A review by visual_eyes
Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

a bloodbath - its the trickery of game of thrones and the luscious indulgence of something that sees politics for what it is and bares it in all its twisted beauty. davico is the culmination of my favourite kind of trope  the almost, nearly decent with a lacking spine, sharing a fear and a nervous disposition towards the weave of complex intention, utterly undergone a fire and forge by steel and blood. to see that break apart and reforged, pieces of deceit, darkness, steel, cruelty, rile elegant strength, strategy all of it weaved by the straggling remains of a boy who loved the voiceless living world, and enamoured in the battered, snared host of dragon scale, claw and teeth. serpentine soul enmeshed to forge a new creature and beast, davico di regulai. its the build up that delivers it all best, to give davico a healing hand in youth, a young boys bleeding open heart, a sensitivty that endears him to the so called Firmos, while he struggles in the world of Cambios, where his father in merchanter grace and twisted sense manipulates and designs to call of empire like a drunk kings night of ecstasy. the imagery is excessively infused with sex and lust and figs and roots and as such is political intrigue, not only of power but of raw wanting. so it is that davico suppresses his wants in favour of what he can love and understand wholeheartedly, to recognise plants and herbs and flowers by smell or sight. davico goes from wylan naivete and the entire story, world building and narrative builds him very believably into an apprentice of kaz-like cunning in a city, navola that could be ketterdam, that deals with a world steeped in what reads as an authentic an italian touch, Merai and Cheroux and Torre Amo lift out of the page, felt real by the ambassadors and figures that leap out to clash metaphorical swords with a young growing heir. I wish to see the rage that he might unleash, to see the struggle of his morality now enmeshed with an animal, bestial host