What a challenge to your typical read. The writing in this is well done and the second person perspective is not an easy thing to pull off. Polansky does a marvelous job of creating a voice for his characters, all while building a puzzle one small piece at a time.
I could easily see people becoming discouraged by the writing style. I had a few moments were I had to backtrack, and I felt like a bit of the world building was missing, but overall an enthralling new point of view.

‘The Seventh Perfection’ by David Polansky is like a first person shooter video game. This book was offered to me on Netgalley upon request in exchange for an honest review.

At first I felt confused and dizzy, like I do when I try to play those sort of games. I think many people might abandon the story in these first few chapters without giving it a chance based on how different it reads.

However, as I pushed through the initial feeling of wanting to stop, I found myself immersed in the story of Manet and her journey for the truth. I began to enjoy that there was nothing but conversation as interpreted by Manet. It felt like muddled memories and dreams being recalled streamlined down a narrow corridor to make a cohesive story but that was part of its appeal.

The book’s speakers were constantly referring to memory and perceptions of memories, so I felt that his way of telling the story was to express this in a similar manner.

The more I think about the book, the more it opens up to me. I enjoyed it.

The Seventh Perfection is an exquisite puzzle box of a story told with second-person POV. It's an intricately plotted mystery told with gorgeous, atmospheric writing perfect for fans of Tamsyn Muir.

Manet, the God-King's Amanuensis, is searching for the identity of a woman, whose photograph is in a locket. You, the reader, read people's responses as if you're Manet, asking the questions. It's a difficult feat to do well - capturing the voices of so many characters, making them unique while also creating answers that slowly put together the puzzle pieces without feeling like an info dump.

To do all of that brilliantly within a novella is astounding! I hope Daniel Polansky sets other stories in the world he's created because the details he shares within The Seventh Perfection are incredibly intriguing. I want more!

Because this is a novella, it would be easy to dash through it but don't. Savor every beautifully written twist and turn.

Wow, this was a truly unique reading experience. There are several ways this is going to be unlike anything you've read before and when you combine them, it makes this absolutely a rare gem in its originality of execution.

The narrative is a second person variation that made it feel like I was listening in on a phone call and trying to piece things together with only one side. I knew right off the bat this wasn't a story my mind would or could drift from. Where most narratives strive to hold your hand and take you on a journey, whispering gently to turn this way or that, this narrative says... no it screams... 'Hey, you, pay attention or you're going get lost and miss the good parts.' Trust me, you don't want miss the good parts.

In the choice of narrative it also makes a shift in the usual path of immersion, in that you get to know the protagonist through the world not the world through the protagonist. That's crazy brilliant.

The pieces of the plot don't really start to fall together, at least not for me, until later in the novella, which was also something I don't usually see. However, I was so in love with the style, I think any plot would have suited. That the story was fascinating as well, was all icing.

It's brave, and bold, and as I said, brilliant.

It's not a leisurely read, but if you are looking for something different, something thoughtful, artful, crafted to perfection by doing everything they tell us not to and doing well, then you'll want to read this.

I had a hard time finding the story in this book if there even was one? I don't think that this type of poetic, almost string-of-consciousness writing is my cup of tea, even if I take note of the writing, which in this case was quite pretty.

I love a carefully conceived, beautifully executed, challenging narrative, but if someone had told me that the new novella by Daniel Polansky (Low Town trilogy) was written in the second-person point of view, I might have passed on it, which would have been a HUGE mistake. The Seventh Perfection is a gripping, strange, and grim story that will satisfy multiple readings (which, unfortunately, I did not have time for before this review). It is extremely unconventional in its narrative execution, but the narrative is absolutely perfect for the story, and the story is absolutely perfect for the shorter format of Tor.com’s excellent novella series.

