I think I missed the memo on what others are raving about with this book. It was an okay story with so-so characters. It was interesting enough to have me keep reading and finish the book, but I can't say that it was engrossing.

The City In Glass by Nghi Vo
3/5

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

This was a story so deeply entrenched in its own beauty that it failed to capture me beyond surface level appreciation. I am genuinely impressed by Vo's beautiful writing but there was just so much of it without anything actually happening plot-wise that I couldn't help but find myself skimming through and looking for the next story beat. I can't think of a better summary than "all vibes no plot", especially considering that the main hook of the blurb didn't come into play until the very last pages! I've seen comparisons to "This Is How You Lose The Time War" which I understand, but the relationship in this felt much barer and the pacing far slower, both of which worked against it for me.

The writing style and abstract time jumps all contributed to a feeling of disconnect with the subject matter. I appreciated Vitrine's love of her city but we only got a brief introduction to her time within it, and while her memories were nice, they were so separated from our situation that I wasn't wholly engaged with them. The Angel was a sympathetic character in some ways and I was most intrigued by his potential character arc, so the choice of ending was bittersweet for me.

I can see how many people love this book, but I needed a firmer plot structure to hold onto and without it I was a bit disappointed.

"Because it was written at the beginning of their world that they could not die, every demon knew the trick of bringing themselves back from death. They might sight the far flags of death's pavilions, but they knew they were not welcome."

A demon and an angel in a city that was destroyed and rebuilt over generations. This story reads like a fable, following the perspective of the demon of Azril, the city she loves. The prose is lush and abstract, and our window into the story is through the eyes of an ageless creature, for whom years pass like days and the lifespans of humans are only brief interludes. I really enjoy this sort of vibes-based storytelling, but readers should be aware that this isn't action-packed.

A love letter to sprawling cities in which mischievous demons and destructive Angels sit within its ruins. Unfortunately the desire for poetry stands in the way of a coherent plot.

Vo is an elegant writer who has mastered the art of purple prose. However, I found this book to be a little bit too much vibes and not enough plot to keep my interest. The tale of the city is told through the memories of Vitrine over centuries but does little to situate the reader in the story.

Lacking footholds, it's a rare miss for me with Vo but I won't be recommending this read.

A demon nurtures her beloved city only to see it razed to cinders by angels. She curses one of them and binds him with her grief and anger. Together, they set about rebuilding the city.

The angel and demon do not exhibit humanness - they are definitely ”other”.
It was fascinating to see how they behaved and exhibited emotions such as love, fear, loss etc.
the writing is incredibly flowery - syrup thick in its purple prose. It takes effort to read. And is mostly vibes, little plot. Whilst I consider the relationship between the demon and angel to be “viciously romantic”, this is NOT a romance. That ending was rough and my shipper heart suffered but it felt right for the beings they are.

https://youtube.com/@chanelchapters

Favorite Quote: The city in the south would go the way of limestone, crumbling into the desert until nothing was left but an archaeological layer of dark gray ash and sorrow.

Story Synopsis: Vitrine is a demon - ancient and powerful - who loves her city of Azril more than anything. Over the centuries, she walked among Azril’s people, accepting their offerings, matchmaking, and raising the city like a mother raises a child.

When the angels come, Azril is destroyed in front of Vitrine’s eyes.

Vitrine diligently kept a book of names in a safe place of all the humans she loved over the years. After the destruction of Azril, the book is all she has left… the book and a wingless angel whom she cursed to never leave the city he destroyed.

As Vitrine mourns her city and begins to rebuild, she finds herself locked in both love and hatred with the angel. Together, they shape a new Azril and help its inhabitants with new challenges and new humans to love. When war approaches Azril’s borders again, Vitrine and the angel must determine how their interactions will shape their lives and those residing in Azril.

Why does this book beguile? I was super excited to read this book because it’s not every day you find a standalone fantasy novel - especially one that’s short! The City in Glass is beautifully written: descriptive and immersive. I enjoyed how the main character was a demon who lived for centuries and each of the humans she interacted with was a blip on her radar of living. Vo does an excellent job of building the tension between Vitrine (the demon) and the angel counterpart to create a will-they-won’t-they/enemies-to-lovers-to-enemies situation, and you don’t know where anything will fall. The City in Glass by Nghi Vo is a different and short fantasy novel that all high fantasy readers will enjoy.

