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queenmackenzie 's review for:
Navola
by Paolo Bacigalupi
When I see that there is a new fantasy out by an Italian author that is based on the history of Florence and the Medici family, you bet I’m going to read it! I decided to tackle Navola as an audiobook, all 20 hours of it, and I must commend the narrator who, though American, did a good job with the Italian-style pronunciations. I will tell you upfront that I have mixed feelings about this book having completed it, and I am conflicted about whether or not I would recommend it because there are many great elements and then a few things that I know will discourage particular readers. So I’m afraid you’ll have to go through the full (spoiler free) review and see if what I talk about sounds appealing.
First of all, Bacigalupi’s writing is lush. People use that term to describe prose often, and I don’t always think it makes sense, but in this case I find it very fitting. From the start he weaves an intricate story and fills the space with the type of detail that make it impossible not to imagine that this world might truly exist, somewhere. But crucially, it does not feel overwhelming. It’s like walking into a room full of displays, ornaments, and furnishings and seeing that together they make a splendid picture, and that if you wanted you could then walk around and observe it’s details more carefully. In this respect, and in the way the characters and politics are laid out, I was reminded a lot of Robin Hobb’s writing. Navola is a twisty city, built on trade and control, holding its own against stronger nations through its wealth, and the Regulai family sits at the centre of that web.
Out of necessity, the pace of this book is slow. The politics and the setting need to be built up enough that the consequences of them resonate, and I think this is done very cleverly. We meet Davico di Regulai as a boy, and learn to navigate his world alongside him. He is the sole heir to an empire he does not want, and he loathes the way his city runs on the art of faccioscuro, or deception. We see the world through his eyes, as he narrates in first person, though from the start we know that he is looking back on his formative years from a distance and there are frequent allusions to what would later happen. Again, this put me in mind of Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy where Fitz’s tale is framed as his own musings as a grown man. For the most part, I enjoyed lingering in Davico’s childhood, though there was at times a little too much repetition, but I could see that through many seemingly-inconsequential scenes and the highlighting of various characters, that the pieces were being laid out for the action.
When the action did come, it was brutal and did not really stop. Maybe because I was listening instead of reading, there was no way for me to skim the gorier parts of the book, so it really stuck with me and turned my experience sour at the very end. I had no illusions that I was in a brutal world when reading Navola, but I think the way it was all grouped together at the end was a bit much for me, and made it feel as if I had toiled through it all for nothing. Those were my thoughts at the time, but it has been quite a few months since I finished it, and seeing it from some distance it does feel as if the finale was inevitable in some ways, and does leave things open for the story to continue, though I have not seen anything anywhere about this being a series.
I think my lingering feelings about this book are mostly positive, especially given the feat of storytelling and worldbuilding that it is. For fans of Robin Hobb, George R.R. Martin, and RJ Barker I would definitely recommend it. For those who get a bit bogged down by the detail in epic fantasy and want to be taken for a ride, this might not be for you. Overall, I am glad I read it and would probably dive straight in if a sequel were to come out.