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Brida is the story of a search of learning by a young girl who is seemingly naïve, but she is neither naïve nor lacking in intellect, since she has had a few incarnations, in which she knew a lot about being a witch. Brida is a beautiful, ambitious, and successful person, and she has a very supportive boyfriend, Lorenz. The story takes place in Ireland during 1983 and 1984.

The story opens with Brida telling Magus that she wants to learn magic. What Brida doesn't know at that moment is that she is Magus's soul mate. This she will find out toward the end of the book together with who she is and what the deeper meaning in her life is, by getting transported to a parallel universe and through other supernatural experiences.

Magus is the teacher of the tradition of the sun. Brida's other teacher is Wicca, who is a witch, and she teaches Brida the tradition of the moon.

This story's construction does not live up to the quality of Coelho's other work; however, it is easy to find the characters real enough, and the book is interspersed with spiritual sayings and messages. Since the plot has no twists, the storyline seems to be prolonged, possibly because the writer wants the reader to pay attention to the messages rather than the story.

In addition, wanting to learn to be a witch is melded with wanting to learn wisdom, and this reader wonders if the author views wisdom in its totality as being on the same level of becoming a witch. Still, the book has inspirational passages, even if it disappoints where the story weaving is concerned. For example: "Life is about making mistakes," said the Teacher. "Cells went on reproducing themselves in exactly the same way for millions of years until one of them made a mistake, and introduced change into that endless cycle of repetition."

Then, Paolo Coelho bonds the teachings of Christianity with the Tarot, witchcraft, mysticism, and other practices. The rituals of the witches are described in detail in several passages. This is not necessarily harmful, but those who may be put off by such practices should stay away from this book.

Brida is in hardcover, 224 pages with ISBN-10: 0061578932 and ISBN-13: 978-0061578939. The book opens with a quotation from the Bible, Luke 15: 8-9 as its first page. Then, a warning page, a prologue by the author, and finally, the story of Brida's search follows.

The author, Paolo Coelho, was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. He worked as a theatre director, actor, lyricist, and a journalist. After traveling the world and finding out about secret societies and other religions, Coelho dedicated himself to his writing and published his first book in 1982. 1n 1987 The Alchemist was published to become an eventual international best-seller. Coelho has received many awards too numerous to list, among them The Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and "Knight of Arts and Letters of France." His books are: Brida, The Valkyries, By the river Piedra I sat Down and Wept, Maktub, The Fifth Mountain, Manual of a Warrior of Light, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Eleven Minutes, The Zahir.

Brida is a readable book, if the reader does not expect the same heightened enjoyment of other Coelho work.