With “Navola”, Paolo Bacigalupi starts a grandiose new fantasy series

Bacigalupi first caught the attention of the science fiction world with his debut, The Windup Girl (2009), which follows a “calorie man” – a searcher for missing food – in a future Thailand. The novel won a slew of awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell and Locus Awards for best first novel. International accolades followed as the book was translated from English into other languages. Bacigalupi’s subsequent works – a diverse series that includes a second adult novel, a young adult trilogy, a story collection and a middle grade book featuring zombie cows – have received much critical acclaim, but it’s been nearly a decade since he published a novel for adults.

In creating the world of Navola, Bacigalupi follows the example of Canadian fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, who makes no effort to hide his real-world inspirations and, indeed, hopes that our knowledge of Byzantium will enrich our enjoyment of his Sarantium and that his Arbonne will make us book tickets to Provence. Navola, located in the northeast of a peninsula, is modeled on Renaissance Italy, particularly Florence and Venice. Likewise, the fallen Ammonese Empire resembles Rome; the menacing nation of the Cheroux has a distinctly French tinge. The text is peppered with Italian-sounding words like “catredanto,” a kind of cathedral, and “scriveri,” which are clerks and scribes. Davico, our guide and narrator, is heir to the Regulai family, more or less the Medicis of his world.

Of course, not even Cosimo de’ Medici could boast that he possessed a dragon’s eye, as the Regulai family does. As a boy, Davico is fascinated by the eye, which seems to hum with anger and power, but he spends little time with it. Davico’s father expects him to inherit the family’s globe-spanning business, and so the boy must learn bookkeeping, self-defense, and, most importantly, faccioscuro, the art of hiding emotions and disguising intentions.

The Regulai family strives to be charitable and generous, but their methods of maintaining power are unscrupulous. After an attack on the family, retaliation spreads fear and terror throughout the city:

“Women woke up at dawn to find their husbands dead beside them, stilettos in their eyes, their heads pressed against pillows. Sons clutching their throats and vomiting black bile, in the middle of a song in taverns, surrounded by their closest friends.”

Davico has little desire for revenge, but his father has decided that his only heir should be a master of trade, politics, and deception. The boy cannot resist, and so Davico is surprisingly passive throughout much of this long novel. He is trained, tutored, and eventually tortured; he is tricked at cards and conspiracies, and is alternately the victim and beneficiary of underhanded schemes, but never their instigator. His great passion is for his adopted sister Celia, a vivacious and inscrutable young woman who was adopted into the family after her biological father crossed the Regulais and was banished for his troubles. But even Davico’s probably ill-fated search for Celia is clumsy and erratic; it is only towards the end of this novel, injured and alone, that he finds the inner strength that will probably carry him through the books that follow. That dragon’s eye will surely play a crucial role, too.

The advertising The text of “Navola” unsurprisingly emphasizes its similarity to “Game of Thrones,” but those comparisons may not do the film justice. Yes, as in Martin’s novels and HBO’s adaptations, there are betrayals, mutilations, retribution, sudden deaths, miraculous setbacks, intrigues and counter-intrigues. The protagonist even has a dog named Lazy, who is as loyal as Martin’s direwolves but far less violent. But while there are brutal moments, Bacigalupi offers fewer Grand Guignol shocks; it moves at a more dignified pace and with more elegant prose. “Navola” lingers on Davico’s privileged childhood and education. The first real glimmer of plot emerges 40 pages in, and it’s another couple hundred pages before we learn the extent of his father’s plans and the precariousness of the Regulai family. But Bacigalupi’s writing style is so good that the book would still be praiseworthy even if the protagonist’s idyll continued until the last page.

At the end of this first volume, Davico leaves his hometown in modest circumstances and in great haste. Almost all parts of “Navola” is set within the boundaries of the eponymous city; at the end, it seems as if Davico is finding his way through the wide world. In the course of this long novel, Bacigalupi mentions the names of many other fictitious cities and states, from Avillion to Zurom. We can only hope that each of these places will receive a novel as rich and captivating as “Navola”.

Matthew Keeley is a freelance writer who has written for Reactor and the Los Angeles Review of Books.