Welcome to Night Vale

In the small, isolated desert town of Night Vale, Jackie is the owner of a pawnshop that pays eleven dollars for pretty much anything that can be pawned, including tears. She's nineteen and has always been nineteen, she can't remember being any other age. It doesn't bother her that much.
Diane is a single mother to teenage shapeshifter Josh and works in an office that performs unclear business. Diane is the only person in the office who remembers a recent co-worker named Evan, though her memory of him is getting weaker. More importantly, she's shocked to see her ex, Josh's father, has returned to town after abandoning his family years before, and he seems to be working every job he can get.
Creeping into their lives is the worry about a show more mysterious man in a tan jacket who has been skittering all over town, handing over pieces of paper with two words written on them. He put one in Jackie's hand at the all-nite diner and now she can't get rid of it. The two women really dislike each other, but when Josh somehow escapes Night Vale, something few people have been able to do, they work together to find him.
Surreal, funny, and with strong doses of both sci-fi and horror, this is the second Night Vale novel I've read and now I want them all. How can I not like a place where a visit to the public library is nearly always fatal? show less

from James:

I can totally understand why you might like this book: it's full of imagination and quotable lines ("Nearly ever broadcast told a story of impending doom or death, or worse: a long life lived in fruitless fear of doom or death."). It's different than a lot of fiction out there. My biggest issue, however, is the lack of character dialogue and development. Fink and Cranor create a world that is strange and mysterious, but I read for character and having the place be the character only gets me so far.

The whole book reads like a series of dichotomies. Take this paragraph:

Most people in Night Vale know there is information that is
forbidden or unavailable, which is almost all information. Most
people in Night Vale get by with show more a cobbled-together framework of
lies and assumptions and conspiracy theories. Diane was like most
people. Most people are.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's bad writing. It's playful and entertaining, but a whole book of it gets tiring. I wanted some flesh on the bones to fill it out. show less

(I read an ARC; details of the text may change prior to publication)

This tie-in novel to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast centres its narrative on two minor characters from the show: Diane Crayton and Jackie Fierro. Many other characters make appearances, and there are frequent excerpts from the radio show (which I had no problem in reading in Cecil's voice), but the bulk of the book is about Jackie and Diane and how they have to work together to figure out what's going on with King City and a certain mysterious man in a tan jacket.

This is an entertaining book—Fink and Cranor answer some long-held questions about Night Vale and raise some others, there are some fun/atmospheric set pieces—but not one that needed to be 400 pages show more long. It could likely have been edited down by 100 pages and not lost anything, especially since some of the lines that could be just about carried off in podcast form sound even more like a first year philosophy student striving for profundity when written down. Definitely readable, but I don't know that it's going to have much appeal to people who aren't already fans of the show. show less

This is the much-anticipated novel -- or, dare I say, hopefully, first novel? -- based on the astoundingly popular podcast, Welcome to Night Vale. If you're unfamiliar, Welcome to Night Vale takes the form of a community radio program broadcast from the little desert town of Night Vale, a place where the bizarre is ordinary, the horrific is mundane, and all conspiracies theories are true, a place that, as one of the characters puts it in this novel, "is mostly made of the unexplained."

I'm a huge fan of the podcast and its compelling blend of surrealism, comedy, horror, humanity, heart, and bleak but strangely comforting existentialist philosophy. So I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. The actual experience of reading it show more turned out to be a little weird, though -- in different ways than the ways in which Night Vale is weird -- because reading a Night Vale story in novel format at novel length turns out to be very different from listening to a half-hour podcast in which, as often as not, the plot gets resolved offscreen during the weather. (Which is music. No, I don't know why. It's Night Vale.) I think, because of that, I kept expecting things to happen faster than they did.

But never mind that. Overall, it was enjoyable, and very much in the spirit of the podcast, while also doing things that the podcast itself couldn't do as easily. It focuses primarily on two minor characters from the show: Jackie Fierro, the pawnshop owner who has been nineteen for a very long time, and Diane Crayton, the PTA mom with the shapeshifting son. And it's interesting to see Night Vale from their point of view, and to get a look a ordinary life in that extraordinary town without it being filtered through the reporting of a not necessarily entirely reliable narrator. It also answers a long-standing mystery from the series, namely the identity of the weirdly forgettable Man in the Tan Jacket, and provides some brain-breaking insights into the way that time works, or fails to work, in Night Vale. I'm not entirely sure how much these answers and insights actually make sense, but that, perhaps, is as it should be.

