The City in Glass by Nghi Vo [Fantasy Review]

Summary 💬

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.

And then the angels come, and the city falls.

Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.

She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.

Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

Goodreads

Review ✍🏻

Well! I don’t have much to say about this one. Reading The City in Glass felt like reading something new, something a little different, but something comprised mostly of style rather than substance. Nghi Vo’s incisive prose continues to shine here. You won’t be disappointed if you’ve enjoyed her other writing. Vitrine makes a fascinating protagonist. I loved the grand time scale over which the story takes places. Vitrine engages in tasks only a powerful immortal being could complete, spending months or years to complete a singlular task of manual labour. Seeing the city’s rebirth over hundreds of years and following families through generations humanizes both Vitrine and the city itself.

I have mixed feelings on stories which feature angels and demons yet don’t specifically define either within the context of the story. I would have loved to learn why angels sack Azril, or what the ongoing relationship between angels and demons at large it, or to whom (if anyone) they report, but I suppose I’ll accept that those details don’t matter for this story. Comments about Vitrine’s siblings (and an apperance by one) intrigued me but didn’t reveal much further. What I tried to keep in mind is that The City in Glass is ultimately a love story between one demon and one angel. An atypical love story (and not simply for the fact it’s between an angel and a demon) but a love story nonetheless. So that’s what the story focuses on – the relationship between those two alone.

The Bottom Line 💭

Another hit from Vo that feels more experimental than anything else I’ve yet read by her, The City in Glass is one to pick up if you prefer character and setting over plot and action.

Further Reading 📰

🍂 Author website
🍂 Reviews: L @ Broken Engines, Siavadha, @ Every Heart a Doorway, Lili @ Utopia State of Mind
🍂 Related: Other books by Nghi Vo which I’ve read and reviewed include historical fantasies The Chosen and the Beautiful and Siren Queen, and the first two fantasy novellas in the Singing Hills cycle.

Do you have a favourite story about angels and demons?