I finished this a few days ago and it's taken me a few days to fully solidify how I felt about this book. Overall, I think the idea is lovely - it's a character study of a city in a way, and really lingers on the exploration of grief. Overall it's very melancholic in tone, but I think it suits the book.
My issue is that while the book is about healing from grief, I never really felt the grief the characters were experiencing myself. I really enjoyed the beautiful prose and the snippets from the characters lives over the centuries, but alas I never got emotionally attached enough to shed a tear. I'm gonna round the rating up to a 4, but its honestly more of a 3.5. Still, interesting little novella that I'm sure will hit many more than it did me!

(4.5/5 stars)

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo is a lyrical mega slow-burn literary fantasy romance between an angel and demon.

I will literally read anything that Nghi Vo writes. I just love her prose, especially when I'm reading it in audiobook form. This standalone novella is narrated by Susan Dalian, and I really enjoyed listening to her read.

Centuries pass in the city of Azril, from its beginnings to its deaths, and when the cycle begins anew. I really enjoyed segments when the demon Vitrine interacts with citizens, and my absolute favorite part was when she hired an artist for decades.

This was a wonderful exploration of grief for me. As is typical in Vo's works, there is casual queerness in abundance. At one point the angel and demon end up parenting a transgender child (who also appears to be a disaster bisexual).

CW: violence, death

*Thank you to NetGalley & Tor Publishing Group for sending me a digital copy to review*

This is probably the most unique story I’ve ever read. A demon, an Angel, and the rise and fall of a city that spans centuries if not millennia.

The demon Vitrine loves the city of Azril and has influenced and shaped it for generations. Then, the angels come and the Azril that Vitrine knows ceases to exist. She curses one of the angels and as a result, he is bound by her anger and becomes just as invested in the city as she is.

I really loved the concept of this story, seeing the destruction and the building of a city through the eyes of an immortal demon who loves the city and its people. I thought the idea of Vitrine’s book that she keeps her memories of the people of the city was a cool bit of imagery - she keeps it in her chest which I guess could be an allegory of her heart.

The relationship between Vitrine and the Angel was interesting as well. Vitrine despises him for his actions and we see over the centuries her hatred of him slowly simmers. While Vitrine is more emotional the Angel is detached and pragmatic in his views of the destruction of the city, he’s only there at the beginning and the end and doesn’t witness the life in between.

While the story is interesting, I found it hard to get through. For me, it felt jumpy especially when Vitrine would all of a sudden start flying, and in my head, I’m picturing a human form but then later she would mention wings or something. Everything just didn’t flow for me and I found myself getting confused often.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the prose. This is a mood book for me. It felt like a great fall read for no other reason than the ambiance. While some of the prose was a bit much in some sections, there were lines of great beauty in this novella that were lovely to experience.

The aspects of this book that worked less for me all made sense to the story and the characters. As Vitrine builds this world for the reader in the beginning, I longed for a map of Azril and less of a movie-scene view of the people within it. Dipping in and out of people's lives reflects the lived experience Vitrine would have had in the citizens' lives, but without more time spent with them, I found them forgettable and inconsequential. It took me awhile to understand I didn't have to store these names in my head for later chapters. When Azril is destroyed by the gods, I hadn't bought into its importance enough yet and didn't feel much for the place or its inhabitants. I had questions about why and what Vitrine's connection was to this place, but without that development, it felt like an early plot moment that was going to develop. I also never felt a deep connection to Vitrine's character as her character development was mostly centered around her interests in Azril and nothing more. As a result, I found that even her outrage for the catastrophic violence inflicted upon the city by the gods wasn't enough to make me care more about its people.

I felt the way the connection between Vitrine and the god was explored was interesting and helped tie the story together from beginning, middle, and end. But as an anchor for the entire plot of the novel besides city destroyed, city rebuilt, grief, and loss, I just didn't find its centrality enough to engage me in all aspects of the book. I did, however, find it to be well developed and satisfying as a reader and thought it had a lovely message.

Thanks to TorDotCom for an eARC and Macmillan Audio for an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review!

I don't know how Nghi Vo wrote a novel about the history of the city of Azril across time and a love story at the same time in less than 250 pages. Nghi Vo cannot miss! We follow a demon named Vitrine create a city and nurture it to its full potential until a group of angels destroy it. She curses an angel to never return to where the other angels live. As time passes, we see Vitrine rebuild and grow to love this new version of her city. Vo's writing continues to be evocative and brilliant as we see Vitrine and this cursed unnamed angel change and grow. I found Vitrine's rage and grief quite sympathetic, but I had a hard time appreciating the angel's presence. Once I got to halfway through, I started to see how he foiled Vitrine so well. While he is prideful, he felt guilty for destroying Azril.

