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| The City in Glass by Nghi Vo |
The City in Glass is a story of a city, a demon who loves it, and an angel who loves the demon. It’s set in an imaginary world close enough of ours to be recognisable in some parts, though not immediately identifiable as a particular culture or specific time. A distant past, maybe.
Vitrine is a demon, an immortal being of high emotions and capricious nature, but not evil. She’s arrived to Azril centuries ago when it was still a shanty-town of pirates. With love to its people and the town itself, she helps it to grow to a bright jewel, watching its fortunes ebb and flow through time. And then, out of the blue, four angels arrive and destroy the place and the people.
Only ruins, ghosts, and Vitrine’s rage remain. In her anger, she curses one of the angels, planting a part of her essence in his heart. Unable to return to his own plane of existence with other angels, he stays in Azril, watching as she begins to clear the destruction to make way for the town to reborn again.
The two don’t like or understand each other. Her anger doesn’t ease, but he offers no explanations to the angels’ actions. Years and decades go by as Vitrine clings to her grief, reminiscing the people she’s known. The two barely interact, but they are each other’s only company. Until she drives him away. She would want it to be forever, but in the end, she sets a limit of fifty years.
When the angel returns, he wants to bring refugees of a war to Azril to repopulate it. She demands a huge sacrifice of him to let them come. He agrees, and so the city comes alive again, and the cycle of watching it grow starts anew. It’s not the Azril she’s known before, but it’s her city and her people and she loves them. But it’s now his city too, much to her upset.
This was such a wonderful read. It doesn’t really have a plot that would advance from point to point. Instead, we walk the streets of Azril remembering the past with Vitrine, so named because of a glass cabinet in her heart where she holds a book with names of all the people of Azril—and the angel’s sacrifice. Years, decades and then centuries flow past, and the city grows under Vitrine’s supervision. Not that humans really know she’s there.
The angel comes and goes. He doesn’t speak much, but the reader sees him change from a cold vessel of judgement and destruction to a person who cares about the people of Azril as much as Vitrine does. Her anger eases eventually, and his love for her grows, though we have no indication of it other than that he keeps returning to her. He’s never named, and even at the end she refuses to ask his name or add it to her book. Instead, as a show of her love, she gives him her city—or gives him to the city.
Even without a traditional plot, this was a compelling read. The tone is pensive, but the pace is good, the language is rich, and Vitrine is ever changing like her city. The ending was a bit of a surprise, and while it made an impact, it’s sort of disappointing in the way it was handled. (MINOR SPOILER AHEAD)
I would’ve liked for her to set him free, like she did to everyone she loved, something he struggled with. She does ask if he wants it, but he doesn’t want her to ask. For me, it meant he wanted her to give it voluntarily as an act of love, but she takes it to mean he doesn’t want it. And although he goes to his fate voluntarily, I would’ve found it more meaningful if he’d done it free of the curse too. It’s a small mar though and doesn’t in anyway lessen my enjoyment of the story.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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