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Navola  By  cover art

Navola

By: Paolo Bacigalupi
Narrated by: Marc Vietor
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Publisher's summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Windup 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.

"Steeped in poison, betrayal, and debauchery, reading Navola is like slipping into a luxurious bath full of blood." (Holly Black, number one New York Times best-selling author)

"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 diplomacy: 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 Nalova’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.

©2024 Paolo Bacigalupi (P)2024 Audible, Inc.

About the Creator

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of The Water Knife and The Windup Girl, as well as the YA novel Ship Breaker, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has won a Hugo and a Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and he is a three-time winner of the Locus Award. He lives in Colorado.

About the Performer

Marc Vietor is a narrator, voice actor, and theater director. He’s narrated almost 300 books, including 1Q84, The Deptford Trilogy, Pale Fire, Lucifer’s Hammer, and Hyperion. He has been nominated for a SOVA Award and five Audies and appears on the multicast Audie-winning Dracula (2012). He’s also the recipient of five Earphones Excellence Awards from AudioFile Magazine, most recently for Second Hand Curses (2019) .
He's worked as a theater director at The Bucks County Playhouse, The Red Bull Theater Company, The NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program, and at Yale. His production of The School For Scandal at The Lucille Lortel received the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Revival 2017.
As an actor he’s worked on and off Broadway at The Mint Theater, HERE, NYSF, The Old Globe Theater, The Roundabout, The Huntington Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), The Arena Stage, The Westport Country Playhouse, Ravinia Music Festival, The O’Neill Center, The Kennedy Center, South Coast Repertory, The Prince Music Theatre, The Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Theatre for a New Audience, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Sundance Theatre Lab. He’s a graduate of Yale College and Juilliard Drama Division.

What listeners say about Navola

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    5 out of 5 stars

Slow to start, but ultimately a very satisfying read/listen

This is not as compelling as Water Knife (Bacigalupi’s masterwork so far IMO) and the pace is sometimes slow as he wanders into describing details of details, BUT it is a promising beginning to a new series with an author who has established writing chops.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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I tried

Loved the Wind Up girl…this is not the Wind Up girl…more like a day time soap. Well written but lacking originality.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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This audiobook is straight heat

It never gets boring, I’ve been at work doing mindless tasks for hours, story is so good, I wouldn’t be able to tell
what these tasks were, my phone might not make it past chapter 20

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Snooze

This book hardly has any plot or character development. The world building is kind of fun, but God what a slog.

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