This is less so a novel with plot, but a character study between the demon and this angel (moreso the demon since this novel is in her perspective) and the history of this city across hundreds of years. I loved this book and will continue to read anything Nghi Vo publishes. Now excuse me as I go back to her previous novels, The Chosen and the Beautiful & Siren Queen.

Content warnings: death, grief, fire, blood, murder, violence, pandemic (plague), sexual content (minor), war

This book was magical. If you enjoy a "love letter to a place" style book, then this one is absolutely for you. It is a make believe place, but if you have ever loved a place with your entire being, then this book will absolutely resonate with you. Vo does such a beautiful job of weaving the lives of the people who live in Azril with the story of Vitrine and her nameless angel. It is a heartbreaking story of love and loss, and Vo's writing is absolutely stunning. Vo's newest work is not to be missed.

Thank you NetGalley and Tordotcom for this ARC Copy!

I was interested in the book form the moment that I saw the cover. I though it was going to a mythology story and it definitely read like mythology at times. Following a Demon and the city that she loves that gets destroyed by biblically accurate Angels, such an interesting concept. I enjoyed it for the most part but I also spent a lot of time confused, which may be a me problem. It felt like there were times that we would go back in the past with no warning, and suddenly there are characters that came out of nowhere. It was interesting and definitely worth the read, I just wish I walked away understanding what exactly I just read. Regardless, the writing is beautiful, and the characters are hauntingly strange.

Nghi Vo's The City in Glass evoked some very Neil Gaiman-esque feelings, but to me, it lacked any of the joy which made it an incredibly slow read for how short it was.

I will be honest in that I didn't like this book and it was a fight to finish it. It felt a lot like Good Omens if all of the humor had been sucked out of it. It wasn't poorly written, it just...it wasn't for me. I feel like this may have been a love letter to Nghi Vo's readers which I haven't been in the past. It almost seems not fair to grade it if that is the case...but again, someone like me will likely grab it by its description and end up disappointed.

I don't know what I was expecting from this book, but this wasn't it.

Fans of Nghi Vo will be very happy with this story about angels, demons, and the fall and rebirth of a city. Vo's signature style, detailed and cutting descriptions of beauty and tragedy, and strong characters really capture the devastation and heartbreak at the core of the narrative, and invite readers to sit with our somewhat otherworldly protagonists and experience this loss as they do. If I had any complaints, it would be that due to the ruin of the city that it takes quite some time for more established characters to be added to the tale, and I found myself wanting more active people instead of memories. While this choice feels very much intentional, given what happened to the city and how our main point of view character is also actively wishing that society would just come back already, it did make for some slow reading at the start.

If Nghi Vo writes it, I will read it. However, I got to be honest, I’m not sure what to think about this particular piece. I went in expecting Vo’s evocative and rich writing, paired with queer characters and an interesting story. I mostly got that. I have to say, normally I adore her writing and I find it the strong point in the books that I haven’t cared much for. However, for this novel, the writing was too much. It felt like I was trying to pull my mind and the plot through molasses. I don’t even know if I can properly explain it, but others have compared it to This is How You Lose the Time War and I think that is pretty accurate. If you liked the way that was written you’ll probably be fine here. I DNF’d that and I probably would have DNF’d this if it hadn’t been for Nghi Vo and the fact that people were promising me enemies to lovers.

I am still in love and utterly enchanted by every installment of the Singing Hills Cycle that Nghi Vo releases. They are bits of literature that breath life into me and part of the reason that I consider myself a fan of Nghi Vo, however, I haven’t really enjoyed her work outside of that world. I haven’t hated any of her other things, they just didn’t give me the same feels. The City in Glass is the same. I didn’t hate it, but honestly I didn’t love it. To an extent I’m still not sure what I think about it. At times, I was vibing and quite happy with it, other times I questioned if Nghi Vo had actually written it.

The plot of this is mostly watching the rebuilding of a civilization after its downfall. Vitrine watches over her city and its people. She also banters and tortures an angel that has “fallen in love” with her. Honestly though, this is very much an all vibes book. Even the enemies to lovers plot point is weak considering there are expanses of the book where Vitrine and the angel don’t speak to each other and aren’t even in the same area. I’ve been sitting on writing this review because I thought I would know how I felt closer to release and that’s just not the case.

For me, this is a strange little book that ultimately just landed middle of the road for me. It had so many elements that I adore: enemies to lovers, city building, angels and demons, and queer characters. However, the writing was just… thick? I don’t know how to explain it. Copious amounts of words? I don’t know. I wanted more from the characters or the plot and less from the writing.

