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Loading... Welcome to Night Valeby Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.  JamesMikealHill | Jan 3, 2025 |    ) Beammey | Dec 21, 2024 | ) Yaelig | Nov 16, 2024 | This review comes with a disclaimer - I would not pick this book up and just try to read it. It may not be for you. I would first start out with listening to the podcast Welcome to Nigh Vale. If you get through at least 5 - 10 of the first podcasts and found yourself chuckling but also interested, then I would recommend this book to you. It's a pretty funny book that wraps horror and shocking between some pretty profound statements. There are a lot of deep things to think about it, if you see them, and I like that the story makes me wonder. I also enjoy the humor. I don't often like the humor in stories but this one just strikes the right cord. I find myself giggling and full on laughing (so much I have to put the book down!) I was intrigued by Night Vale (although I'm sad the floating cat did not make an appearance). I loved the reference to Erika's and knowing more about the pawn shop. I loved that Jackie didn't age and that Josh was always whatever he wanted - although I would have loved for the mom to change his pronoun a time or two. All in all, I was intrigued by the story and I enjoyed it. (  ) Trisha_Thomas | Nov 14, 2024 | Cheryl_in_CC_NV | Oct 18, 2024 | no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesWelcome to Night Vale (Novel 1) AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Horror.
Science Fiction.
Humor (Fiction.)
HTML: 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. "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 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. .No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.69)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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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 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. (