This is a book of beauty: elegant prose captures the sadness and inevitability of death as a part of life. It's an inventive book: it captures and makes relatable motivations that are fundamentally inhuman, and looks at the death of civilisations in what felt like a novel way. I have complained about Vo's novellas that they don't have enough plot to hook me, and this book did a notably better job of that, of capturing my attention and convincing me that I should continue to give it.

Nonetheless, I think I would have liked some more. The biggest character arc to me seemed to be the one experienced by the angel, and yet he didn't have the page space to explore how that came to be. I wanted maybe 10% more time with him (and with the worldbuilding of the angels and why they do what they do) to flesh that out.

I am, at heart, a city kid, and I found this a particularly lovely exhortation of the joy and beauty of cities in general. I thought it a wonderful meditation on grief and forgiveness. I loved the inventiveness of the characterisation and the viewpoints. I respect the book for taking on some difficult ideas and executing them so well.

YES, YES, and yes!
Shew! from the beginning, this will SNATCH you. I fell in love with these characters to the point I was thinking about them long after I finished. I keep forgetting it does not release for a while, but that doesn't stop me from telling everyone I know! I'm so glad this writing style, trope, etc has become popular! BRAVO!! If youre looking for fast paced adventure, this it it!

I absolutely loved reading this book! It sounded really fantastic, and I've really enjoyed her previous books. I had such a great time getting to know these characters and the world that they inhabit, and following along with this story!

This was such a beautiful and atmospheric book, with such well done writing of this story. I really enjoyed following along Vitrine and her angel, and this city that she loves so much. It hurt when the city was destroyed, it was great watching them rebuilt, and it was tense when it was threatened, and I loved reading it!

Vitrine was an interesting character, and how much she came to inhabit Azril, to basically make it a part of her identity. And then there's the angel, who Vitrine injured, and thus can't go home, and they're basically stuck together, and I loved there interactions and dynamic, especially since it started off with the destruction of Azril!

Oh, but that ending? That was so strange and weird, and I'm still not sure what to make of it, but it definitely fit with the oddness of the whole book. It's not a happy ending in the average sense, but it's a happy ending for these characters.

Loved reading this book and I can't wait to read more by Nghi Vo!

This was a stunning read! Going into this one I knew I would probably like it, since 'The Singing Hills Cycle' is one of my favorite series. As I suspected I did enjoy this one! It was what I expected from Nghi Vo and then some.

Nghi Vo, is so good at writing atmospheric stories, that evoke a a wide range of emotions depending on what is on the page. I would argue that this might be one of my favorite reads this, or at least in the top ten. This is a solid fantasy novel, that has a little extra something to make it not cliché. Highly, highly recommend

(I'm definitely going to be hyping this up at my library! Please say a small prayer for my coworkers as I might be insufferable about this one!)

5/5

The City in Glass is a very powerful book, emotionally speaking and the writing is magnificent and evocative.
Azril is a city built by a demon and destroyed by angels.
Vitrine is left with nothing, she doesn't even have a body, when the angels leave.
She wants to rebuild everything and we follow her mourning process, her anger, while she regains her power.
A story of loss and mourn, love and anger, a demon in all her humanity, set in a magical and atmospheric city, magnifically crafted.
For those who miss Strange the Dreamer, and wanted it obscure.

While reading Nghi Vo’s beautifully crafted and deeply imaginative The City in Glass, I kept wondering where the story was going, even what it was for. Don’t get me wrong, this short novel is completely enjoyable and brilliantly written, but I was missing something that was hard to pin down. On one level it is a love story between a demon and her adopted city of Azril. Much of the narration brings to life a great rogue’s gallery of its people and the structures she creates as well as the festivals she brings to liven the place up. The story also reveals itself over the centuries it covers as a strange relationship between a vengeful demon and a wounded angel, as forbidden a pair as can be imagined. It reminds me just a little of the friendship between Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens. Except different, very different.