Overall, I think that some fans of Nghi Vo will just gobble this up. I think that if you’re okay with weird little works that are mostly vibes, you’ll be fine with this. If you like books where the beginning feels like an end and the end feels like a beginning, this could be for you. If you’re here for enemies to lovers, go somewhere else. I don’t know where, but I don’t think this will give you what you want. Especially if you want feels. I still don’t really know how I feel about this, but I’m still excited for whatever Nghi Vo comes out with next.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this novel, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was drawn in by the comparison to one of my all-time favourite books, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, but unfortunately I think that is highly misleading and incorrect marketing. There is no humour here, except the blackest, grimmest Death's Head-grin sort.

This is an incredibly difficult story to describe, especially without spoilers.

Imagine you're lost in a strange, sprawling city. You think you're going in one direction, but the group around you sweeps you away and you're pulled down meandering, labyrinthine passageways and alleys. Some show glimpses to wonder and delight; others show horrors to stun and disturb. A chiaroscuro, a combination of darkness and light, ever shifting and changing like a kaleidoscope.

Over centuries, two figures warily circle each other: the demon Vitrine, patroness of the ruined City, and the Angel who participated - for unknown reasons - in it's ruin and was cursed to remain outcast from his own kind by Vitrine's wrath.

If it is a love story, it is not a kind love, or a love worth keeping.

The language can be beautiful and hideous, often in the same sentences.

Although the story centers almost claustrophobically on the widely spaced encounters between Vitrine and the Angel, the two remain at a distance not only from each other, their kin and themselves (neither seems to know even their own motivations) but from the reader. It's impossible to feel for either character and the fleeting human lives that Vitrine marks in her secret book are as ephemeral as fireflies, or sparking embers.

Ultimately, it's an uneasy story that leaves a blurred, uncertain impression like a dark fever dream. I am glad I read it, but I can't say that I enjoyed it. Thought-provoking in some ways but hopelessly obscure in others - or, perhaps, that is the entire point?

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the eARC and chance to review

4.5 stars rounded up

The City in Glass is a slow, thoughtful examination of many lifetimes in a city through the perspective of the immortal demon who loves it and watches over the people who inhabit it. And the angel who once destroyed it and is now trapped by a part of the demon. He also will learn to love the city and love her. By turns melancholy and biting, I would definitely call this literary fantasy. It's filled with evocative prose, and the bittersweetness of time. Cycles of life and death, destruction and rebirth. It's not going to be for everyone but I thought it was beautiful. I'm not a fan of the audio narrator for this one. I started listening to it, but ended up deciding to just read it physically. I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions are my own.

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo was a brilliant read. Nghi Vo is a fantastically talented author and The City in Glass delivered. The story is mesmerizing and the writing is a whole other level. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Brilliant and evocative, The City in Glass is unlike any other novel I've read. It's many things at once: a slow, centuries-spanning romance between an angel and a demon; a portrait of a city through destruction and rebirth; a study in grief and what it means to belong to something and have it belong to you. Nghi Vo's prose is surprising and elegant; a modern master.

Nghi Vo's novella "The City in Glass" is a mesmerizing and deeply emotional journey that transcends the typical boundaries of fantasy fiction. With its lyrical prose and intricate narrative, this book delves into the complexities of love, loss, and the long, arduous path to redemption.

The story begins with a dramatic premise: an angel, among the divine beings responsible for destroying a centuries-old city meticulously built by a demon named Vitrine. In her fury and despair, Vitrine curses the angel, binding a piece of her essence to him, leading to his ostracism by his own kind. This curse sets the stage for a poignant exploration of two beings caught in an eternal dance of creation and destruction.

Vitrine, driven by an indomitable spirit, returns to the ruins of her beloved city, determined to rebuild it from the ashes. The angel, equally compelled by a sense of duty and inexplicable devotion, finds himself aiding her in this endeavor. However, their relationship is fraught with tension and unresolved emotions, epitomized by Vitrine's demand for the angel to leave for fifty years—a command he obeys out of sheer devotion. Upon his return, having gained a deeper understanding of humanity and accompanied by refugees seeking shelter, the angel must humble himself, begging Vitrine to allow them sanctuary. The ultimate sacrifice comes when he willingly offers his wings, the symbol of his freedom, to Vitrine, a gesture that speaks volumes about his commitment to their shared cause.

