First of all, my thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc of this book.

This read was quite a ride for me and one of those rare books that I instantly want to reread after just having finished it.
In this book we are following a young girl, held in high esteem within this society for having perfected the seven skills, as she sets about uncovering the truth of the story behind the ascension of the God in her world.
But not only is she seaking the truth, we as a reader are only given half of the conversation. This story is told in second person narration, a difficult enough perspective to get right. Polansky pulls it off remarkably well and goes above and beyond by only giving us one side of the conversation. He leaves out everything uttered by our protagonist Manet herself. As a result the reader themself also has to puzzle together these answers and try and understand the questions and the overall story.
I was a bit worried at first that I wouldn't be able to put it all together as I'm not usually actively making conjectures while reading, but it worked brilliantly. We are offered enough strings throughout to be able to form a whole.
The brilliant narrative technique really helps drive the story forward as you are eager for more snippets of this origin story and of this world-building and the one downside might be that you don't get as acquainted with the world-building as some might like. But there is enough there to easily overcome that in my opinion.
The story talks very much about history telling, a subject I find very rewarding in books (think Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace). And not only delves into how history telling is very much shaped by the winners in history, but also how history telling also shapes our beliefs and our memories. If it is written to have gone down in a certain way, then that must have been the case, no?
An absolutely delightful surprise of a novella

The Seventh Perfection is told all through one way conversations where the reader is only privilege to half the words spoken but as most of these conversations are more like monologues, this takes a few pages to adjust to but does not detract from the story. My main issue was behind the interesting worldbuilding and the one sided conversation, the plot itself was really straightforward and predictable. I do not want to have any spoilers but there really isn’t a plot to this book mind the young woman looking for her mother and fragments of conversations. It is hard to connect to any characters since each perspective is a new person and out main character is not very sympathetic. Still, the worldbuilding was quite interesting and some of the side characters seemed to have real potential for being unique and very interesting. All in all, I think there was not enough structure to support the writing style.

First of all: This is a really special, I‘d even say unique, book. I had a hard time getting into it because of the second-Person POV. I was not sure if I liked the single-sided conversations the book consists of. But they make the book special and after giving it some thought, it is a cool way to tell a story!
I would have loved to have learned more about the world and our main character. A lot of things are left unsaid. I am said that this is only a short novella.. All about the seven perfections would be predestined to be explored (and explained) more thorougly.
A special book, really entertaining but one has to read slowly and let it all sink in to savour it fully, I think. I am a fast reader and did not heed my own advice... Maybe that is why it was not entirely for me. I missed something.
I want to know so much more about Manet/the Amanuensis, the God-King and the White Isle. This book is an intriguing mystery!

The whole structure of the book was so interesting and it kept me engaged in the story. The ending was a bit too open-ended for my liking, but the whole experience reading the book was just so pleasant.

Okay, at novel length I probably would have hated this, but as a novella it's an intriguing piece of oblique storytelling that doesn't outstay it's welcome. The story itself is rather slight, but the fun is in the format. The book is essentially a series of... well, not really monologues, but rather halves of dialogues, where you only see responses to a question and not the questions themselves. It's a fun exercise to be forced to put the story together yourself, and this book is a good way to spend an afternoon.

Tenía muchísima curiosidad por leer la nueva obra de Daniel Polansky, un autor al que he leído en varios registros, como The Builders o Low Town. No obstante, he de reconocer que me he encontrado ante un obra que me ha sorprendido en el aspecto técnico, con uso de recursos de gran complejidad y repleta de huecos que el lector ha de intentar ir rellenando para desvelar qué pasó en realidad.

