Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi, which immediately grabbed my attention because of the stunning cover. I just had to know what the dragon eye was all about. Did the story live up to the eye-catching cover? Read on to find out!!

From the New York Times best-selling author of Wind-Up Girl and The Water Knife comes a sweeping literary fantasy about the young scion from a ruling class family who faces rebellion as he ascends to power.

“You must be as sharp as a stilettotore’s dagger and as subtle as a fish beneath the waters. This is what it is to be Navolese, this is what it is to be di Regulai.”

In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms.

Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur—like the fossilized dragon eye in the family’s possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.

As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Navola’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.

***Thank you to Knopf for providing a copy of Navola via NetGalley. My review, however, is based on my experience listening to the audiobook and contains my honest thoughts and feelings.***

I was so excited to read Navola. Unfortunately, so many things about the book just did not work for me. I lost count of the number of times I fell asleep while listening to the audiobook. The first half of the book was so boring. I considered DNFing it multiple times because I just did not care about the characters or what was happening to them. The second half of the story did pick up and held my interest a bit more. However, many of the problems I had with the first parts remained. I did enjoy the style of the writing, though, which is one of the main things that kept me going.

One of my biggest gripes about Navola was the lack of world-building. I was looking forward to learning about a world inspired by Renaissance Italy. There just wasn’t much depth to the world-building. I never got a good sense of what the city of Navola was like or how it differed from the other cities. I was also so excited to learn about the dragon’s eye. Frustratingly, it ended up being nothing more than a glorified paperweight for most of the story. In general, I just didn’t find the world very interesting, which was a big disappointment.

Navola also promised lots of political scheming with the comparisons to Game of Thrones. It managed to disappoint on that front, too. There was plenty of scheming in the story. The reader just didn’t get to see any of it take place. There was only one POV in this entire novel, and he was nothing but a pawn of the real major players. So, we ended up seeing the results of all the political maneuvering without getting to experience any of it firsthand. It left me very frustrated with the story at times, and I often wished there had been at least one other POV.

It didn’t help that I felt absolutely nothing for Davico other than mild annoyance. The story focused so intensely on his coming-of-age and the mundanities of his life, especially in the first half. I found him to be spoiled, naïve, and extremely ungrateful for his privileges. I wish I could say my opinion of him changed by the end, especially given how dramatically his entire life fell apart. However, I still could not make myself root for him. I did love his dog, though.

Overall, Navola was just a miss for me. There were two major problems that kept this book from meeting my expectations: the lack of depth to the world-building and the singular POV being outside the political action. It didn’t help that the main character was just not someone I cared about. All of those factors coalesced into an extremely slow, and often boring, tragedy that I had no stake in. Therefore, I rate Navola 3 out of 5 stars, which is frankly me being generous.

Have you read Navola? What were your thoughts? This was my first book by Bacigalupi, and it will probably be my last. 😬