I should add that while there are plenty of familiar characters and little continuity references here for fans of the show, the book is deliberately written in such a way that one could pick it up and enjoy it entirely on its own. So if you're curious about Night Vale, but, for whatever reason, don't like the podcast format, this might make for an alternative worth checking out.

(PS: ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD.) show less

An extension of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, this is the story of two women searching for .... someone? Maybe? They can't really remember. Jackie is 19 and has been working at the same pawn shop for at least 30 years when someone gives her a piece of paper that says "King City" and won't leave her hand. She goes to ask her mom about it but, like, who is her mom? Where does her mom live again?
Diane lives a normal life, taking care of her teenage son who does not have a consistent form and remembering coworkers who no one else remembers. But after seeing multiple copies of her son's father all over town, Diane finds out that her son is missing and he might be in some place called "King City"? But how do you get there when your car show more spontaneously returns to Night Vale every time you try?

This is an extremely absurd story. But unlike most modern absurd horror, which can feel extremely messy, Night Vale is a world that has been crafted with such care that it feels comforting instead. Highly recommended if you like the podcast, of course. Probably not a good starting point if you've never listened before. show less

Night Vale is stranger than your average strange small town. When nineteen-year old Jackie who runs the pawn shop and who has always been nineteen is given a slip of paper by a mysterious man in a tan jacket with a deerskin suitcase, she assumes it's just a typical pawn. Except she cannot put down the paper. Ever. The paper's simple text of KING CITY seems to indicate just where Jackie might be able to get rid of the paper but leaving Night Vale can be dangerous. Meanwhile, Diane is trying desperately to be a good single parent, which is becoming increasingly difficult when her ex keeps cropping up everywhere and her son is desperate to actually meet him. When Jackie and Diane's paths cross the results might be devastating for both of show more them.

If you've listened to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, this book will be an absolute delight. If you've never listened in a) you should but b) you can still read this book. Just be prepared to miss out on why some sections are truly awesome. I giggled regularly while reading the fantastic weirdness that is this book and was thrilled that there were no real spoilers for the podcast series as I'm still a few months behind. All hail the glow cloud! show less

I was able to get a copy of the Night Vale novel out of the library more easily than I’d expected, probably because most Night Vale fans are wary of libraries so did not hurry to reserve it. (Whereas I cannot help being somewhat sympathetic towards the librarians.) It is rather disconcerting to read, given the seamless transposition of the podcast format into a novel. I wasn’t expecting it to work so well, but it really does. The delightful weirdness of the setting is equally well evoked in book as in podcast format. The narrative follows two women named Jackie and Diane, who both have annoyances to deal with that are connected to a mysterious man in a tan jacket carrying a deerskin suitcase. This story is regularly intercut with show more extracts from Cecil’s radio show, which ensure that the wider goings-on of Night Vale are also known to the reader.

I enjoyed the novel, although not as viscerally as the Night Vale live show I went to last year. The juxtaposition of the mundane with the horrifying is Night Vale’s greatest strong point and this is much in evidence here. A particular highlight for me was Diane’s office job, a lovely satire. I became quite invested in the doings of the office tarantula. I also loved the descriptions of Jackie’s mother’s house, in which Jackie struggles to find cutlery: “Who has two hot milk drawers?” There are many brilliant little asides, though, such as,

He had to have his phone with him. It was illegal for any person to not carry at all times some sort of device by which the World Government could track their location. Most people opted for a cell phone because it could also do useful things like make phone calls and attract birds. A few holdouts still preferred the old tracking collars, bulky and impossible to take off though they were.

If you enjoy the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, you will obviously enjoy this book. It complements the podcast without transcending it. If you have never heard of the Night Vale but enjoy surreal mundanity and vaguely existential musing, you will also appreciate it.

In addition, the pattern of flies on the end papers is very appealing. show less