Vitrine, a demon whose essential form is a glass case enclosed in whatever body she chooses to build for herself, presides over the city of Azril. It is a thriving city in the shadow of a mountain by the sea that rocks with its share of wealth, poverty, corruption, thievery and dancing, especially Vitrine’s favorite, the ganli. The first chapter sets the tone of Vitrine’s discovery and cultivation of the city and the huge task that faces her.

When she first arrived in the city, it seemed a dour, colorless place. The first people she can relate to are three corpses hanging from a gallows in a town square. One of them starts talking to her, the others join in, and before long Vitrine is dancing with them on the scaffold. Thereafter, she exerts her influence to nudge humans toward riches or disaster as she or their human foibles determine, all the while pushing the city to expand, building higher towers, bringing in festivals. It takes her 300 years to get Azril to the thriving state she wants, and it is just then that disaster strikes.

One day, while Vitrine is admiring her handiwork, four powerful winged angels arise out of the harbor like pillars of light and set about undoing all she has built. Vitrine sinks her claws into one of the angels, but as that one staggers upright again and rejoins the others, they proceed to mount a fearsome column of flame over the city, like an atomic bomb, that destroys everything. That wounded angel can’t go home until he gets the part of Vitrine now sunk into a deep wound completely out of his body. With nowhere else to go, he sticks around and begins a long and fraught relationship with Vitrine.

................

Most of the story is devoted to Vitrine’s reconstruction of the city and also her remembrance of what it used to be. She understands that love can be a destructive thing as well as her motive for building. And I think in the end, Vitrine is not so much attached to the physical form of the city, which has gone through its cycles of prosperity, plague, war and rebuilding. Rather she is most in love with the city as she writes about it in the book she keeps in her glass case. The City in Glass becomes a kind of love story about Vitrine and the written city that is her book, comprising all her most treasured memories.

But circling back to where I started, I took a while to see what it was I was missing in this beautiful novel. It’s really something in the nature of demons. They may go through a lot of physical changes, have their fits of rage and vengeance, and even do something constructive, like build a city. But they don’t exactly develop as characters. We learn more about Vitrine as the story of her single-minded city-building unfolds, but she doesn’t really change. The angel, by contrast, does have his ups and downs and definitely is transformed from the beginning of the book to the end. The City in Glass hits a strong and beautiful melody from the outset and plays hundreds of variations in its rich composition, but, enjoyable as it is, I missed something of the dramatic power I’ve had from other Nghi Vo stories. I’ve rarely felt this way about a book, so enamored of its style and imaginative power yet still missing that essential experience of dramatic change.

I really loved the premise of The City in Glass and Vo's prose was as lyrical and beautiful as always. I certainly didn't dislike this story, but neither did I love it, and I think that is because I struggled to connect on more than a surface level with the characters. Vitrine received a little more character development, but I felt we never properly got to know the angel, so their relationship was hard to embrace and it was thus harder to care about their feelings and intentions. Perhaps a slightly longer word count, to really explore the characters to a greater extent, would have made this work better for me. I am still giving it three stars, though, as it was a great idea and an atmospheric read.

The world doesn’t deserve Nghi Vo’s beautiful writing, but we’re so lucky to have it. Her fans will be ecstatic, easy 3-4 stars and 5 for the right readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the ARC.

The City in Glass is such an amazing book. I recommend everyone to read this book asap If you can. It has everything a good fantasy book needs.

Beautiful, lyrical and utterly captivating. It will end up in my top 10 of 2024 for sure, although I think the style in which this book is written won't be for everyone. After loving "Siren Queen" from Nghi Vo I had quite high hopes for this one and it surpassed them. I loved seeing the world from the perspective of eternal beings, what love, hate, devotion and time means to them... The ending was beautiful and even though I hoped for a different direction, I fully recognize that it wouldn't have been right for this particular story (it was just my wishful thinking). I'm exiting this tale with awe and a broken heart. Thank you, Nghi Vo!