(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Language of the Night: The City in Glass by Nghi Vo [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-12-02 Hello lovely readers, it’s a nice night to curl up with a warm book this December night. Many thanks to DrLori, as always: for starting up this forum where the fantastic, fun, and sometimes frightening written words have a place to call their own. I’m guest hosting tonight from the wintry wonderland of Upstate NY, we had our first real snowfall this AM but nothing compared to the lake effect felt to our west. Nghi Vo’s The City in Glass, published October 2024, is short at 216 pages. It has been compared to Miéville, LeGuin, and Tchaikovsky because it is about a city, and these authors wrote fantasies about cities. Hmm. A reviewer on Reddit called it “a demon plays Civ” (I resemble that remark- I spend too much time in Sid Meier’s creations)! Another Redditor, SeraphinaSphinx, thought it fit into the Japanese genre of iyashikei. Iyashikei (meaning "healing") is a subgenre of slice-of-life fiction where the focus is on small details of the world the characters inhabit in order to create a sense of calm and peace in the audience. These stories are often "plotless", where the point is for us to feel like we're experiencing life alongside the characters … "finding meaning in fleeting moments of time” (This is not a calm or peaceful story) WARNING! Spoilers ahead! We start off with a moment of exuberant celebration at Summersend (readers, this is the first sentence that hooked me), p. 3 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. A demon holds in her heart a glass case (“vitrine”) encasing a book of names. Vitrine came to Azril, a port town, as a refugee from war-destroyed Saqarra in the south and built the town into a city of light, laughter and dancing. She loves the people of her city and guides them from the shadows, and is rarely clearly seen. Her goal is to build the city up, to its benefit but, if possible, also to the demon’s amusement. A host of angels comes that night and scourges the city for its sins. P. 10 Arrogant, was Vitrine’s first thought, that they would walk so mighty through the world. Demons learned humility with their first mouthful of dirt, their first mouthful of blood, and angels had never learned it at all. In her pain and grief, Vitrine curses and contaminates an angel who looks back at the death and destruction and at her. He is banished from heaven and forced to spend eternity on Earth. Now begins the story of the rebuilding of Azril and the relationship between demon and angel. The story is told in vignettes of slow dirty tedious clearing, finding beauty in the wreckage, a shock of torture, sadness and wonder, jumping in time between the Azril-that-was-destroyed and the Azril-that-is-becoming. You’ll read of ghosts, horses, bees, refugees, a pirate princess, a merchant family, an artist whose sketches “are not beautiful but true,” and a fierce swordsman: the tapestry of the city. Vitrine is challenging, caring, mischievous and fickle but always in love with her people, careful to record their names in her book. P. 69 Vitrine loved her city like demons and cats may love things, with an eye towards ownership and the threat of small mayhem. In contrast to the demon, the angel is viewed by humans p. 206 Those who saw him pass remembered different things, and afterwards they dreamed of him, love without mercy and fury without holiness. Over time, and after many years and decades, Vitrine finally accepts the angel and the new rebuilt city of Azril. She never learns or writes the angel’s name in her heart’s book but builds a permanent thing of him nonetheless. Like Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle series, this novel is a tribute to stories, and story-tellers; and thus is bookended by and about books and libraries (look for butterflies). It starts with a library of a shut-in who hoards his books; it ends with a more permanent library. This is a short book to have such richness in its pages; it was also written during the difficulties of the pandemic. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/2/2289792/-The-Language-of-the-Night-The-City-in-Glass-by-Nghi-Vo?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/