I was fifty pages in when I knew this’d be a 2024 favorite. The balance of weight and whimsy in the back and forth between Demon, Angel and humanity is so compelling—every myth-y detail had me pausing to appreciate (/annotate). Vitrine is a stunning main; I loved her rage, I loved her love. I think I’ll be re-reading for years to come trying to articulate my awe for all of this book’s Bigs, even though what comes to mind are its many, precious Smalls.

Thank you so much for the eARC, NetGalley!

I genuinely wanted to love this book, but somewhere along the way, the writing began to overshadow the story itself, making it hard for me to stay connected.
At its core, this is a powerful tale of loss, grief, and deep emotional journeys, and there's so much to appreciate here. However, the prose was so lyrical and poetic that it often pulled me out of the narrative.
That said, if you're someone who thrives on rich, flowery writing and intricate prose, this book might be exactly your style!

A lyrical novella about a demon, an angel, and a fantastical city. Vitrine has nurtured, loved, and helped grow the city of Azril. When a group of angels burns the city to the ground, Vitrine's curse lodges in one of them, and he is bound to forever haunt the city - and, by extension, Vitrine. As the city begins to slowly rebuild into something new, Vitrine and the angel are locked in a love-hate relationship. I love Vo's writing so much; she clearly labors over every word until only the best remain. This was an epic story about transformation and love, and the perspective of eternal beings and how time is experienced differently for them. Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group / Tordotcom for a digital review copy.

I wanted this to be longer. I loved that it managed to cover over 300 years in a very short time.

They love/hate between the two main characters was dynamic and truly engaging. You really feel the pain of watching a city die and the joy of watching it be reborn even though it’ll never be the paradise it once was.

This could easily have been 100 more pages and I wouldn’t have complained one bit.

Haunting. Elegiac. Unexpected. Wondrous. Strange.

These are some of the words that sprung to mind when I was reading this novella. All used in the best possible way. For a large part of the story, I wasn't sure where it was going or how it would end, but that didn't matter because there was something deeply, and at times darkly, compelling about it. Vo's writing is as magical and (successfully) experimental as ever, and the meditations on cities, humans, civilisation, memory, and story unexpected but not at all unwelcome. A story I won't forget in a hurry!

This is a very character driven book, with the plot mostly revolving around the relationship between two characters. The characters were interesting but I felt like the cast of background characters was underutilized and could have been more present. I also felt like this was a good length, had it been longer it would've dragged to the end.

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo is a beautifully written novella that weaves a story through history, time, and the eternal clash between angel and demon. The lyrical prose creates an enchanting yet existential journey, told from the perspective of a demon, that dives deep into philosophical themes of life, existence, and identity. The world-building is immersive and thought-provoking and explores grief, anger, joy, and love.

However, I found it challenging to connect with the characters, as the focus on lyrical writing sometimes creates a distance for me. The ending was unexpected, and I found myself rereading the final pages several times to fully grasp its meaning. To make sure what I read was true and made me curious about rereading again to make sense of the story and relationship. Overall, it's a perfect novella for those who appreciate philosophical, existential themes wrapped in beautiful, reflective writing.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook to review through NetGalley..

Thoughts: I was incredibly excited to read this but ended up being fairly disappointed. This tells the story of a demon, Vitrine, who has built up the city of Azril only to have it destroyed by a host of angels. When she infects one of the angels with part of herself he is not allowed to return home and is forced to stay by Vitrine's side. We follow Vitrine and the angel through the ages as Vitrine struggles to build up a new Azril and protect it from threats.

This is written in a very flowery, somewhat hard to access style that I struggled to stay engaged with. The beginning of the book is especially slow paced; this is a bit better in the last quarter of the book. The book jumps between past and present, and sometimes it takes a bit to figure out if you are in the past or present when you start a new chapter.

As you get to the last third of the book, some intriguing characters are introduced. However, they are never around very long because this book is written on the scale of angels and demons, who measure time in decades and centuries.

