Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I enjoyed the writing style of this book and interested in readign other books by this author.

For me I didn't find the main characters engaging enough to keep me reading and had to keep coming back to it time and time again.

After 39% I could not go on. I found it very confusing and understood little or nothing. Even the part of angels and demons is not well explained and I couldn't understand.

I chose this book because I thought it would be a great read based on the description as I have never read the author before. I Really hard getting into the book. It follows Vitrine, a demon that loves a city she was lived in and cultivated for hundreds of years, when it is abruptly destroyed by a group of Angels. One of the Angels feels an immediate attachment and begins to return and a love entirely unfolds. It’s intertwined with the present and past day describing the her building love for the city and then its rebuilding. It was well written and very poetic however for me, the way it was written felt like it was trying too hard to be deep and meaningful and it just missed the mark for me. For the protagonist, It didn’t feel like there was a lot of character development to start off with, she didn’t really have flaws which made her less real to me. I didn’t have too much attachment to the characters and there was minimal world building. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed and bored. .

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this story.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

I wanted to like this, I really did. I've read other stories by Nghi Vo before and loved them (namely The Chosen and the Beautiful, and the Singing Hills Cycle) so I was really excited for this newest novella but I couldn't get into it. The prose, while very well written, felt like too much at times and I couldn't make sense of the timeline at certain points. The story was constantly switching from present day to the past where the city was alive. I thought, at first, that Vitrine was imagining everything as she tried to rebuild her destroyed city but that wasn't what was happening. I also couldn't make sense of the angel and what role he truly played in all of this besides being like an opposing force to Vitrine. The angel didn't seem to add much to the plot at all and... I don't even know what happens to them in the end. It was a very confusing way to finish the story. If someone smarter than me would like to explain, please do because I'm at a loss. Either way, there were still some parts of the story I found enjoyable and I did really like Vitrine as a character!

Simply exquisite: dark and tender and so wonderfully different to most current fantasy. I savoured every page; it rewarded taking one's time and letting the prose and setting and storytelling seep into the cracks in your mind. Nghi Vo's best yet. This is a book that has left me changed.

Many thanks to Tor and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Such a captivating story! Loved every minute of this read. Any enemies to lovers fans will certainly enjoy this one! I am a huge fan of Vo's writing and The City in Glass is no exception!!

I think every reader has or will have at least one author where their writing just seems to get better and better with every release. For me, that writer is Nghi Vo. In all honesty, from The Chosen and the Beautiful up until this point with The City in Glass, each new novel feels like my favourite.
I want to say that the language and the descriptions in this book stand out as some of the most beautiful I have ever read, but I feel like I may sound like a broken record at this point. What makes The City in Glass as amazing as it is, is not the fact that it has these amazing, lyrical lines of prose that make every quote feel like something that should be etched beneath monuments, but rather it combines that rhapsodic composition with imagination and ingenuity.
For those unaware, this story follows a demon, Vitrine, who patrons a human city slated for destruction by angelic forces. In the aftermath, she curses one angel in particular, who is now prevented from following his divine brethren, and must remain as Vitrine attempts to come to terms with her loss.
The story told in this novel is wholly unique and so outside the realm of convention I can’t help but applaud it. While the City in Glass lacks even the base level through lines of reality that Siren Queen had, instead choosing to fully devote its narrative to something surreal and passionate; the emotional bondage that it wraps around its reader makes the characters and plot feel real and immediate.
Full disclosure, I loved this book. It is just so beautiful in its depictions of wrath and grief that it makes me want to purchase it for every single person I know as a means of telling them, no matter what you are going through, you are not alone.

Not a lot of plot going on beyond what is described in the blurb but as this is a 200 page novella, I do not mind that at all. The vibes were immaculate and I enjoyed the beautiful but abstract, kind of dreamlike writing style.

Every once in a while a story comes along that shatters your bookish heart and makes something new out of the rubble. THE CITY IN GLASS is one of these stories. Vitrine, the demon of Azril, is helpless to do anything but watch her beloved city destroyed by angels. Anything, that is, but curse one of those angles with a piece of her broken heart. Angel and demon now haunt the ruins of Azril-that-was and slowly, through rage and grief, time and resilience, they create the Azril-that-will-be. THE CITY IN GLASS almost defies description in the best way possible. In Vo's capable hands, the story feels as timeless as a Greek epic and as lyrical as poetry. Five stars!

If you loved 'This is How You Lose The Time War' then this is 100% for you!
Books you love are so much harder to write reviews for! Nghi Vo is an outragously talented writer and Vo is an instant buy author for me.
Here are some bullet points and a revised RTC.

- The prose is full of emotion
- Forbidden flame of romance that is tender and passionate
- The way Vitrine feels for the city is palpable, and adds another character to the pages
- This is bizzare! Reminds me of The Starless Sea in its absurdity, and This is How You Lose The Time War in its love story.
- The writing is best appreciated when you allow yourself to be enveloped in the prose, as well as taking in the story slowly.

I wasn't sure if I would like this when I started reading it but once I started to get into the story and the characters, I became more invested. NGL, I'm all here for those toxic relationships, especially between immortals.

