The Seventh Perfection

An interesting take on a second person narrative, The Seventh Perfection has the reader listening into one side of a conversation. The whole book is written in the second person, but without any input into what you are doing or saying - all you get is the replies the people you are interacting with give you. As a literary device it is intriguingly different and gives a fascinating sense of mystery. Over the course of the book you begin to put together the different stories being told by the cast of characters we meet whilst we begin to understand the quest we are on.

The literary nature of the work makes this very different to your standard fantasy work. The format works as it allows the reader to unravel the mystery as they read. Whilst the ultimate story line is nothing especially novel it is not a bad story, and the way it is told is fascinating and well worth a read.

Probably more of a 3.5 but I'm rounding up.

I was so intrigued when I first saw this premise but what really made me wanna read this book was that very painting like beautiful cover. And this one has definitely surprised me.

I've read only a few short stories and other works which are written in second person, and I have come to distinctly associate it with N. K. Jemisin. But it was such a surprise to see such creative use of this writing style in this novella. While the story itself stays close to the premise that is mentioned on GR, the way the author goes about it is very unique and really did have me thinking hard on trying to connect the dots. It's all a one sided conversation with many many unusual characters, and we have to rely on the shaky and unreliable memories of these people to try and figure out what's going on. We don't get the protagonist's POV at all, so it was very interesting to try and get to understand her motivations.

There is also an underlying theme about revolution, what happens after it is successful, are the legends that are borne out of it always truthful or merely exaggerated, and do the general public really need to know the actual truth or just the manufactured one that keeps them content. It's also very interesting to see how memories change over time, what and how we try to remember them and what it really says about us.

To conclude though, despite all this interesting stuff, I wasn't satisfied with the story and would have preferred if it was a longer book so that we could have gotten to know the world a little more and just gotten more answers in general. The ending is also slightly open ended and I'm not usually a fan. However, I would still recommend this novella just to experience something so fascinating and singular.

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.