Welcome to Night Vale is an on-going podcast about a mysterious desert town teeming with secret police, men in black, illegal angels, deadly librarians, and a glow cloud, all discussed by Cecil Baldwin in his daily radio show. In 2015 the creators came out with a stand-alone novel set in the same town. The story fits into the narrative of the podcast, but knowledge of one isn't necessary to enjoy the other.
Fink and Cranor have a distinctive narrative style that highlights the absurdity and horror of life in Night Vale, but while that style works well in a half-hour podcast, it's too much here, becoming somewhat of a distraction from the story itself. Which is a shame, because it's a very good story. Jackie and Diane, along with many other Night Vale residents, begin receiving a mysterious message that may or may not be intended for them about a city that no one can actually get to. And it's nice to see an expansion of some elements of Night Vale; a novel gives the opportunity for more in-depth storytelling.
As in other magical realism books, the oddities and supernatural occurrences are manifestations the struggles ordinary people have trying to figure out the big questions of life -- its meaning and purpose -- and what they want their own lives to be. Diane's teenage son is a literal shape-shifter, because teenagers have to figure out who they are. Jackie has been 19 years old for decades, because like a lot of young adults today she isn't quite ready to grow up. A charming but feckless character multiplies himself endlessly because he doesn't have an actual personality, and in the process almost destroys reality. In the end, the horrors of Night Vale remind us of just how little we understand the world and ourselves. What keeps me coming back to that desert town is the humanity that thrives despite those horrors.
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