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krayreads 's review for:

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
2.0

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

this took me FOREVER to get through. the pacing in this book was agonizingly slow. it was literally just a bunch of world building - heavy on the language that was basically like italian/latin gibberish - and little to nothing when it came to character development and plot. the main character was a snooze to read about. he was clueless about everything going on. he's the heir to a mafia family but in this world the mafia is accounting??? please lol. and barely anything happened in the first 70% of the book and by the time it started it pick up, i didn't even care anymore no matter how jarring and gory some of the scenes got.

i think a big part of my disappointment was that i was expecting more fantastical elements (like, hello, dragons??? the cover???) than the political intrigue that took up most of the book. there were too many politics in play. i wanted to cry at how bored i was lol.

an extra star just for celia who was the only interesting character and aspect about this book. are we shocked that a woman was the only saving grace in this? no. we are not.