The City in Glass

Available From:

Add to your Goodreads To-Read Shelf

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 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.

Reviews

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

About the Author

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.

Learn More About Author

Books By Nghi Vo