Navola, Book Review

There are great moments, when you are a heavy reader, of discovering new authors. This last week, I discovered Paolo Bacigalupi. He has written books before the one I found, such as The Windup Girl, The Water Knife, and The Tangled Lands. He also has a young adult series called the Ship Breaker trilogy. As a rule, as an adult, I don’t read young adult books; they tend to disappoint greatly. In his case, I might make an exception.

Because the book of his I discovered, Navola, is the first book I have read in over a year that, after I was done, made me want to go for a walk and just think about the book.

I wanted to read it again immediately. That is even rarer.

It is without doubt a 9.75/10.0, and I am hedging my bets. It might be better.

Why?

Trying to tell you about this book is hard because it is so well laid out and so meticulously planned that everything which happens at the end, and I mean the last 75 pages, is set up cleanly in the first sections of the book. Very often, in books which play at complexity, I can feel the hand of the author making things happen so that they seem complex. There is no such artifice here. This is a book which is complex because the characters are outstandingly complex and well written.

This is a book with political and interpersonal intrigue built into the fabric of life, and the author, Paolo, is smart enough to write characters that feel smart too.

There are characters like Davico’s father, who are so reprehensible and yet so admirable in their skills that they are believable as real people. The motivations and complexities of people like Davico’s adopted sister Celia, also technically a slave and owned by his father, are never fully revealed. This is because the novel is told in first person, by what we can only call a partially reliable narrator, who is doing his best but doesn’t understand how women think.

The characters are part of what makes this book amazing, but I will also say the dialogue in this book is 10/10. I have not read scenes with such perfect, believable, real emotion, character, and reality in every word uttered in years. The dialogue drives plot and character, of course, because it is a book set in a mythical version of Florence and is driven by court intrigue and the promises of powerful people trying to manipulate one another, but there is more to it than that.

We have moments in the book during games of cards where Davico and his friends (or are they?) are just talking, and with barely a single dialogue tag for two pages, I know exactly who is speaking among five people. Every word is a real slice-of-life moment. It transports you out of the tense, driving world into a moment where boys will be boys. Except it isn’t. Paolo is so good that the tension suffusing everything around our protagonist follows him even into relaxation, because of his station as his father’s son.

Why else?

Because the setting is believable.

Because the fantasy element (I do love fantasy) is present in a way that is subtle and believable.

“My father had a dragon eye.

The long-dead sultan of Zurom did not have one.

The king of far-off Cheroux did not have one.

In fact, no one could say they had one.

…

It frightened me.

And it drew me.

And one day, I touched it.”

A promise made in the prologue, a hint of the fantastic that is not brought back for many pages.

There are characters who verge on caricature but remain believable. An assassin, a stilettotore, in the parlance of this book. Yes, Paolo makes a language for this world which is rich, Italian-inspired, and beautiful. It adds to the immersion through its use and never leaves the reader confused. It is worldbuilding on a grand and immaculate scale.

I can say that if you love anything resembling political fantasy, intrigue, or historical fantasy, this is a crowning achievement in the field. It is a book that will have you aggressively turning pages until page 500 just to chew up the ending. It is a book that, if you love fantasy, you need to read, and in the near future, I need to read again.

Paolo Bacigalupi, thank you for creating this.