The Seventh Perfection es una obra escrita en segunda persona, de forma que el propio lector parece el protagonista, pero utilizando unos diálogos de los que solo conoceremos una parte, la del interlocutor de la protagonista. He leído por ahí una metáfora muy acertada para describirlo, leer el libro es como asistir a una conversación telefónica en la que solo oímos una parte.
Esta extraña disposición de los capítulos, unidos a comenzar la acción in media res hace que sean necesarias varias páginas para empezar a entender lo que el escritor nos está narrando, así como lo que oculta. Nos encontramos en un mundo fantástico regido por un Dios que hace relativamente poco tiempo asumió el poder. La protagonista es Manet, una muchacha que ha conseguido dominar las siete perfecciones que suponen el mayor logro para el servicio de este Dios, pero que se encuentra sumergida en un mar de dudas por un objeto que ha recibido que hace que se tambalee todo su sistema de creencias.
Manet irá siguiendo las pistas que se van desplegando ante nuestros ojos con un gran sacrificio personal y un objetivo que no siempre estará claro. Como digo, lo más interesante queda merced a la disposición del lector para ir atando cabos e intentar entender toda la historia. Aparecen referencias a animales fantásticos, a robots… pero esto no es más que un poco de aderezo para seguir extrañándonos con el mundo creado por Daniel Polansky.
No negaré que hace falta una disposición de ánimo algo especial para entrar en el juego de Polansky, pero también es cierto que la escasa longitud de la obra, hace que el reto sea asumible. Os recomiendo su lectura, aunque solo sea para ver qué otras cosas puede ofrecer la fantasía moderna.

The writing style of this book is really bizarre! It’s like a recording of the people talking with the protagonist without ever hearing her voice. No actions, no descriptions, even the thoughts of the protagonist are absent. It delivers really well the concept of the protagonist’s ability of being able to recall perfectly everything she heard.
It gives a particular sensation, like a puzzle where the reader slowly discover new pieces by continuing to read. It’s interesting in the beginning but with time it starts to become burdensome.

At first I thought it was taking place in a kind of Arabic fantasy setting, but then it seemed more toward a steampunk / Sci-Fi genre; There elements of both genre.

The story totally didn’t get me and, for how it was written, it seemed to me that lacked the elements for suspense and action that I feel important to keep the reader entertained.
I found difficult in finding the will to continue reading and I struggled to finish the book.

I'm not quite sure what to make of THE SEVENTH PERFECTION. While not necessarily for me, it is certainly an interesting, difficult read. Extremely effective as a novella. If there ever was a genre mash of "experimental fantasy noir," this would probably fit the bill. Would recommend if you like books like THE RAVEN TOWER by Ann Leckie or THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone for their experimental styles, or A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS by Alexandra Rowland for sheer voicey-ness.

There's a mystery at the heart of this novella, told through a series of one-sided conversations between various characters and Manet, our silent protagonist, a high-ranking servant of the God-King. Because of this, she is in a precarious position as she investigates the origins of a locket that was anonymously sent to her. As she digs deeper into the mystery of who the woman in the locket is, she uncovers things about the city, its God-King, and her own past that could very well lead to treason—and even blasphemy.

That's a very loose interpretation of the plot, at least. The book itself is rather more vague due to the style that Polansky chose to write it in. Because you never get to hear Manet speak or get insight into her thoughts, there is a definite distance that took away from any sort of tension that readers might have felt otherwise. Still, Polansky did a remarkable job at character building through these one-sided conversations. You get as full a picture of Manet as you can in a story this short: her motivations, her personality, a little of her history.

I think the most interesting thing about this book is probably the idea of mythmaking—who controls history, who benefits from it, and what are the consequences of pursuing truth to its bitter end.

This is definitely unlike any book I ever read. Most obviously, it is entirely told as only one side of multiple conversations. Manet, our protagonist, is solving a mystery by following a trail of spoken crumbs she finds by asking people questions. The reader does not get to hear the questions at all, as the narrative is entirely composed of the answers, and when I say 'entirely' I really do mean it - there are no reactions, no descriptions, it is all a one-sided conversation. She is assisted in this task by having achieved the "7th perfection" - a perfect recall.

At first I was quite taken aback about the storytelling format, hoping it's just a prologue, an unusual introduction to get the story going. In short order, I realized that I will have to "put up" with this format throughout. I am using quotation marks around the phrase 'put up' because I quickly adapted to the format, and even began to enjoy it. You have to be a detective yourself to build in your mind a picture of this world, its history, and to understand the circumstances that Manet has found herself in. As I said, there are no descriptions, thus no "info dumps", no world building other than what you are able to suss-out by yourself.

