilliant stuff

Brasyl is a work of true brilliance! If William Gibson will still penning mainstream science fiction works than this is what he would have evolved into.

Never has South America seemed so real as in this fictional cyberpunkish take on what it might end up as.

I love it. If you have any taste, you should too!