the city in glass
Jul. 20th, 2024 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaNghi Vo, The City in Glass.
The demon Vitrine loved the city of Azril until it was destroyed by angels. Her fury wounded one of the destroyers; no longer pure enough for his kindred, he is cursed to stay on Earth, wandering the ruins that were once Azril in pain and confusion.
I have a theory that some novellas are constructed like short stories and some are constructed like novels. The City in Glass is a novel that feels like a short story. The narrative arc is simple--the plot is essentially a love triangle, where Vitrine loves her city and the angel loves Vitrine--and the ending strikes with the force of a well-built short story. The complexities are in the streets and people of Azril itself: the tales that the angels cut off and the new tales that accumulate as different people arrive and begin to rebuild.
The City in Glass is in the same continuity as Vo's Singing Hills novellas. There's a passing reference to mastodons, and another to a cleric with a talking shrike. The angels and demons clearly draw on Christian mythology, but Christian mythology isn't privileged here above other mythologies: you won't find the attention to the hierarchies of Heaven and Hell that prevails in other stories about angels falling in love. Vitrine comes from a far-flung family of demons, each with its own talents and obsessions; they seem to be powers arising (super)naturally from the earth itself, rather than exiled angels. The angels, meanwhile, are terrifyingly destructive and terrifyingly good. We never learn why Azril was destroyed, or whether the angels serve a God. The focus is instead on grief, rebuilding, and the inevitability of change. Even immortality is not altogether constant.
(I read this book as a Netgalley ARC. In the US, it comes out October 1.)
The demon Vitrine loved the city of Azril until it was destroyed by angels. Her fury wounded one of the destroyers; no longer pure enough for his kindred, he is cursed to stay on Earth, wandering the ruins that were once Azril in pain and confusion.
I have a theory that some novellas are constructed like short stories and some are constructed like novels. The City in Glass is a novel that feels like a short story. The narrative arc is simple--the plot is essentially a love triangle, where Vitrine loves her city and the angel loves Vitrine--and the ending strikes with the force of a well-built short story. The complexities are in the streets and people of Azril itself: the tales that the angels cut off and the new tales that accumulate as different people arrive and begin to rebuild.
The City in Glass is in the same continuity as Vo's Singing Hills novellas. There's a passing reference to mastodons, and another to a cleric with a talking shrike. The angels and demons clearly draw on Christian mythology, but Christian mythology isn't privileged here above other mythologies: you won't find the attention to the hierarchies of Heaven and Hell that prevails in other stories about angels falling in love. Vitrine comes from a far-flung family of demons, each with its own talents and obsessions; they seem to be powers arising (super)naturally from the earth itself, rather than exiled angels. The angels, meanwhile, are terrifyingly destructive and terrifyingly good. We never learn why Azril was destroyed, or whether the angels serve a God. The focus is instead on grief, rebuilding, and the inevitability of change. Even immortality is not altogether constant.
(I read this book as a Netgalley ARC. In the US, it comes out October 1.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-20 03:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-20 10:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-21 03:08 am (UTC)I like Vo, but in a cerebral way. I'm not in love with nor identify with any of her characters, which are the most common ways for me to bond with an author's work.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-07-21 03:41 am (UTC)I would say I am cerebrally engaged with about half of her works and intensely swept up by the other half. It's not as simple as identifying or not identifying--Vo tends to write characters who are standoffish in one way and I am internally standoffish in a slightly different way, so there are subtler questions about the ways that feelings align.
This is one of the stories that is more interesting to me than emotionally compelling, but that seems like too faint praise given how interesting it is!