Navola – Bacigalupi Paolo (2024)

The city of Navola is built on trade, its palazzos and towers rising from merchant wealth in barley and rice, flax and wool, iron and silver, arms, armies, lives and kingdoms. At the heart of its power stands the Regulai bank. Through cunning, force of arms and the cast-iron strength of money and promises, the Regulai family has risen from humble origins in just three generations: merchants seek their backing, artists their patronage and princes their invitations. Though the Regulai claim to be apolitical, their wealth buys cities and topples kingdoms. Davico di Regulai is soon to inherit this power, but the boy is ill-suited to the role. His heart is soft where it should be hard, he is trusting when he should be suspicious, and he is weary of being trained for a legacy he is not sure he wants. Yet fate has him in its grip, and his doubts may summon ruin. As enemies plot beneath Navola’s colonnaded porticoes, assassins sharpen their knives in its catacombs and princes and despots muster armies across the kingdoms of the Cerulean Peninsula, Davico’s only hope lies with a girl whose family was destroyed by the Regulai and a crystalline orb the size of a human head, said to be the eye of a long-dead dragon.