(no subject)

[skygiants]

The City in Glass is I think my favorite of Nghi Vo's full-length novels so far, for the reason that it seems to feel the least need to actually force itself to take the shape of a novel. The description calls it "a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story;" I don't quite think it's either of those things, though the first more than the second.

In the first chapter of The City in Glass, the seaside city of Azril, which the demon Vitrine loves, is destroyed, very thoroughly, by angels. Why? That's not what Vitrine cares to talk about or to remember. What she wants to remember is the city in its heyday, the place and the people, and that's what she spends the first half of the book doing: wandering through the ruins, accumulating bits and pieces of memory, grieving and gradually building a determination to see the city become itself again, somehow.

One of the angels is stuck there too, because she cursed him. She is not happy to see him and does not want him there. Though she is glad that this means that he's suffering horribly! Fringe benefit! Nonetheless. This of course is the dynamic that the description calls "an epic love story" which I think does not really accurately convey ... the vibe .......... the thing that is going on here certainly does contain elements of both 'enemies' and 'lovers' but is definitely messier than I think the standard image that this phrase conjures.

Anyway. In the second half of the book, people do come back to Azril, and it becomes a city again. Vitrine, frankly, has mixed feelings about this: no city can ever be the same city twice, and she's still yearning for Azril-as-it-was, which is neither possible to have nor reasonable to want. Nonetheless. The new city of Azril is shaped by both Vitrine and the angel, and reshapes them in turn, as they reshape each other, in various painful ways. And, in the end, Vitrine finds something to love forever!

Weird book. Vivid, evocative, odd. Not really shaped like a novel, and, I think, better for it. I read it in a single night, and had some feelings about the various shapes of its grief.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

I agree entirely with your critique of the tagline here.

I had a certain degree of trouble with Azril itself (imo the greater of the two love affairs), because the whole "rich description of this seaside city" just didn't have the texture of reality about it to me. It felt like many, many speculative short stories I have read set in Wild Colorful Coastal Cities with Picturesque Dark Sides.

Second-Azril really drew me in, though! We knew the people in it, and that made all the difference.

[hebethen]

I'm with you on both points re: Azril! Very much so. (I felt like I didn't know old Azril so much as I knew the shape of its absence, which isn't necessarily bad in itself or anything, but it is what it is.)

[skygiants]

Yeah, the parts in the first half that really stuck with me were when we got something that came out of the ruins in an unexpected way -- the beat with the transformed girl really got me, and the poison plant, and those evoked much more for me than any of the bits where we were actually told A Story About the City.

[shadaras]

I assumed I would adore this book from the first time I read the blurb (especially knowing I generally like Nghi Vo) and I was very much correct.

My favorite part was the author's note at the end commenting on how one of the story seeds for this was "what if you could fuck a library?", which made me laugh and which I absolutely could see as a throughline once it was pointed out. xD

[skygiants]

lol yes that also made me laugh!!

[dhampyresa]

This sounds lovely!

[skygiants]

I expected to enjoy it, because I usually enjoy Vo's writing, but it was a stranger and more interesting book than I expected from the cover copy!

[kore]

Ooh I've been meaning to read this.

[skygiants]

I hope you enjoy it if you do!

[dolorosa_12]

I agree with you that this is Vo's best book so far, and that it's basically all vibes — and the better for it.

[skygiants]

I'm not sure I agree that it's Vo's best book, tbh -- the first two Singing Hills novellas are just so good -- but it feels like she's finding her way into being as weird and confident with longer work as she is in the shorter space and it's exciting to see!

[ceitfianna]

This one didn't really work for me, lovely writing but I needed more than vibes.

[skygiants]

That's fair, it is very vibes-based!

[blotthis]

the various shapes of its grief.

eyes emoji

[skygiants]

I will be very curious what you think of it when you read it.

[uskglass]

I liked the concept on this one better than the execution, which I don't mean unkindly in this case; I appreciate ambition, I just think the book was weighed down a little by its prose style & conventions and by a lack of specificity - a lot of detail, yeah, but detail meant to gesture generally at Grandeur and Opulent Fantasy City rather than really evoking one city (or two cities) in particular.

Same with the characters: there were a couple of times when I found myself going "yeah, yeah, a pirate queen," as opposed to being interested in this particular pirate queen, as it were. I think I also would've been more interested in Vitrine if her long-view amorality was pushed a little harder, if she invested in city leaders that were genuinely unappealing by ordinary reader standards? In a way I think these are the same problem: an Opulent Fantasy City peopled by Occasionally Ruthless but Essentially Glamorous Figures, etc.

Lest it sounds like I found nothing to like: I really enjoyed some specific sequences, and I thought the book was stronger when it stayed longer with a moment - the false hope of a denizen's survival turning to the discovery of the transformed crane-girl, for instance, and the slightly pathetic misjudgment of that from the angel. Gotta love a shitty, disturbing gift.