Vo's storytelling is both haunting and beautiful, weaving a non-linear narrative that mirrors the fragmented nature of grief and memory. The City of Azril, the heart of Vitrine's world, is as much a character as the demon and the angel, its rebirth and decay reflecting the emotional and psychological states of its inhabitants. The city's spectral presence lingers through the lives of its human residents, who are subtly aware of Vitrine's influence, adding layers of mysticism and melancholy to the tale.

At the core of this novella are two profound romances: Vitrine's deep, almost maternal love for her city, and her complex, evolving relationship with the angel who once destroyed it. This is not a straightforward love story; it is an exploration of how love can emerge from the ashes of hatred and loss. Vo captures the delicate balance between these emotions with a deft hand, making the eventual peace and mutual understanding between Vitrine and the angel feel both inevitable and hard-won.

Vitrine is an intriguingly multi-faceted character, embodying both demonic and human traits. Her fierce determination and vulnerability make her a compelling protagonist. The angel, whose name is never revealed, serves as a perfect foil to Vitrine, his journey from divine destroyer to a humbled, wingless companion mirroring the novella's themes of transformation and redemption. Their relationship is the emotional backbone of the story, a slow-burn progression from enmity to a tentative, fragile peace.

"The City in Glass" is not an easy read; its non-linear structure and heavy themes demand careful attention and emotional investment. However, for those willing to engage with its poetic storytelling and rich symbolism, it offers a deeply rewarding experience. Vo's prose is nothing short of exquisite, capturing the aching beauty of a city and its inhabitants struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of divine wrath.

Nghi Vo's "The City in Glass" is a masterpiece of fantasy literature, blending elements of myth, romance, and existential reflection into a seamless whole. It stands out as a poignant meditation on the nature of grief, the possibility of redemption, and the enduring power of love in its many forms. This novella is a must-read for fans of experimental, emotionally resonant storytelling, and it firmly establishes Vo as a unique and powerful voice in the genre.

Ultimately I just don’t think this author is for me. The writing is at times lyrical and at other times a bit choppy and I struggle to grasp the characters or plot. It feels like a lot of vague motions without feeling like the pacing is tight enough to move us forward.

It seems Nghi Vo possibly likes to play around with the scale of her stories. In The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the small becomes the large; items spiral out to become stories. In her new novel (a short one, but she assures us, definitely a novel), she plays something of the reverse trick. Or possibly both at the same time. The story follows a demon, Vitrine, in the city she has helped shape for many years, a city that welcomed her as a refugee from her original, fallen home. She has curated it, whispered in the ear of its leaders, artists, librarians and pirates, sculpting it like a gardener with a well-tended hedge. And then, right at the start of the story, it is destroyed. Angels sweep in, unexplained, and put it to fire and the sword. All her work is gone. The story is of the aftermath, her memories and gried sweeping her up, telling stories of the large, spiralling down into the smallness of one single existence - her own - while reciprocally telling that grander scale through the moments of its individuals, day by day and year by year.

If it brings to mind anything - I'm not sure it truly does; it's a singular book in many ways - it is The City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky. At the simplest level, they are both stories of the soul of a city, told through a chorus of its inhabitants. The difference, however, is a big one. Where for Tchaikovsky the story of the city is the purpose in and of itself (and a very well executed one), for Vo here, the story of the city is only a half of what's going on. The rest is the story of Vitrine herself, and her care at that macro scale, using the humans that inhabit her city - and she is fiercely possessive of it, even after its downfall - as tools to shape it, things that can be discarded, that will pass even as the city endures, not stories or ends themselves. Vitrine lives outside of the scale of human life, and so the story must expand outwards, beyond those boundaries, to attempt to contain her.

This presents itself both subtly and unsubtly throughout. One of the most pleasing reflexes of it is the offhand remarks about how long Vitrine takes applying herself to a given task - stretched out into the days, weeks or months as debris falls and bodies rot around her in the aftermath. We observe the story through Vitrine's scale, experiencing events in a way that feels natural because it is natural to her, but then are jarred into awareness by these little comments, slipped around the edges, reminding us that nothing about her sits naturally with us, however it may feel in the moment. This is someone who can remain sat in one place for months, who can wait out a river. Vo manages to marry an extremely human and an extremely extra-human sense of wonder and scale throughout, with Vitrine's emotional reactions - intense, moving ones - lending accessibility to the broader scope of the story.

Where Tchaikovsky gives us the full view of his city by using multiple viewpoints, seeing it differently through each new set of eyes, Vo does is by using the same eyes, but seeing those people. There's a continuity that brings - Vitrine has been there and can keep on seeing, so can pull herself out of the "now", because she too experienced the "then". She can see change on a scale inaccessible to a mortal.

