Brasyl

A review by John Berlyne of Ian McDonald’s Brasyl, has been postedat SFRevu:

“One sentence summations cannot convey the brilliance with which Ian McDonald’s blends his three narratives together – and definitely not without spoilers,” writes Berlyn. “But certainly, this author’s skills are on full Technicolor, surround sound display here, and his innate feel and obvious love for language gives Brasyl a vibrant Latin beat that pulsates persistently at the very heart of the novel.”

Berlyne labels Brasyl as “recommended” and concludes by saying that, “One is left with the impression of genre novel right on the cutting edge of the quantum blades wielded as weapons within its pages, a book that loudly proclaims the arrival of the future, of a designer fiction, fashioned for a premium market and of a book that surely will be hailed as loudly as McDonald’s previous works.”

Paul Di Filippo reviews Brasyl for SciFi.com’s SciFi Weekly today, giving the latest from Ian McDonald an A and saying that the novel is, “hot and tropical and full of music—finds more than enough materials and promise in this developing land to support a conceit of cosmic magnitude… He manages to work simultaneously at many levels, from the intimate and individual to the societal and universal. And he always embodies his themes in minutely particularized images and descriptions, both quotidian and fantastical. His characters are utterly believable, grounded in their unique pasts and presents. And typical of his more stefnal speculations is his invention of ‘Q blades,’ knives with quantum edges that can sever reality. They steal the show every time they appear.”

As always, Di Filippo’s reviews are grounded in a thorough understanding of our genre’s history. His comparisons to other works always interesting and informative, this time he offers, “In Marcelina’s sections, we get a story built of equal parts Norman Spinrad (the sardonic media satire) and Fritz Leiber (the crosstime shennanigans). In Edson’s parts, McDonald distills John Brunner, Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, producing his own unique hard liquor. And in the Quinn action, we’ve got flavors of Neal Stephenson blended with Howard Hendrix. And don’t forget that all three sections authentically render the Brazilian milieu as deftly as native writer Jorge Amado would.”

Di Filippo concludes by calling the novel, “a tripartite thriller that whipsaws the reader’s expectations and enjoyment around like a motorcycle ride straight down Sugarloaf itself. As Dr. Falcon writes in his journal, ‘Brazil turns hyperbole into reality.’ Call what McDonald does here, then, “hyper-real SF.”

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist on Ian McDonald Brasyl:

“With River of Gods, Ian McDonald raised the bar rather high, and I was wondering if the author could come up with something as good. It never occurred to me that McDonald could write a better novel. And yet, somehow, he did!

Brasyl is a mesmerizing ensemble of three different tales. I was astonished… to see how McDonald yet again captures the essence of a country and its people and weaves it in a myriad of ways throughout the novel….

The worldbuilding is ‘top notch.’ Ian McDonald deserves kudos for his brilliant depiction of Brazil during three different epochs. As always, the author’s eye for exquisite details adds another dimension to a book that’s already head and shoulder above the competition. …This book blew my mind even more than River of Gods. Seriously, I didn’t want it to end! Brasyl deserves the highest possible recommendation. It will surely be one of the best — if not the best — science fiction novels of 2007.”

Nick Gevers weighs in on Ian McDonald’s forthcoming Brasyl in the April edition of Locus magazine:

“McDonald conveys quite brilliantly the prodigious energy and fecundity of Brazil as it is and could be. …Brasyl is a feast of fine prose, an able political novel, and an intriguing experiment in cross-temporal storytelling and implication. …it is without doubt one of the major SF books of 2007.”

Ian McDonald’s forthcoming Brasyl has just received a Starred Review in the March 26th issue of Publishers Weekly:

Brasyl
Ian McDonald. Pyr, $25 (480p) ISBN 978-1-59102-543-6

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. (May)