The City in Glass is a 2024 fantasy novel published in the English language by the Hugo Award-winning American author Nghi Vo. The novel was selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top 10 Fall 2024 SF&F original work.
While the following may appear a spoiler of the narrative, please note that I am not saying anything which is not stated on the back cover blurb for the novel, and what transpires will do so in the first handful of pages.
Vitrine is a demon, and her one and only love and obsession is the city of Azril, which she has raised from the ground up through centuries of construction, conniving, and cosseting. Vitrine has tenderly manipulated the lives of each and every citizen, with and without their knowing or consent, guaranteeing them meaningful and fascinating life stories, which she has recorded in the book stored inside her chest, where a heart would dwell in a mortal being. All is well and beautiful in Azril, as much as any densely populated city may be called well and beautiful, and Vitrine revels in a festival dedicated to the bounty brought about by her influence.
Then the angels arrive, without warning or explanation, and everything Vitrine loves is obliterated from the face of the world. In her wrath and sorrow, with no other recourse at her disposal, Vitrine curses one of the angels to be trapped with her in the ruin of the city, unable to return to his home in Heaven. How Vitrine chooses to address her grief, and the thorough exploration of that emotion, as well as the angel's own discovery of guilt, remorse, love, and atonement, make up the body of the novel. The novel's perspective shifts frequently between Vitrine's memories of Azril as it previously existed, and her present efforts at reconstruction. Depending on whether you were to ask the angel's opinion or Vitrine's, one would say that this is a romance novel, and the other would say it is a revenge plot, and much in this regard is left open to the reader's own interpretation and preference. In any case, it is compelling and rich with catharsis.
The City in Glass uses lavish prose, bordering at times on poetry, which will resonate in a familiar and pleasing way for fans of This Is How You Lose the Time War and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and its themes bear resemblance both to those of Time War and Good Omens. It is a fabulously beautiful text, from end to end, and it is blessedly just short enough to not overstay its welcome with the reader, being easily finished in a single day if one is able to savour it without interruptions.
The logistics of city building and statecraft may remind the reader also of Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and The Gameshouse, and for my part, this was what brought the novel to my attention in the first place: it came up as an algorithmically generated suggestion after I finished reading those works, and it spent most of this season waiting in my reading queue for me to get around to it.
I can gladly recommend The City in Glass to anyone who has previously enjoyed a book from these or other of my recommendations, as by now I expect we find similar resonance and relevance in these themes and this iconography. I shall need to read other offerings by Nghi Vo, at this rate.
Iron Noder 2024, 04/30