The blurb of Nghi Vo’s The City in Glass says that the novella is about a demon, Vitrine, and an unnamed angel. The true protagonist of this story is neither of these creatures, however, but the titular city, Azril. This book tells the story of this city’s rise and fall—and its rise again from ashes—through the eyes of a demon who loved it intensely. With lush, evocative prose, this 216-page volume makes Azril feel incredibly alive and unique, both before and after its destruction.
Cityscapes have always played a prominent role in speculative fiction. From the magical realist imaginings of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972), to China Miéville’s mysterious Beszel and Ul Qoma, to N. K. Jemisin’s anthropomorphized cities in The City We Became (2020), cities and the people who live in them—and everything they represent—have been a frequent SFFnal motif. In The City in Glass, Vo has created a worthy addition to this list of vivid fictional cities. The very first sentence of the book—“From the topmost tower of the observatory to the floating docks on the beach, the city of Azril lit up with paper lanterns, with candles, with girls throwing flaming knives and boys in firefly crowns, with passion, with desire, with hatred, and with delight”—paints a vivid picture of the city and its denizens, only, in the next line, to let us know that things have not always been the way they are—that Azril, like every other place, has changed over the years. “When Vitrine first arrived, Summersend had been a fast, a time when the people of Azril kept indoors with black flags hung over their windows and ate dry bread dusted with salt as a reminder of flesh and the sea.”
The story is told from the perspective of the demon Vitrine, who moulded and nurtured the city of Azril. At the novella’s opening, however, Azril gets razed to the ground by a group of angels. Heartbroken and furious, Vitrine binds one of the angels to the city, cursing him to haunt it forever. Over the years, demon and angel form an uneasy companionship, as the city rebuilds itself and its new denizens rebuild their lives in it.
Like Vo’s previous works in the Singing Hills Cycle, the worldbuilding in this book has a certain dreamlike quality to it. Yet, within this fairytale context, the prose invokes sharp, strong imagery. Likewise, Vitrine, as the most prominent character in this book (apart from the city), has a strong and unique voice. She is a complicated character, a demon with a great and abiding love for the human city she helped create. Largely amoral, yet fuelled by anger and grief, she makes for a compelling protagonist and point-of-view character. We also have a rotating cast of human characters whose lives and intrigues pass by in the blink of an eye. This style of writing and worldbuilding might not be for everyone. While I felt the dreamlike style and the flowery language worked well for this story, it might feel a little jarring if you prefer a harder style of worldbuilding.
I’ve certainly seen this book labelled as “romantasy” and called an “enemies-to-lovers romance.” While that may not be an entirely inaccurate label, readers will be disappointed if they pick this book up expecting a conventional example of that genre. The book does record the changing relationship between the angel and the demon, as it goes from one of hate to one of companionship and eventually love, but the nature of that love isn’t explicitly defined. Which, of course, makes sense: Demons and angels are shown to be otherworldly beings and don’t need to love like humans do. Though Vitrine is portrayed as humanlike in some ways, the unnamed angel’s nature remains largely inscrutable.
I’ve also come across someone describe the plot of this book as “an angel playing Civ”—and I thought that this painted an interesting and perhaps more accurate picture of the story. The rise and fall of a city and its people—from merchants to courtesans to anchoresses—make for the bulk of the book. There’s something haunting about the way in which Vo writes about grief and hope, about the rise and fall and rebuilding: She brings to life the traditions that existed in the city, the way they survive and change. For instance, here is how she talks about a traditional dance, called the ganli, which is mentioned right from the beginning:
The steps, it occurred to Vitrine, were not quite the same as the dance she remembered, too fast, a hop where there should have been a pause, and too short, as if there was a bit missing, but she didn’t care. They were dancing the ganli again in Azril, and right in that moment, every pigeon in the city dead, the plague lords gone on to other places, and an angel holding her hands, it was all right.
Another passage towards the end of the book reads: “Beyond the walls of the library, the people were beginning to move again, coming out of their hides. They would reckon what they had lost, whether it was to a lovesick angel or to an enemy sword. They would find out what was left, and they would mourn what had gone. Sooner or later they would begin to repair what was broken.” And that, in a way, encompasses what the book is about. It is a book about the rise and fall and rebuilding of Azril, an ode to a magnificent city through the eyes of an unearthly being. It is about grief, and cruelty, and love in all its complexity. While the prose, worldbuilding and characters in this book made an impression on me, many of the individual plot beats did not. Similarly, many of the side characters and side plots did not make a huge impression on me. What remained was this overall narrative of the city and its culture.
After I finished reading this book, I wasn’t initially sure if it was one that would stay with me, that I would keep returning to. Only time will tell for sure, of course. But I’ve come to think that the next time I think of the rise and fall of ancient cities, or see paintings depicting angels and demons, this book, with its lush and evocative prose, will definitely come to my mind.