I struggled to have any interest in Vitrine or the angel. Vitrine does not show growth or change throughout the book but remains selfish and unwilling to let go of the past. The angel changes more but is kept at a distance from the reader, and because of this, it feels very two dimensional.

The ending was just kind of odd and I wasn't sure what to think about it.

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this was beautifully written but strangely slow and hard to engage with. If you enjoy beautiful, lyrically written, slow paced, somewhat ambiguous stories about things on a godlike time scale you might enjoy this. It is intriguing idea but just wasn't quite there on execution. It most definitely was not one of my favorite reads by Vo, but part of that could be the style of writing here. I just found the story and writing not to be very accessible.

This is a fantastic novella! Classic Nghi Vo with brilliantly beautiful storytelling with fascinating worldbuilding and characters.

The City of Azril is watched over by a demon, even after the day the angels arrived and destroyed it all. We follow said demon as they work to rebuild the city in the image of what it was, even if that is not possible.

This provides the classic Vo moments of short form storytelling, but these span massive periods of time effortlessly creating a full image of the process despite the small page count. This gave me flavours of Sandman, This is How You Lose the Time War, and Singing Hills Cycle all combined.

I am relatively new to Nghi Vo and now I want to read pretty much everything she has ever written.

There is so much that is enchanting about this book.

I love the idea of an immortal being having a long-term connection to, basically a relationship with, a particular place and group of people. What that looks like over a long period of time is a key part of what Vo is looking at here. I think connection to place is something that we don't talk about enough.

And then there's the fact that the main protagonist is called a demon, while the antagonist is an angel... nice work on the challenging expectations and flipping conventions, Vo.

The writing itself is also just a delight. This was such an easy book to read - it was so easy to just KEEP reading, to be sucked into the world and desperately need to know what was going to happen. This is always a good sign.

I remain delighted to have read this.

A demon has been the watcher and creator of a small city, until angels come to destroy it.
The demon cursed one of the angels who was then doomed to stick around the city as the demon rebuilds it.

This book just did not do it for me. The writing was odd and just surface level.

The writing for this novella is so magical, but I did get lost at some points with the plot, especially in the romance aspect. Overall, this is a good story, however it could be twitched and polished a bit more.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Macmillan/Tor for an advanced reader's copy of the book. I love Nghi Vo's writing and I was super excited to read a new release for her. Her latest, The City in Glass, is a novella that explores themes of creation, destruction, grief, and the history that we create. Follow two main characters, an unnamed Angel and the demon Virtrine as the city of Azril rise and fall through generations. Vo's writing is beautiful, but this book was a miss for me. The lack of an actual plot made the short read a bit hard to concentrate. This book was too existential for me, but it might work for other readers. While this particular release didn't work for me, I still do enjoy Vo's writing and I look forward to reading to her future releases.

This might have been the slowest book I’ve ever read. And it’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s just this slow, sort of meandering story, very melancholy and full of grief.

So, this is the story of Vitrine, a demon, and the city of Azril, which she helped to build over hundreds of years. Until the angels come and completely destroy it. In her grief and anger she curses one of the angels and because of this he is not allowed to returned to his brethren anymore. So, he sort of hangs around and helps Vitrine to rebuild Azril.

Throughout most of the book, probably the first 75% or so, it’s mostly Vitrine grieving for what she’s lost and trying to figure out how to recreate it. There are many flashbacks to the past when Azril was thriving, with Vitrine looking at all of the people she’s loved and lost.

I feel like this book is saying a lot, but I wasn’t necessarily understanding it all. There are the obvious themes of grief, and of family, as well as all different kinds of love. Though I think the main thing that I got from the book is that, regardless of how difficult it can be to let go of something you love, it’s important to remember how it was, to remember the love and the joy, but that it can never be the same again. And that even if it’s not the same, that doesn’t mean it’s not as good or important, it’s just different, and that’s okay.

The way that Vitrine was written was really interesting; not at all how you would expect a demon to behave in some things, but then absolutely demonic in others.