The novel is also extraordinarily short, I was even wondering if - under 175 pages- it should be perhaps qualified as a novella. As such, it was an extremely quick read, completed in several hours. Indeed, I enjoyed this world so much that a part of me wished that we were given a larger, more detailed, more encompassing story.

An unusual and bravely tackled approach to SFF from Polanski. The MC Manet can remember everything with perfect clarity which takes a strain on her psyche, meanwhile she is determined to become the God-King’s emanuensis by perfecting herself. Stylistically this will not be for everyone – 2nd person pov and told in a series of one sided conversations. I found it stunning, beautiful and literary. Like a magic eye picture or a Japanese puzzle box. Try it if you like more challenging SFF

Polansky uses a method here that works well and is entirely unique. All of the dialogue in this short story is told from the perspective of those speaking to the main character. The main character's communication is inferred from the conversations and I was led through a city on a wonderful adventure of mystery.

There is a lot added into this short story and much of it is confusing due to little or no context. I loved many of the characters, including the Captain and the halflings. It was an enjoyable read and far too short. My only inhibitions to it were how confusing it became at times and for all the times I had to read back to remember if characters had been mentioned before.

This was such an interesting story to read! I haven't read a story written in second person POV in such a long time so the beginning took some time to get adjusted but after a while, it adds to the atmospheric feel of the book. We follow different character conversations and this omnipresent voiceless narrator, Manet. The coolest thing was how the author managed to develop Manet's character through the perspective of those around her - she doesn't feel flat or uninteresting at all. The plot was well organized and supported by the world. Despite some moments lacking full development, it was still enjoyable to read.

I've never read a book written in second person perspective before, and found it challenging for the first few pages, however, the secret to The Seventh Perfection is that you feel maybe the next conversation will be the one that sheds light on what the heck is going on, and thus you keep reading - and before you know it, you're completely absorbed.
Polansky cleverly makes you re read each conversation to try and figure out what questions Manet is asking each person she interrogates.
Manet, who starts off as a mystery, becomes more and more characterised and '3D' the further we go - indeed, she's sometimes not very likeable at all, but she's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and so are you.
Some accounts are a little difficult to parse - I would have avoided the whole 'tram' chapter as it felt unnecessary, and of course, we cannot be sure any of the information is true, so that also adds an element of confusion.
Some further illumination of the whys and how's of the world Manet inhabits would also not have gone amiss, as intriguing as she was, I still wanted to know a bit more about the world, but this is hard to learn in pointed conversations.
Recommended for fantasy fans who want to stretch their horizons.

This little novel is thoroughly unique and incredibly bold. Not only does Polansky tackle s second-person POV, he tells the story in a series of one-sided conversations between various characters and our mysterious, voiceless protagonist. As another reviewer put it, it reads like you‘re in the room of someone else on a phone call: you get one half of the conversation and have to interpret from the context from there.

This is a challenging way to write a story. Polansky has given himself the task of creating a world and a plot with only one-sided dialogue, and he still somehow manages to make it (mostly) work. The plot starts out somewhat confusing, but you slowly start to understand more and more about Manet, the God-King, and situation of his rise. Futhurmore, I found the Polansky was able to give Manet, his silent protagonist, somewhat of a personality just through the lens of others and the way they react to her and her unseen dialogue.

It doesn’t always work. There are times where explanations and world-building feel artificially created, and there are times when I got frustrated by the lack of explanation in certain aspects of the story telling (the Kelp stirrers? Sweetness? The spire? There is a lot that goes frustratingly unexplained). Still, I can’t help but feel that the parts that do work are so cleverly done that they outweigh the parts that are more foggy.

This won’t be a story for everyone. It’s a tale for lovers of the genre, yes, but it’s also a tale for lovers of truly innovative storytelling. What Polansky has accomplished is a feat, and even with its shortcomings I really enjoyed the novelty of this read.

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.