I was fifty pages in when I knew this’d be a 2024 favorite. The balance of weight and whimsy in the back and forth between Demon, Angel and humanity is so compelling—every myth-y detail had me pausing to appreciate (/annotate). Vitrine is a stunning main; I loved her rage, I loved her love. I think I’ll be re-reading for years to come trying to articulate my awe for all of this book’s Bigs, even though what comes to mind are its many, precious Smalls.

Thank you so much for the eARC, NetGalley!

I genuinely wanted to love this book, but somewhere along the way, the writing began to overshadow the story itself, making it hard for me to stay connected.
At its core, this is a powerful tale of loss, grief, and deep emotional journeys, and there's so much to appreciate here. However, the prose was so lyrical and poetic that it often pulled me out of the narrative.
That said, if you're someone who thrives on rich, flowery writing and intricate prose, this book might be exactly your style!

A lyrical novella about a demon, an angel, and a fantastical city. Vitrine has nurtured, loved, and helped grow the city of Azril. When a group of angels burns the city to the ground, Vitrine's curse lodges in one of them, and he is bound to forever haunt the city - and, by extension, Vitrine. As the city begins to slowly rebuild into something new, Vitrine and the angel are locked in a love-hate relationship. I love Vo's writing so much; she clearly labors over every word until only the best remain. This was an epic story about transformation and love, and the perspective of eternal beings and how time is experienced differently for them. Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group / Tordotcom for a digital review copy.

I wanted this to be longer. I loved that it managed to cover over 300 years in a very short time.

They love/hate between the two main characters was dynamic and truly engaging. You really feel the pain of watching a city die and the joy of watching it be reborn even though it’ll never be the paradise it once was.

This could easily have been 100 more pages and I wouldn’t have complained one bit.

Haunting. Elegiac. Unexpected. Wondrous. Strange.

These are some of the words that sprung to mind when I was reading this novella. All used in the best possible way. For a large part of the story, I wasn't sure where it was going or how it would end, but that didn't matter because there was something deeply, and at times darkly, compelling about it. Vo's writing is as magical and (successfully) experimental as ever, and the meditations on cities, humans, civilisation, memory, and story unexpected but not at all unwelcome. A story I won't forget in a hurry!

This is a very character driven book, with the plot mostly revolving around the relationship between two characters. The characters were interesting but I felt like the cast of background characters was underutilized and could have been more present. I also felt like this was a good length, had it been longer it would've dragged to the end.

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo is a beautifully written novella that weaves a story through history, time, and the eternal clash between angel and demon. The lyrical prose creates an enchanting yet existential journey, told from the perspective of a demon, that dives deep into philosophical themes of life, existence, and identity. The world-building is immersive and thought-provoking and explores grief, anger, joy, and love.

However, I found it challenging to connect with the characters, as the focus on lyrical writing sometimes creates a distance for me. The ending was unexpected, and I found myself rereading the final pages several times to fully grasp its meaning. To make sure what I read was true and made me curious about rereading again to make sense of the story and relationship. Overall, it's a perfect novella for those who appreciate philosophical, existential themes wrapped in beautiful, reflective writing.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook to review through NetGalley..

Thoughts: I was incredibly excited to read this but ended up being fairly disappointed. This tells the story of a demon, Vitrine, who has built up the city of Azril only to have it destroyed by a host of angels. When she infects one of the angels with part of herself he is not allowed to return home and is forced to stay by Vitrine's side. We follow Vitrine and the angel through the ages as Vitrine struggles to build up a new Azril and protect it from threats.

This is written in a very flowery, somewhat hard to access style that I struggled to stay engaged with. The beginning of the book is especially slow paced; this is a bit better in the last quarter of the book. The book jumps between past and present, and sometimes it takes a bit to figure out if you are in the past or present when you start a new chapter.

As you get to the last third of the book, some intriguing characters are introduced. However, they are never around very long because this book is written on the scale of angels and demons, who measure time in decades and centuries.

I struggled to have any interest in Vitrine or the angel. Vitrine does not show growth or change throughout the book but remains selfish and unwilling to let go of the past. The angel changes more but is kept at a distance from the reader, and because of this, it feels very two dimensional.

The ending was just kind of odd and I wasn't sure what to think about it.

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this was beautifully written but strangely slow and hard to engage with. If you enjoy beautiful, lyrically written, slow paced, somewhat ambiguous stories about things on a godlike time scale you might enjoy this. It is intriguing idea but just wasn't quite there on execution. It most definitely was not one of my favorite reads by Vo, but part of that could be the style of writing here. I just found the story and writing not to be very accessible.

This is a fantastic novella! Classic Nghi Vo with brilliantly beautiful storytelling with fascinating worldbuilding and characters.

The City of Azril is watched over by a demon, even after the day the angels arrived and destroyed it all. We follow said demon as they work to rebuild the city in the image of what it was, even if that is not possible.

This provides the classic Vo moments of short form storytelling, but these span massive periods of time effortlessly creating a full image of the process despite the small page count. This gave me flavours of Sandman, This is How You Lose the Time War, and Singing Hills Cycle all combined.