Navola - Paolo Bacigalupi

''One of the amazing feats of worldbuilding which I''ve encountered this year, or really in the last few years.'' Lev Grossman

Navola is a city built on trade.

Its palazzos and towers are conjured from its merchant wealth: barley and rice, flax and wool, iron and silver, arms, armies, lives and kingdoms are all traded here.

And presiding over it all, the Regulai bank. By guile, force of arms and the cast-iron might of their money and promises, in just three generations the Regulai family have risen far from their humble origins: merchants beg their backing, artists their patronage, princes an invitation to dine at their table. The Regulai say they are not political, but their wealth buys cities and topples kingdoms.

Soon, Davico di Regulai will take the reins of power. But the boy is not well-suited for his role. His heart is soft where it should be hard. He is credulous when he should be suspicious. He is tired of being tested and trained to inherit a legacy he is not sure he wants.

But Davico is inextricably tangled in fate’s net and his doubts can only summon ruin.

In the shade of Navola’s colonnaded porticoes, his family’s enemies gather and plot.

In the shadows of its deep catacombs, assassins sharpen their stiletto knives.

In the kingdoms of the Cerulean Peninsula, princes and despots muster their armies.

Davico’s only hope rests in the heart of a girl whose own family was destroyed by the Regulai, and in a crystalline orb the size of a human head, said to be the eye of a long-dead dragon.