Trigger warning for maiming.
The Regulai name is legendary. Davico di Regulai’s ancestors include warriors, politicians, and bankers who shape not just the city of Navola but the world around them. Davico was raised to be the perfect heir to his master manipulator father, but Paolo Bacigalupi’s engrossing new novel Navola is a tale of what happens to people who get caught up in the webs of those who practice to deceive.
We meet Davico as a young man, scarcely ten years old, at his accounting lessons. His tutors are doing their best to drill finances, contracts, law, and the fine art of faccioscuro—hiding one’s emotions behind a deceptive or unreadable face—so that he can take over his father’s many schemes. He’s a privileged young man. In his spare time, he can roam the palazzo, the city, and the nearby countryside with his dog and his pony. In the background, however, we can see that his father, his tutors, and his father’s consort are worried that Davico is too naive and too kind to truly take his father’s place. Even after Davico sees ample evidence of his father’s willingness to use violence and coercion when guile fails, he can’t see the potential consequences of forcing an entire city and its neighbors to bend to the di Regulai will.
When things turn for Davico and the di Regulai family, they turn spectacularly. The last third of this book is dark. Fans of the politics in George R.R. Martin’s books will devour Navola. I loved how Bacigalupi was able to create a wonderfully realistic character such as Davico at the same time as he builds a complex, Italian Renaissance-inspired world up around Davico. Savvy readers will probably be able to spot the downfall of the di Regulai from the clues that Davico’s innocent nature simply doesn’t see. From the beginning of the novel, there are scenes between Davico’s father and the leaders of Navola that made me wonder if there was someone plotting revenge against the di Regulai’s scheming. People will only take so much before they snap.
I don’t know if Bacigalupi has plans for a sequel to Navola. He leaves the door open for one and, even though parts of this book are absolutely harrowing, I would love to return to this world and its characters. I want to know if the wheel of Fortune will bring the di Regulai name back to power.