Navola would stand among the best of its genre even if a second volume never appeared ... Bacigalupi writes well enough that the book would be commendable even if the protagonist’s idyll continued to its last page.
Bacigalupi’s... new genre-bending fantasy is a coming-of-age tale set in a mob-like family, full of intrigue, betrayal, and the lust for power, status, and money.
[An] addictive account of the rivalries between powerful families in a brilliantly rendered fantastical world ... Admirers of Game of Thrones and Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolò series will be riveted.
The novel’s climax shares significant elements with... Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber (1970). Perhaps both authors drew from the same historical source; perhaps it’s an homage. It’s a bit jarring when so much of the story has a wonderful freshness to it. But regardless of the source, the book employs these plot elements extremely effectively. And it is clear that Bacigalupi has his own kind of epic in mind.
