Nghi Vo
Tor
1 October 2024
224 pages
eBook - EPUB
Fantasy
ARC via NetGalley
A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.
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.
I really loved the premise of The City in Glass and Vo's prose was as lyrical and beautiful as always. I certainly didn't dislike this story, but neither did I love it, and I think that is because I struggled to connect on more than a surface level with the characters. Vitrine received a little more character development, but I felt we never properly got to know the angel, so their relationship was hard to embrace and it was thus harder to care about their feelings and intentions. Perhaps a slightly longer word count, to really explore the characters to a greater extent, would have made this work better for me. I am still giving it three stars, though, as it was a great idea and an atmospheric read.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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