Title: The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy
Pub Date: October 1, 2024

"𝐁𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬, 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝, 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐲"

Otherworldly Beings
Standalone Fantasy
Enemies to Lovers
Lyrical Prose
Multigenerational Story

Another reviewer likened reading The City in Glass to reading a very, very long prologue and I couldn't agree more. The writing is beautiful, less like a story and more like reading a poem. This story is one of love, devotion and destruction.
Essentially, an angel is tasked with destroying a city beloved by a demon, so the demon curses the angel and he's unable to return home. The demon spends many generations trying to rebuild what once was, the angel at her side.

⭐️ 3.5/5

Thank you so much, NetGalley and @tordotcompub for the digital review copy

This was such a unique and vibey book! While the prose was beautiful it wasn’t quite my style but that didn’t take away from it being a great book that I think many people will fall in love with. The characters were so interesting and the setting was unique as well. I don’t think I have read anything quite like it and that is a good thing. Will be adding to our library 100%.

You know how in a lot of books, there's a prologue that's written in really flowery, poetic language?
It might be retelling a myth or legend, and it's it's probably set a long time ago and somewhere far away?

And then it ends, and you get to Chapter One, and things are suddenly 'normal' and there are relatable characters introduced, and regular dialogue, &c, &c. And it's always a little disappointing.

Well, this whole book is like that prologue. It tells the story of a demon/avatar that is devoted to a city, and the fearsome angel assigned(?) to destroy that city.

Whether you like it will largely depend on whether you enjoy the writing. The language is beautiful - it's like a long prose-poem. But the writing style also makes the setting and characters feel very abstract and distant.

My love for Nghi Vo increases with each story that she writes. Her lush prose and the feral bite of its edges is a delight, no matter what world she chooses to explore. The City in Glass does so much in such a short time, creating a love affair between a demon and her city that feels as real as any human romance. I could easily see selling this to people who love This is How You Lose the Time War, for its imagination and the intimacy of the relationships within a vast and wondrous world.

Brilliant writing, as to be expected from Nghi Vo. Azril comes to life as much of a character as Vitrine and the nameless angel. The pacing goes slightly off in between, but the high fantasy effect remains powerfully in place throughout.

I'd like to start this off by saying this cover art is some of the coolest I've seen in ages. It fits the vibe of the story perfectly. This one was a little weird to start out with, but it really grew on me.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC!
I was so captivated by the writing style and story telling. It was so dark and moody. Fans of Madeline Miller would definitely love this one. The line writing was so beautiful and felt like a fresh glass of water. Let it be known that this is one of those stories that is mostly vibes and not a lot of plot, but that is what I loved about it!

I don’t know if I’ll ever recover. No one writes like Nghi Vo. A demon and angel fall in love in the ruins of an ancient city. The city itself is love. What an epic love story about life and death, grief, and the weight and beauty of moving on. Gorgeous on every page.

The City in Glass's book blurb compared it to Calvino - and I definitely see this comparison, especially if you've ever read Invisible Cities! I think if you enjoy literary pieces that are "all vibes no plot", The City in Glass is a great place to start if you want to stick a toe into fantasy waters. If readers walk into this expecting a more typical genre fantasy or genre romance book, I think they might be disappointed. For this reason, while I like the cover, I don't actually think it accurately reflects the story itself.

At its heart, The City in Glass follows the relationship between a demon named Vitrine and her city, Azril. As the city rises and falls over time (including getting destroyed by angels, one of which is cursed to haunt the city), we follow Vitrine navigate grief, hope and memory to rebuild her city anew. While there are other characters that come and go (the story takes place across multiple centuries), it's really Vitrine's relationship with the city of her memory, and the city as it grows anew, that is the center heartstring of this novella.

This is my first piece by Vo but I know she has written other fantasy-categorized pieces, so I'm not sure if this is her typical writing style and approach. I'd be interested in trying more from her, but I think I'd have to be in the right mood.

