Brazil Red

Rating:
Summary: Fun Read and Enlightening
Review: Rufin's story is great adventure told by a subtlety humorous narrator-no small achievement given the seriousness of Brazil Red's themes. This would also be a terrific book for advanced young readers, age fourteen and up. A rare book that makes history real, entertaining, and meaningful. Because of its child protagonists, Just and Colombe, Brazil Red favorably reminded me of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass.

Rating:
Summary: A ripping yarn!
Review: If you approach this book expecting high literature, you're going to be disappointed. It is not cerebral and the writing is at time clumsy. But if you enjoy a historical novel full of derring-do and exotic locales, with good guys and bad guys and a forest full of sixteenth-century proto-Brazilians, go ahead. As in all good adventure yarns, the love scenes (except with the treacherous betrayer) provide nothing but a slowing down of the action. I was driven to research the history of "la France Antarctique" and was introduced to a bit of French history I had never even heard of. I've already passed my copy on to a friend who has reported he's as gripped as I was. And he's a professor of French literature!