One thing I (usually) dislike about second-person narrative is its propensity to use the word you a lot. ‘You go up the stairs. You see….’ I just don’t buy it most of the time. I find it hard to suspend my disbelief, as Coleridge might say. The Seventh Perfection avoids that completely, and almost entirely flips the problem on its head. In The Seventh Perfection, you are Manet of the White Isles, an amanuensis of the God King Ba’l Melqart, who lives in the Spire in the middle of the city. Manet is one of the very few people who have completed the seven perfections, specialized trainings for servants of Ba’l Melqart, the seventh of these being the development of perfect memory. When Manet receives the gift of a locket with a faded portrait inside, she begins an investigation to find out who the woman in the portrait is, which brings her to various people around the city who might know. Each chapter of The Seventh Perfection comprises a character telling Manet what they know, or don’t know, about the locket. As such, each chapter is named for the character who tells, in first-person point of view, Manet what he or she knows about the locket; hence, the flipping of the second-person narrative on its head. And you, Manet, have to figure it all out. That alone would be a pretty compelling read; however, the locket leads to a story that the servants of Ba’l Melqart do not want known, and there’s the rub.

As she quests through the city, Manet talks to a variety of strange and stranger people, from a street hawker, to an antiques collector, to a witch with a rat, to an old friend, to the Patriarch of the city guards, to a ferryman, and more and more. Each character has a unique voice and a unique story to tell. Manet listens and records everything in her perfect memory. When she visits Nutesh, a renowned and somewhat bumbling and notorious antiques collector, early in the novella, the narrative voice of the collector immediately called to mind Robert Browning’s most famous poem “My Last Duchess,” in which the reader is addressed (presumably) by the Duke of Ferrara who explains what happened to his late duchess in the portrait he is showing off. The poem is widely recognized as a classic example of the dramatic monologue form (and you should read it if you haven’t already because it’s great). And that’s what you’ll find in The Seventh Perfection, twenty-eight widely varied and variously hysterical, intimidating, conniving, helpful, deceitful, and confusing dramatic monologues (and one trialogue) told to you, the amanuensis. To make matters worse (which means, of course, to make them much better), rumours of your investigation are beginning to circulate around the city, and the guardians of the God King do not like it one bit.

Importantly, as it turns out, the monologues of the people Manet encounters ultimately unveil the history of the city itself, which has recently undergone a revolution of sorts by which, for better or worse, the God King replaced an equally feared and mysterious queen whom he renamed the Anathema when he deposed her. As often happens in political upheavals, most of the people, the subjects of these rulers, couldn’t care less who lives at the top of the Spire, so long as they don’t change anything very much. The people are just as willing to revere the God King as they were the Anathema, as long as they can still drink and whore and go about their business. This moral and political ambiguity reminds me a bit of the constant battle between the North and the Union in Ambercrombie’s First Law. Neither side is worth a shit, but the upheaval is constant.

Manet’s quest for information must ultimately lead to the Spire, of course, but is that a good thing or a bad? We don’t really know. Will she press the city into another seemingly purposeless violent upheaval? Maybe I’ll find a clue when I reread the book again starting tonight. But that’s one of the beauties of moral ambiguity and one of the reasons we love grimdark so much – we get to decide … or not decide.

So … getting down to the point: Polansky is a fucking genius. If you don’t already know that from reading the Low Town trilogy, you will realise it when you read The Seventh Perfection. He took an unconventional form, the novella, and practically reinvented storytelling for it. For example, (and don’t tell my editing clients this), the inciting incident in this story could be said to happen about ninety percent of the way through it. That’s very unconventional, but here, it’s just the way it happens, or at least how we find out about it. Similarly, the main character never says a word, and yet we learn her life story. There is no ‘narration,’ per se, but the reader is thrust through the city at a rapid pace in vivid detail. Though I’m sure the narration style has its roots somewhere, perhaps in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, I’m willing to bet you’ll find The Seventh Perfection to be like no book you’ve read in recent memory.

