The phrase "a brilliant tale" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when describing a story that is exceptionally well-crafted or engaging.
Example: "The author captivated readers with a brilliant tale of adventure and friendship that spanned generations."
Alternatives: "an amazing story" or "a fantastic narrative."
It's a brilliant tale of hard work, patriotism and bearing the weight of a nation's love.
Robert Wade and Neal Purvis said: "Len Deighton's SS-GB is a brilliant tale of espionage that dares to think the unthinkable, and we are very excited to be adapting it for television".
Billy Strayhorn was only 16 when he wrote the majority of Lush Life, yet it's a brilliant tale of failed romances and lives wasted in the mistaken pursuit of illusions.
That's how I feel about it because when they first said Dirty Rotten Scoundrels I thought that's a pointless exercise, 'It's Steve Martin at the peak of his powers, why would you need to revisit that?' Once I listened to the music and read the script I thought, 'Oh, that's why.'" "The story is a brilliant tale, a fantastic caper".
It's perhaps unfair but inevitable to compare it to Bruce Norris's 2011 Pulitzer winner "Clybourne Park," a brilliant tale of Chicago gentrification and the pulsating racism just below the characters' urban-chic dinner party banter.
I'm thinking, for example, of Sigrid Nunez's fifth novel, The Last of Her Kind, a dark, brilliant tale centred on two college classmates in the 1960s.
It's a brilliant dystopian tale and a great re-interpretation of the Guy Fawkes story so it fits the brief perfectly, right?
Or, rather, it is a brilliant fairy tale; and even nightingales, as a Russian proverb has it, can't live off fairy tales.
Lawrence Norfolk's John Saturnall's Feast (Bloomsbury) is a brilliant, erudite tale of cookery and witchcraft in 1681.
"It is a brilliant fairy tale," he said, but that wasn't entirely a good thing: "Even nightingales, as a Russian proverb has it, can't live off fairy tales".
