Everybody's Perfect - by Jo Walton (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From Hugo award-winning author Jo Walton comes a cozy Venetian fantasy of extraordinary warmth and appeal!

The Serenissima is built from mist and belief, a mythical shadow sister to Venice and crossroads of the nine worlds.

When a laborer called Tiry has a dream that Serenissima will have a doge, and that they will marry the sea, he tells it to a fortune teller named Khadsha. She tells her apprentice, a gondolier called Taddeo, who tells a cop named Gom, who's heard it from five people this morning already. And by that point, it's already settled into the bones of the Serenissima, more than half-fated.

Everybody's Perfect is a gentle, shifting, structurally inventive narrative of startling beauty that will make you rethink everything you think you know about fantasy.

Review Quotes

Praise for Everybody's Perfect:

"Everybody's Perfect is a love letter to a strange city and all its contradictions. It's a meditative celebration of how we create history together, whether or not we know we're doing it, and of survival through and beyond times of plague. I adore this promise that history never ends, and that everyone who's ever contributed to a better future has been as flawed and frustrated as we are." --Ruthanna Emrys

Praise for Jo Walton:

"Funny, acute, and impassioned."--Ursula K. Le Guin on Among Others

"Or What You Will is a Jo Walton book. Which is to say--it's a joy and a revelation, and I never wanted it to end." --Rainbow Rowell

"Rendered with Walton's usual power and beauty...It's this haunting character complexity that ultimately holds the reader captive to the tale."--N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times, on My Real Children

"Has as much in common with an Alice Munro story as it does with, say, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle."--Lev Grossman, Publishers Weekly, on My Real Children

"Walton shines, as she always does, in the small and hurtful and glorious business of interpersonal relationships...this book about philosophy, history, gender and freedom also manages to be a spectacular coming-of-age tale that encompasses everything from courtroom dramas to sexual intrigue." --Cory Doctorow on The Just City

"A remarkable novel of ideas...Superb. In the end, the novel does more than justice to the idea of the Just City." --Booklist, starred review, on The Just City

About the Author

JO WALTON won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel Among Others and the Tiptree Award for her novel My Real Children. Before that, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Tooth and Claw won the World Fantasy Award. The novels of her Small Change sequence--Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown--have won acclaim ranging from national newspapers to the Romantic Times Critics' Choice Award. A native of Wales, she lives in Montreal.