A bit different from the author’s climate dystopia fiction I’ve read in the past, but still pretty good! The initial portion of the book, describing young Davico di Regulai’s coming of age in the city-state of Navola (a Venice/Florence analog in a fictional renaissance Italy) reminded me a lot of some of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Italy-analog books I’ve read. The fabulously wealthy di Regulai family (like the real-world de Medici) control a powerful bank, effectively control the city of Navola and have great influence far beyond in their Mediterrean-esque world. The family’s power and skill at dealing in political intrigue have grown generation by generation. Davico’s father, Devonaci, provides his son top notch security and the best tutors (in business, swordplay, and skullduggery) as well as adopting a sister for him in the person of Celia de Balcosi, a girl Davico’s age from a family punished with exile for defying Devonaci and who becomes a true friend to the growing Davico.

There’s only a slight touch of the supernatural in this world, in the form of an ancient, otherworldly fossilized dragon eye that Devonaci keeps in his library, mainly to impress visitors. Somehow Davico is attuned to the eye, which still is inhabited by an intelligence which only he can detect, which gives him (occasionally) a sixth sense of sorts.

The book kind of starts slow, but does a great job of world-building and getting the reader interested in the life of Davico, under such pressure to be a master of faccioscuro (the skill of always hiding your true intentions) and to live up to his mighty birthright that he becomes physically sick. Halfway through there’s a sudden swerve to horny-town, but I’ll let this pass since it IS a coming-of-age story and Davico is …well, a horny teenager at this point. 

But then it suddenly speeds up a lot, and I’ll confess it did not go where I had expected. Almost seemed like author realized “hmmm, cool world I’ve created; now I better put together a plot!”

<SPOILER WARNING>

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In a nutshell, Devonaci has grand schemes involving Davico and Celia, intending to marry her off to a neighboring rival. Davico has fallen in love with her though, and objects; yet is manipulated into helping out with the alliance negotiations anyway. Suddenly, all these plans are dashed when a character long relegated to the background of the story treacherously attacks the family, murdering basically everyone we’ve gotten to know and locking Davico in a dark dungeon under his former mansion. Oh, and before that he is blinded by Celia, with a dagger … partially in an effort to spare his life (since he is more harmless if scarred) but also out of some measure of revenge for what Devonaci did to her own family and how he was planning to use her as a bargaining chip. Davico-Celia relationship is complicated.

We don’t hear of Celia’s exact fate. But Davico spends a good few years in the dungeon, living on food scraps and the occasional rat, and tormented by the guards. He’s trotted out for the birthday feast of his captor, the cruel ruler of the Navola, as a warning to those who might be thinking of plotting against him. At one of these feasts, Davico insults the ruler who decrees that Davico is to be fed only cut-off portions of his own body (eww…) until he dies. Luckily, Davico is able to make his connection with the dragon eye again, and is able to escape to the mountains. He sees through the dragon eye, and uses its powers in other ways; in return he provides the dragon souls to eat. So, yeah, he kind of becomes the bogeyman of the mountains, I guess.

Cool villain origin story!