The City in Glass, Nghi Vo
The City in Glass, Nghi Vo
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The City in Glass

Author: Nghi Vo

Narrator: Susan Dalian

Unabridged: 6 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2024

Synopsis

In this new standalone novel, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Fall 2024 SF&F pick

A demon. An angel. A city.

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.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to reduce a world to ashes and remake it anew.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com.

About Nghi Vo

Nghi Vo is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began with The Empress of Salt and Fortune. The series entries have been finalists for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Crawford Award, the Ignyte Award, and the Hugo Award. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.

Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on December 19, 2024

this is a beautifully written book about how after a bunch of angels destroy a demon's city, the demon curses one of the angels and then they fall in love. i love nghi vo, but i've always disliked these sort of star-crossed ill-fated romances because they feel instalovey to me. if the stakes are this......more

Goodreads review by Robin on April 21, 2025

what if you were one of the angels responsible for destroying a city built up over centuries by a demon and she cursed a bit of herself to follow you forever so you are ostracized by your own kind and return to the rubble of a city forgotten where the SAME demon labors to build it back up again (view spoiler)[ and (hide spoiler)]......more

Goodreads review by Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) on October 16, 2024

The City in Glass is a slow, thoughtful examination of many lifetimes in a city through the perspective of the immortal demon who loves it and watches over the people who inhabit it. And the angel who once destroyed it and is now trapped by a part of the demon. He also will learn to love the city an......more

Goodreads review by EveStar91 on March 23, 2025

From the topmost tower of the observatory to the floating docks on the beach, the city of Azril lit up with paper lanterns, with candles, with girls throwing flaming knives and boys in firefly crowns, with passion, with desire, with hatred, and with delight. This first sentence is representative of t......more

Goodreads review by Samantha on October 29, 2024

3.5 This book is a very interesting, very pretty contemplation of grief, anger, history and so much more. But it leans a bit too far towards “all vibes no plot” for me and I didn’t really feel the romance aspect of it which made the ending fall flat. It kind of gave me This Is How You Lose The Time W......more

Quotes

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Fall 2024 SF&F pick

Praise for The City in Glass:

“Echoing with strains of myths like a familiar tune half-heard in a distant room, The City in Glass is a treasure, as fragile as its namesake and relentless as granite, filled with exquisite sorrow, fury, and desire.”—Jacqueline Carey, author of Kushiel's Dart

“Satisfying as a leisurely stroll along the streets of some historic city, The City in Glass opens up like a treasure box to reveal glittering jewels of insight, exploring the nature of love and destruction with a sharp and delicate touch.”—Sacha Lamb, Mythopoeic Award-winning Lambda Literary Fellow

“Evokes the best of Italo Calvino and Ursula K. Le Guin.... This beautifully crafted tale of resilience and transformation may be Vo’s best yet.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Creates the kind of push-pull duality of This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, then adds a splash of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens to tell a romantic story about two beings on opposite sides of an eternal conflict who find common ground but never peace.”—Library Journal

Praise for Nghi Vo:

"Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today."—Taylor Jenkins Reid on Siren Queen

“The Chosen and the Beautiful is a subversive, sexy, atmospheric, sweltering, gin-soaked, Hell-haunted vision of Gatsby's New York, with prose that will pull you under.” —Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of Starling House

"A piece of perfection. It is queer and it is unapologetic and it is loving and it is a reminder that we can survive our demons, that we can outsmart them, that we can beat them at their own game."—Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“I love it with the passion of a thousand burning hearts.”—The Washington Post on The Chosen and the Beautiful

"Luminous."—TIME Magazine on The Chosen and the Beautiful

"Vo’s prose is beautifully supple... A sumptuous, decadent read.”—The New York Times on The Chosen and the Beautiful

"Nghi Vo can take even the most ordinary of actions and describe it in a way you never thought of before and do it with heartbreaking beauty and layers of subtext."—NPR on Siren Queen

“Nghi Vo has become one of my favorite writers, and Siren Queen is lush and brilliant.”—Martha Wells, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Murderbot Diaries

“Decadent. Visual. Imaginative. Genius. Not enough words to praise this page-turning novel.” —P. Djèlí Clark, winner of the Alex, Locus, and Nebula Awards and author of Ring Shout on The Chosen and the Beautiful

"Nghi Vo is a magician—no—maybe a god.”—Kelly Robson, author of Gods, Monsters & the Lucky Peach on Siren Queen

"Vo is a remarkable writer." —BookPage, starred review, on The Chosen and the Beautiful

“Extraordinary. . . Vo’s immersive prose never ceases to captivate." —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Chosen and the Beautiful

"An uncommonly talented new voice in fantasy, one who writes from a place of anger, insight, and deep compassion.”—Vulture on Siren Queen

“Enter Nghi Vo's lyrical, fever-dream spin." —Oprah Daily on The Chosen and the Beautiful

Awards

  • NPR Best Book of the Year
  • Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
  • BookPage Best Books of the Year
Add to Cart
Add to Wish List