Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
Navola, Paolo Bacigalupi (Knopf 978-0-59353-505-9, $30.00, 576pp, hc) July 2024.
Without meaning to stir up those enthusiastic taxonomists who are determined to Let No Subgenre Go Unlabeled, is there a term for the sort of historical fantasy that draws on recognizable times and places, but replaces familiar geographical, historical, or mythical names with invented ones, and often employs only minimal supernatural or magical elements? Guy Gavriel Kay seems to favor the notion of historical fiction “with a quarter turn to the fantastic,” but he’s far from the only practitioner of the form; K.J. Parker has been working out his alternate European history, mythology, philosophy, and religion for something like a quarter-century, and Joe Abercrombie has been at it for nearly as long. (No doubt there are many other examples that could be cited by fantasy readers more assiduous than myself.) Not surprisingly, the labyrinthine scheming of medieval or Renaissance Florentine politics provides inspiration for many of these, just as it has for writers going all the way back to Dante. Nor is it surprising, then, that we should find echoes of it in Paolo Bacigalupi’s first full-length foray into historical fantasy, Navola. The wealthy city of the title isn’t quite Florence – it’s a seaport, for one thing – but there are references to a northern country much like Germany and an ocean much like the Mediterranean, and even a rival family named Borraghese, whose “blood feuds and revenge intrigues” inevitably suggest the Borgias.
Bacigalupi goes a step further in reinventing history by peppering the language of his young narrator, Davico di Regulai, with all sorts of Italianate or Latinate terms like “faccioscura” (a sort of poker face), “archinomo nobilii anciens,” or (my favorite) “stilettotore.” Most of these are made clear by context, and they add to the sense of combined familiarity and estrangement that contributes to the novel’s masterfully controlled tone, which ranges from that of a rather familiar coming-of-age tale – an idealistic young man who would rather commune with nature than learn his family’s complex mercantile business – to a historical romance of young love involving his adopted (or more correctly, abducted) sister Celia (whose own family has been banished by Davico’s father as punishment for betrayal), finally shifting into a powerful and disturbingly violent horror story of treachery, torture, and revenge. The Borgias and Sforzas had nothing on these guys.
The environmental themes which established Bacigalupi’s SF reputation are only faintly hinted at, although we learn that the Navolese view the world in two aspects: Cambios, or “that which man touched and influenced,” and Firmos, “that which lay beyond human power;” i.e., nature. This is hardly an original distinction, but it speaks to the ways in which Bacigalupi has worked out the texture of this society, including its myths, legends, and philosophies, a few of which earn their own interpolated chapters. For Davico, “Firmos was welcoming as the politics of Navola were not. A tree rustling in the wind did not lie, the clouds did not lie, the deer in the forest did not lie, the flowers as they opened their petals to the sun did not lie.” But, as Davico will eventually learn at great cost, lying and scheming are essential to survival in Navola. There may be a third aspect to his world, though, as represented by the novel’s most significant fantastic element: a dragon’s eye which his father keeps on his desk, and which may be the only surviving artifact of an earlier age of dragons. Neither alive nor quite dead, it comes to exert a powerful influence over Davico during times of stress, and Bacigalupi shrewdly manages our expectations as to when or if its full powers might emerge.
Bacigalupi has long been skilled at drawing characters seeking equilibrium while being buffeted by forces beyond their control, and Davico may be his strongest such character yet. From recalling memories of childhood, when he almost touchingly sought to impress Celia by introducing her to his dog and his horse, through a deepening adolescent infatuation and a few romantic interludes – even though he is often reminded that no political advantage can be gained by their partnership – his voice gradually deepens and hardens as he begins to learn the complex calculus of betrayal and manipulation that is his family’s stock in trade. Celia is an equally fascinating figure, kept just enigmatic enough that a startling reversal late in the narrative shocks without entirely surprising us. Secondary characters are strongly drawn as well – Davico’s brilliant but ruthless father; the father’s wise concubine Ashia, skilled in the arts of surviving without power; his bodyguard Aghan Khan; and his enforcer and skilled stilettotore Cazzetta. Needless to say, not all these figures will make it to the end of Navola, but the novel concludes on a note that clearly sets up the promised sequel, while completing an arc that returns Davico to the beloved Firmos of his childhood – but this time with plans. On the basis of this compelling and thoroughly immersive beginning, most readers will be impatient to learn just what those plans are, and what’s really going on with that increasingly intrusive dragon’s eye. It’s undeniably new territory for Bacigalupi, and it’s a pleasure to report that his most impressive narrative strengths have ported over intact.
Gary K. Wolfe is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at Roosevelt University and a reviewer for Locus magazine since 1991. His reviews have been collected in Soundings (BSFA Award 2006; Hugo nominee), Bearings (Hugo nominee 2011), and Sightings (2011), and his Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature (Wesleyan) received the Locus Award in 2012. Earlier books include The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (Eaton Award, 1981), Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever (with Ellen Weil, 2002), and David Lindsay (1982). For the Library of America, he edited American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s in 2012, and a similar set for the 1960s. He has received the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association, the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and a Special World Fantasy Award for criticism. His 24-lecture series How Great Science Fiction Works appeared from The Great Courses in 2016. He has received six Hugo nominations, two for his reviews collections and four for The Coode Street Podcast, which he has co-hosted with Jonathan Strahan for more than 300 episodes. He lives in Chicago.
This review and more like it in the June 2024 issue of Locus.
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