Even if it were only that, even if it were just a story of one demon's grief of her lost city, and the back and forward tale of its past and future circling around its apocalypse, it would be interesting enough. The prose is lovely, often bringing up moments of beautiful description, especially of colour and texture. You get a sense of the city as a physical place, as well as a cultural one, and for the complex mass of people moving within it. The beauty slips in even in the darker, more visceral moments of death and destruction and dismemberment. It is a lovely thing to read, just to exist in its descriptions and flowing use of language, just to be embedded within Vitrine's perspective on the world, swinging between abject sorrow, rage and a sort of wry humour about herself and the people she has experienced in her city.

For example:

Like comets who found the earth too cruel

or:

She was a thing that had been pared down by pain until there was only a sliver of her left, and everything she had regained, from the top of her dark head to her gleaming black eyes, to her sharp white teeth to her brown skin hectic with a madder blush, she had made herself.

For a story so concerned with the grander scale, it is one profoundly unafraid of the physical, and it is enriched by it.

But it is not only that - the city, at the start of the book, is destroyed by angels, but not all of those angels escape unscathed by the angry demon who tries to stop them. One, cursed by Vitrine, returns. Keeps returning. And so, as well as the story of her city, it is the story of these two immortal beings, tied together by a cataclysm that was almost beyond human terms of reference, that they both lived through (though no unscathed). Theirs is a complex relationship outside of the usual human frame of reference, and one that takes the whole book to develop, not reaching its climax (no, not like that) until the very end of the story.

I want to stress here, it's not a simple enemies to lovers type of romance story. Whatever they are moment to moment, neither Vitrine nor the unnamed angel (she is not particularly interested in small talk with him) exist on a human level, with human emotions on a human scale. Whatever they experience with, through and around each other somewhat defies description. It is just that - experience. It is a string of captured moments that become something more, but evade categorisation.

Which makes it rather hard to review. I don't, honestly, quite know what I think ultimately passes between these two characters, by the end of the story. It feels profound. It feels intense. But I don't think I entirely understand it. Instead, it sits in my head, making me wonder, making me chew at it, considering. I want to reread it, to ponder it again. It is the good sort of incomprehension, of a thing that may be currently evading me, but is graspable, and will be worth the time spent in reaching for it.

What I do know, even without that understanding, is that Vo has done a fantastic job in capturing a sense of two beings beyond the scale of human lives, who nonetheless interact with them. Vitrine and the angel feel different to one another, and yet also similar, tied to the same outsideness, that immunity to mortal scale, that makes them both alien and compelling to the reader. The holy is a rare sight in SFF - even more so than the religious - but there is something of it here, in the unknowable actions of powers beyond mortal control, seeking to reckon with one another in rules that are never stated, with powers that exist within a framework of intuition, not hard logic. They are as they are, and do as they do, and exist together, in this space for a little time, as we observe them, but cannot grasp them. The scene early on, in which Vitrine witnesses the destruction of her city, is powerful for its distance, its cold incomprehensibility. It's awful. But it also has the feeling of something so utterly beyond human power that nudges into the sort of boundaries quite apart from "magic" in the commonly used modern sense. If it is magic, it is at a scale beyond the individual, and thus its grandeur.

Wholly different from her other work, there is nonetheless an extremely distinctive feel of Vo here throughout, the deftness of her descriptions, the fierceness of her protagonist. It is a beautiful, sad, evocative story, that manages to compress something enormous and otherworldly into something graspable and personified, in a way that seems quite unique. It is thoughtful, provocative, and full of depth, and a story I think will reward multiple reads, and intensive discussion. I enjoyed it immensely.

ok, this one is weird in such a niche way that it’s hard to describe or know who to recommend it to. CITY is written in a very abstract, conceptual way that holds you at arm’s distance, but is also very lyrical and fairy tale-esque. it’s not plot driven but not really character driven either; instead the main driver of the story is the setting of the city and how it grows over hundreds of years (with the help of an angel and a demon, whose relationship is the secondary driver of the story). overall, I did like it a lot though I’m not sure I know who the right audience is for it.

I was hooked from the first interaction between Vitrine and her angel. Vo has given us a dynamic plot and layered characters. I have always loved to read of demons and angels that do not conform to the accepted. With behaviour that is familiar and not, we follow Vitrine and Angel as their relationship changes and grows, as their feelings twist and twine, as one searches to understand what he has wrought and the other yearns for the return of what was destroyed.

Vo's creativity will always delight which will keep me coming back to her work.

Beautifully written, but a touch too distance for what I wanted from the premise. I also finished this a week ago and I forgot a lot of what happened.