I got my eARC from Netgalley and Tor Publishing! The City in Glass releases October 1, 2024!

With The City in Glass, Nghi Vo has created yet another world that I couldn’t step away from. While the absolute poetry of the writing made me want to slow down and savor this book, I couldn’t tear myself from its pages and instead have just promised myself rereads.

The plot follows Vitrine, a demon who is essentially playing a multi generational game of the SIMs with one particular city. She has followed family lines over centuries, helping to shape what the city becomes, and she loves it and the people in it tremendously. But one day a group of angels is sent to obliterate her beloved city, and Vitrine is left deep in grief and not knowing how to even begin rebuilding after such a devastating blow to her life’s work and the loss of people she cared for. As she navigates that grief she curses one of the angels, who shadows Vitrine as she rebuilds, and gives her a place to hone her anger.

As in Vo’s other works, this world is queer normative. The relationships described in Vitrine’s rebuilt city include lesbian, gay and trans characters.

The resolution of the relationship between Vitrine and the angel is a striking metaphor that I won’t ruin here, but it left me feeling like I immediately wanted to discuss the ideas therein. Its imagery alone is beautiful, but the idea of (after hundreds of years) finally feeling safe enough to let what you care about most live outside yourself is so potent to me, and watching Vitrine’s path through her anger and grief felt so curative for my own anger and grief at losses I’ve experienced.

I was astounded as what a punch this book packs, for as quick a read as it is. I’m very thankful to Netgalley and Tor for an advance copy of this book. It’s definitely one I’m going to buy for myself.

From the very first chapter, I was struck by the imagery. So powerful, strange, fragile, defiant, and angry! I could really just sink my teeth into the prose. A quick read through centuries of fortune, destruction, and freedom.

Overall I really liked this story and my favourite thing were the characters. It was very unique in writing (I’m new to this author) and it did leave me with some questions throughout but got to me on an emotional level. The pacing was good and the story true to the premise!

5/5 stars
Recommended if you like: angels and demons, enemies to lovers, multigenerational stories, setting as a character

This review has been posted to Goodreads as of 5/31 and my review blog as of 6/13, and will be posted to Instagram 6/30.

This is an interesting book. It reminds me a little bit of City of Stardust or one of Neil Gaiman's books. The story is about Vitrine, sure, but I think it's more about the city of Azril and the way that it changes and the way that it's loved. There is tension in the book, but it isn't the tension of arguments or conflicts (though both are present) but rather the tension of the unending march of time.

Vitrine loves Azril. She had a hand in shaping it and raised it from what was essentially a pirate's cove into one of the greatest cities in the world. Naturally, she loses her shit a little bit when the angels destroy the city. But just because it's gone doesn't mean she's ready to give Azril up.

I really liked seeing how Vitrine made and remade the city. It was super interesting how things changed through time and how she made certain things fit together so that she got the result she was looking for. She wanted a strong leader for the city, so she convinced the pirate king's daughter to be cunning and vicious. She wanted silks and jewels, and so she coaxed traders from all over to come to the city. This could easily have become about Vitrine's ambitions, but never once did it come across that way. Instead, it was Vitrine's desires for the city and the way Azril and its people grew and blossomed that was the focus. I enjoyed getting to know Azril's various faces over time, both the good and the bad.

Vitrine and her siblings are called a demon and the beings who destroy Azril are called angels, but we never really get the distinction between the two. Both have powers, though the angels seem more remote and cold compared to the demons, who clearly have passions. The angels burned a city and all its, and Vitrine helped build it up again, but Vitrine's angel is more distressed by murder than she, who sees it as part of the natural cycle. Demons and angels do seem to have some natural repellant to one another, as it's mentioned more than once that there's a stinging or burning sensation if one touches the other.

Now, despite Vitrine's love for her city and her seeming care and understanding toward humans, she can be vicious. She knows every occupant of Azril and their ancestors, grieves them deeply once they're gone, but she curses one of the angels who destroyed Azril, thus casting him forevermore from his homeland, and for a very, very long time that rage of hers is immutable. She shows it in terrible ways too, striving to find something that makes her feel better about what occurred...but her grief is also immutable for just as long. The two go hand in hand, and I liked the dynamic of seeing those two emotions in conjunction with one another.

