James Nicoll Reviews

Nghi Vo’s 2024 The City in Glass¹ is a stand-alone secondary-universe fantasy novel.

The thriving port city of Azril so delighted the demon Vitrine that she took up permanent residence there. Every human foible was on display. The city offered a smorgasbord of passion and depravity to delight even the most jaded demon.

The angels were altogether less approving.

Angels are as judgmental as they are unchanging, as powerful as they are immortal. Although Vitrine confronts and rebukes the intruders as the behemoth angels march towards Azril, she cannot move them from their chosen course. The angels have come to burn Azril from the face of the world. The angels do burn Azril from the face of the world.

Vitrine alone survives the holocaust. Demons may not be as powerful as angels, but they are just as impossible to kill. Surrounded by the remains of her beloved city, Vitrine refuses to submit to angelic whim. Instead, she undertakes the seemingly impossible task of burying the cremains, clearing the rubble, and rebuilding Azril.

The angel at whom Vitrine hurled curses discovers to its dismay that demonic spite can affect even the supposedly unchanging angels. Vitrine’s curse is forever bound to the angel’s heart. Its fellows, unwilling to accept this reality, shun the angel. Forced to wander the mortal world, the angel fixates on Vitrine.

The angel’s attempts to endear itself to the demon are as ineffectual as they are incessant. Demons are masters of grudges and angels are poorly suited to any challenge requiring insight or flexibility. Vitrine makes steady progress towards her goal. The angel appears far less successful.

With time, a dead city can be resurrected or at least a new city built on the site. Can an angel ever make amends to a demon?

~oOo~

Vitrine’s project spans generations and raises a serious Ship of Theseus question. Even leaving aside the question of whether the city raised on the site of old Azril is in any sense Azril, the new city experiences tremendous change over the course of the short novel. Angelic displeasure is not the only way cities are depopulated. Aside from the geographic similarities, is Azril a few centuries down the road the same city that the demon founded? But perhaps it’s better to think of cities as on-going processes, not singular objects.

When I termed this book a novel, that wasn’t a typo for novella. Glass may be short, at some 50,000 words, but it is a novel. Moreover, it is a complete novel, containing the whole story, without need for sequels or other material to provide a full narrative and complete closure. This, even though the events conveyed in this compact narrative cover centuries. Would that more authors could be this succinct and disciplined.

The incident with Vitrine should alarm the angels. They are supposedly perfect and unchanging. Vitrine, who is not a remarkably powerful demon, managed to permanently change one of them. Eternity ensures that there will be sufficient time for each angel to encounter such altercations. If angels aren’t unchanging, perhaps they might not be immortal. The angels cope with this problem by doing their best to ignore the issue, which I sure will be completely effective.

There may be a temptation, when writing about entities like vampires and demons, to buff down their edges somewhat, to reframe traditionally unpleasant beings as just plain folks with public relations issues. Vitrine is not such a demon². She has admirable qualities — persistence being one of them — but these serve demonic goals. Yes, she is determined to see Azril rise again… and once it does rise, she will return to her vocation of making the world more entertaining by urging humans to terrible deeds.

At the same time, despite populating the novel with cheerfully malicious demons, arrogantly judgmental angels, and easily tempted humans, the characters are surprising sympathetic. Well, sympathetic may be the wrong word. Engaging. Readers will care how the story plays out.

The City in Glass is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: How unusual for me to review something close to the release date, as opposed to months before or years, even decades, after.

2: Admittedly the angels are also jerks, of the haughty and violent variety.