Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel

Joseph Fink · Jeffrey Cranor

Oct 2015 · Welcome to Night Vale Book 1 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller

"Hypnotic and darkly funny. . . . Belongs to a particular strain of American gothic that encompasses The Twilight Zone, Stephen King and Twin Peaks, with a bit of Tremors thrown in." —The Guardian

“A splendid, weird, moving novel.”— NPR.org

From the creators of the wildly popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle to find ourselves. . . no matter where we live.

Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.

Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "KING CITY" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.

Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.

Diane's search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: "KING CITY". It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures...if they can ever find it.

Ratings and reviews

Immensely boring. Way too much unnecessary commentary that weighs the story down. The little weird comments are supposed to be unsettling I guess, but unfortunately, they do not lend themselves to an atmosphere of terror or wrongness. Instead, the comments just sound like the ramblings of a dementia patient. I was expecting Lovecraftian horror, and boy was I disappointed.

While I recommend the WTNV podcast to everyone, the book is horrible. It is laid out in a difficult to read format made with millions of run on sentences, repeating lines, and impossible to read descriptions. There is NO reason any book should take 2 to 3 paragraphs to say something that could be summed up in a simple sentence. It's not only makes it harder to read, but incredibly boring. If you could take out the purposely mindless fluff in this book it would probably be less than 30 pages.

This book is both amazing and not, both lackluster and not. It exists in that nebulous space between entertainment and frustration. I do not feel fulfilled after reading this, but I also do not feel hollow. Feelings are weird. This book about a town where time (and most everything else) is weird is... well, weird. It has a style to it similar to descending down an endless flight of steps, constantly looking for a door, a window, or something, anything really to help identify what time, place, or plane of existence this is currently. Please send help. The book weaves in and out of confusion, using the style that works so well in the Welcome To Night Vale podcast. It does not work as well in the printed word. I think, maybe, this is because no one in night vale is supposed to be writing? This book causes unneeded question marks. In the most general sense possible, I would give this book two reviews. A four to long time Night Vale fans who may be resistant to the odd idea of a slowly maddening staircase into the abyss type storyline. Can one gain resistance to that? The other review I would say is a two stars for anyone unfamiliar with Welcome To Night Vale. This is not a "good" book, but not a "bad" one either. I wouldn't even say it is "mediocre", "Ok", or many many other adjectives signalling to the general goodness or badness of a thing. I would say it is weird. Certainly weird. Maybe a bit unsettling? There go those unneeded question marks again.

About the author

Joseph Fink is the creator of the Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn't Dead podcasts, and the New York Times bestselling author of Welcome to Night Vale, It Devours!, and The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home (all written with Jeffrey Cranor), and Alice Isn’t Dead. He is also the author of the middle-grade novel, The Halloween Moon. He and his wife, Meg Bashwiner, have written the memoir The First Ten Years. They live together in the Hudson River Valley.

Jeffrey Cranor cowrites the Welcome to Night Vale and Within the Wires podcasts. He also cocreates theater and dance pieces with choreographer/wife Jillian Sweeney. They live in New York.