I had a really difficult time understanding the relationship between Vitrine and the angel. And I did not understand the ending at all, so if someone would like to explain what exactly happened, that would be great. 😅

If it weren’t for the ending, this likely would have been a 5 star read. Maybe as I sit with it, and turn it around in my mind, it will make sense and I’ll change the rating, but for now, this is a really solid 4 star read.

There's a strange and savage beauty to all of Nghi Vo's books and for me, it's always a delight to get lost in her stories spun from magic. There's just really no other explanation for it.

I think it will be heard to sell people on a story about a demon who fled from her city, founded a new one, watched that one get burned down by angels, and still persevered and grew to love yet another city. To explain how her grief and love and wonder makes this one of the strangest and saddest and most beautiful things you will read this year. But please try.

This standalone novel by Hugo-winning author Nghi Vo charts the history of a city through the angel and demon who make it. She spins a tale of love, death and change as we follow the demon Vitrine as she attempts to nurture the city of Azril in her own way.
The writing was beautiful and this lyrical tale was truly original.
A recommended read for fans of This is How You Lose The Time War, Ursula LeGuin, and characters who do not conform to human expectations.

the first half tempted me to dnf multiple times, but vo’s writing style kept me hoping for more. after about 55-60% the book pushed into a beautiful, complex narrative web and i’m still glad i picked it up. maybe this has more to do with my lack of patience required for millennia of slow change (i would make a terrible eternal being like vitrine or her angel).

many thanks to tor publishing group and netgalley for the advance reader copy.

I really enjoyed this book! I was worried that it wasn't going to pack the same punch as a standard length fantasy novel but it really did. Nghi Vo's writing style was so fantastic that I was immediately immersed in Vitrine's world. The writing was lyrical and flowing and it was an amazing element to the story. I always love a story about angels and demons and I feel like Vo had a fresh twist on the typical demon mythology.

Personally, I did not enjoy this book purely because I believe the writing style was aiming to be something it wasn’t. I really enjoyed the idea of the book as well as the love she had for her city but the writing style really threw me off throughout the entire book.

I’ve only recently discovered this author, and my first introduction was to jump in to the middle of an ongoing series of novellas. Which, objectively, was probably a foolish decision. But it does serve as a testament to the skills of the author that I still found myself fully drawn in and enjoying my read, even as I met these characters and this world for the first time! That being the case, however, I was excited when I saw that she was releasing a new stand-alone fantasy novella! Perfect for a relative newbie like me!

The very premise of this book sounded like it was right up my alley! I love second-world fantasy stories like this, the sort that require elaborate and detailed world-building on the author’s part to weave together a landscape completely foreign to our own. Add on top of that the rather classic angel/demon enemies-to-lovers storyline, and I was in! These expectations, based on the short summary we were given, were both perfectly on point for what this book has to offer and a bit misleading.

The concept was just as described, but there’s no emphasizing enough the powerful writing that went into describing the unique relationship between the city and the chaotic demon, Vitrine. She’s a demon in the truest sense, in that she’s passionate but unpredictable, as much a patron to her city as she is a force similar to the weather, capricious and destructive. But what really sells the heart of this story, is the tragedy that follows. The loss of her city and then the endless battle she finds herself in with the angel that wrought it.

I think I have certain expectations (whether good or bad, who knows) about what enemies-to-lovers stories look like. And, if you’re a fan of that sort of romance, you probably do too. Well, I’m here to say that this isn’t that! This is a devastating exploration of two beings destined to hate one another who cautiously become intrigued and then slowly beguiled by the other. However, none of these feelings undo the massive tragedy that came before, and a sense of darkness looms throughout. The ending is also not a “romance” ending, if you know what I mean. Instead, it was as strange, beautiful, and tragic as everything that came before in this book.

For all that I loved about this book (beautiful writing, creative world-building, complicated characters), I would have a hard time saying that I “enjoyed” this read. It’s not that kind of book. Beach read, this is not. However, readers who enjoy this author or who are looking for a lyrical, more complicated, approach to the oh-so-popular enemies-to-lovers storyline should definitely check this one out!

Rating 8: Beautiful and tragic, this book explores themes of loss and re-birth all through the lens of two fantastic characters, an angel and a demon.

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