The angel is a little harder to pinpoint. For one, he's not the main character, though he is in most of the story. But he's also slower to exhibit deep emotion. As the story progresses, feelings seem to become more accessible to him and it's clear he develops attachments. Interestingly, one of those attachments is to Vitrine, whom he can't seem to help but care for.

As the story progresses, the two enter into a kind of neutral existence that develops into one of friendship. They clear Azril of the rubble and slowly grow it back into a city of world renowned. Vitrine, though angry at first that the occupants are not 'her' Azril's occupants, comes to love the newcomers. And the angel, interestingly enough, comes to love humans as well. Like Vitrine, he has some he favors over others, and those are the ones he worries about and protects in particular.

I say in the 'recommended' byline that this is enemies to lovers. And it is. But it's not a romance. Vitrine and the angel do not kiss and forgive. That's not who they are, and the love they have for one another is different than that. They spend centuries together, watch the new Azril rise and fill with people and change. They work in conjunction to guide it and protect it, and over time they come to guide and protect one another as well. By the end their love for one another is clear, but romantic the story is not.

Overall I enjoyed this book and loved the lyrical writing. While it's from Vitrine's POV, I would venture to say Azril is the main character of the story. I definitely recommend if you're looking for a good read about love and grief and time.

First, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have never read anything by Nghi Vo before, but I've heard good things. When this came up on NetGalley, I figured it was a good opportunity to try her work.

This short novel deals with history, change, and grief in unique ways, as a demon watches as "her" city is destroyed by angels, and then tries to help it rise again. The story is lyrical and atmospheric, and some of the writing is downright lovely. I will warn, however, that this novel is largely about creating impressions and inciting emotion. If you're looking for straightforward answers and explanations, you will not get those. If, for example, you want to know things like why exactly the angels destroyed the city and what exactly angels and demons are in this version of the world, you're going to be disappointed. That was fine with me; you can tell immediately that this is not going to be that kind of book, and you can either roll with that, or you can't. I rolled with it.

The story traces various vignettes of the demon's experiences in the city over the years, as well as the lives of some of the citizens who have caught her attention throughout the generations. It worked very well with a novel this length. In a longer book, it could have gotten old after a while, but here I felt it was very successful. This is also the story of her relationship with one of the angels who destroys the city and then winds up stuck with her. However, the description of the book categorizes this as "a love story," and I see a "romance" tag on it on Goodreads. If you go into this thinking you're getting some sort of Hallmark/rom-com love story, you are going to wind up traumatized. I would never describe this book as a love story or romance. I am not someone who reads or likes many romance novels, and the people I know that are big romance fans are not people who I would think of as the target audience for this book. This is not some "meet cute" or Good Omens quasi comedy. The relationship between the two characters is incredibly complicated, and even downright abusive and hateful at times. Imagine if someone destroyed your hometown and everyone in it, and then you had to live in close contact with them for generations. That's the situation that happens here.

I really enjoyed that both the angel and demon felt genuinely otherworldly and alien, as you would expect such entities to be if they were real. They aren't, like in so many stories, just glossed over versions of "good" and "bad" people. Both are capable of great love and great destruction. I am also a fan of the fact that the demon doesn't wind up as being basically good with a veneer of mischief in the end. This so often happens in stories where a supposedly evil character is the protagonist, but over time we see they're just misunderstood. Nope, not here. The demon does some awful stuff and doesn't care, because she's a demon and that's what she does. Likewise, the angel does some awful stuff, and doesn't care, because he's and angel and that's what he does. This really helped sell the characters for me. They also don't think of love, grief, loss, etc. in the same way humans would, which again, feels realistic if such entities existed.

Overall, I thought this was a unique, well-written book that told a story in ways I haven't seen before. It has convinced me to check out more of the author's work. If you are interested in a serious, dark story that takes place over generations and deals with grief and rebuilding in the wake of tragedy, this is a good pick.