Normally I wouldn’t attempt a book described on the cover as “The Godfather meets Game of Thrones,” but Paolo Bacigalupi has written several wonderful novels in which terrible things happen. His novel, The Windup Girl, is one of my favorite SF novels. Set in a post-climate-change world, it is realistically brutal. But Bacigalupi’s characters are always portrayed with nuanced sensitivity. This adds layers of understanding both to the actions of the characters and the moral stakes behind whatever devastation might occur.
Navola is written as the first person narrative of young Davico di Regulai, the reluctant heir to the powerful, unforgiving Banca Regulai. The bank, and the di Regulai family, are based in Navola, a fictional city in an intricately-realized fictional world clearly inspired by Renaissance Italy. The book is more historical fiction than fantasy, but this is not historical Italy, and there is a dragon’s eye on Davico’s father’s desk.
Davico is more in tune with the landscape of Navola, and the wilds of surrounding Romiglia, than he is with the intricate plots his father creates to promote the family’s vast wealth. He spends pages and pages on lush descriptions of Navola—its gardens and towers and sunlight. He sees the beauty in the games of deception and subtle betrayal that his family plays, even though he thinks he is not very good at them. In his narrative, Davico sees only the ways in which he himself is inadequate, and never seems to notice the ways in which his world is lacking. Which is its own sort of criticism of the immorality of wealth and power.
Not very much happens for a lot of the book, yet it is strangely riveting. The tiny seeds leading to disaster do eventually bloom into the bloodshed promised on the book’s cover. In Davico’s hands, the violence is oddly dispassionate, as though he is able to ignore the corruption and danger that surrounds him, even when it is pointed at himself. Navola is devastating and fascinating. Its fantasy elements could be merely a dream inspired by a dead dragon, but there are rumors of a sequel in the works.
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