I've been putting off writing this review because I honestly don't know what to say about it except it's very good and you should go read it. THE CITY IN GLASS is about a city, sure, but it's really about the city's demon and the lengths she goes to for the love of the city. After her city Azril is destroyed by angelic fire, she spends the next 600 years rebuilding it, tending it like a garden and rejoicing in its blooms. There's also one of the destroying angels, disallowed from heaven because of her curse, and their dynamic through the ages is really well-considered.
I think it'd be easy to make these characters a demon and angel but really just people, but Vo has really thought about how a demon and angel would think and act, and the timescales in which they would do so. This book is a meditation on the character of a city and how it can change over time, and be changed by the people within its walls and forces from without. It's also about the love of a people, and of the strange love between opposing supernatural forces, creation and destruction, ebb and flow.
As for the ending? You'll either love it or be confused, and I'm not sure which I was. But the journey makes it more than worthwhile.
🕮🕮🕮🕮½