And memory is what it’s all about, the main theme here—how do we form memories and can they be trusted? Are they really whole or just fragments we put together? The seventh perfection is memory, and those few people who achieve perfect memory, like Manet, become the memory of the realm. In her quest she explores the memories of twenty-plus people, looking for answers, trying to put pieces together. And the memories of the people she talks to, flawed or not, hold the unreliable memory of the realm and her life. But not only are their memories fallible and flawed, many of them have something to hide and others are intimidated by her position within the realm itself. For me, themes are secondary to compelling characters in tense emotional situations that result in riveting entertainment, but The Seventh Perfection seems to have it all—can’t-put-it-down reading with layers and layers of meaning.

The Seventh Perfection, as you might have guessed by now, is not necessarily an easy read. It will challenge your notion of storytelling and force you to put pieces together that otherwise might have been laid out in the usual expository passages, but this is really what makes it such an involving, enthralling read. There are no armies or staged battles here, but there is a shithole of a grim setting, some violence and the constant threat of more, and a moral vacuum that will force you to make up your own mind about who is good and who is bad or if such a thing even exists in this world. Overall, I found it to be totally fucking brilliant, but if you’re looking for the same old thing, you won’t find it here.

The Seventh Perfection by Daniel Polansky is scheduled for release on 22 September 2020 by Tor.com.

Originally published in Grimdark Magazine #23.

I’ve been a fan of Daniel Polansky’s writing ever since his debut, The Straight Razor Cure, was published in the UK. The Seventh Perfection is his second novella for Tor.com (following the superb The Builders), and I’m very happy to report that it absolutely met my very high expectations.

Polansky takes an interesting and — in my experience — unusual approach to this novella. Nothing you read is said by the protagonist, but it’s all from her perspective. The novella is made up of only one side of each conversation and exchange. It is an incredibly effective story-telling technique, and builds a fascinating picture of the protagonist — especially because none of it filtered through Manet’s own thoughts, experiences, or prejudices.

Given Manet’s nature as amanuensis, one could expect her character to be subsumed a bit by the requirement to remember everything — however, she nevertheless feels like a fully realized character, as seen through her exchanges and interactions with others. We get a sense of her growing urgency, impatience, and frustration as she interrogates others for small nuggets of the truth. We gather from others’ words and reactions elements of her personality that are as effective (perhaps more so) than in a more regular-style narrative. Here’s a favourite example, when Manet is struggling to get the responses and information that she thinks she needs and wants: “the way you hold your eyes as if you might eat the person you’re staring at…”

It’s an interesting and very well-executed premise: the all-remembering amanuensis of the god, hunting for the identify of a single woman who she cannot remember. As Manet moves from one exchange to another, we learn more about her and her role, as well as where she lives, the social make-up of where she lives, the mythology and some history of this world, and the myriad denizens of the city.

As she unravels the mystery, her unrelenting quest for the truth leads her to take risks and chances that imperil her standing and life. Not only that, there are rumblings about the city — there’s growing unrest, tension that could boil over at any time.

“… this truth you seek imperils the safety and stability of millions. You think to gamble their prosperity against the interests of your own mad quest? You would put some abstract virtue above their health and safety?”

The novella is a really interesting examination of memory — how it can trick us, or fail us. But also what it means to have a supposedly perfect memory. Manet’s memory is also not quite the same as a regular person’s, and gathering from the comments of those who speak with her, contains a certain detachment from the events that are remembered. Here’s an example:

“What a terrible thing it must be, never to forget. You don’t realize it yet because you haven’t lost anything, or anything that matters. But you will, that alone is a certainty. What torment, to recall perfectly the line of your breasts once they have come to wither, the musk of every lost lover. Your first sip of wine, the roar of your first crowd, the laugh of a dead friend. The way the sun hit the beach that day, when he came out of the waves shaking his hair and smiling, you and he and nothing else, wanting everything to end in that second, the world snapped shut like an old purse. They have cursed you, girl. They have ruined you.”

If you haven’t read anything by Polansky yet, then I highly recommend you do so. Either of his novellas would be great places to start, if you don’t want to commit to a full-length novel. However, I’m pretty sure that after reading either The Builders or The Seventh Perfection, you’ll go right out to get his novels.

Polansky remains one of the best authors writing speculative fiction, and I can’t recommend his work highly enough. A must read.