Everybody's Perfect

 

Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton, 272 pages.

The Serenissima is a world of mists and uncertainty, a mythical shadow of Venice and the crossroads of the nine worlds, and on a level of reality that is just a little less fixed than any of the worlds. Here anything can be true is people believe strongly enough that it is, and anything unobserved or believed in may disappear entirely.

It's hard to say exactly what this book is about. Structurally it passes from hand to hand through the peoples of the Serenissima, each story flowing smoothly into the next. It starts when Tiry dreams that the doge will marry the sea (which is strange because the Serenissima has never had a doge) and ends the next day when it comes to pass, but from one point to another it goes through many different lives, most of whom couldn't care less about the city having a doge.

This is a strange, dreamlike book that throws the reader into the deep end. For the first few chapters I had no real idea what was going on. However, as the world started to breathe (and I had enough context to understand anything), I found myself compelled. For a book that is less than 300 pages long, this is absolutely overflowing with ideas and contemplations on disease, perfection, faith, and love. I think this is a book that would have a lot to offer on a reread, and I could definitely see myself doing that in the future. 

This book is scheduled to be published 6/30/2026