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Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel
Author:
Fink, Joseph (Fiction writer)
CoAuthor:
Cranor, Jeffrey
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3606.I
Print Run: 150000
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ISBN-13: 9780062351425
LCCN: 2015298604
Imprint: Harper Perennial Modern
Publisher: HarperCollins
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Pub Date: 10/20/2015
Availability: Available
List: $21.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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401 pages ; 24 cm
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.29",
1.22 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Adult Fiction
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
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Awards:
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Kirkus Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Kirkus Reviews
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TIPS Subjects:
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Science Fiction
Horror
Humorous Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary
FICTION / Fantasy / Humorous
FICTION / Historical / General
FICTION / Horror
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Magical Realism
FICTION / Occult & Supernatural
FICTION / Science Fiction / Humorous
FICTION / Thrillers / Historical
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LC Subjects:
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Absentee fathers
Absentee fathers, Fiction
City and town life, Fiction
Detective and mystery fiction
Fantasy fiction
Fiction
Horror fiction
Mystery fiction
Paranormal fiction
Parent and teenager
Parent and teenager, Fiction
Shapeshifting
Shapeshifting, Fiction
Southwestern States, Fiction
United States, Southwestern States
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SEARS Subjects: |
City and town life, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
Accelerated Reader Level:
5.4
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Points: 15.0
Lexile Level:
770
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 07/01/2015 |
| When the man in a tan jacket, holding a deerskin suitcase, gives eternally-19-year-old Jackie Fierro a slip of paper that remains stuck to her left hand, Jackie teams with Diane Crayton to find King City, the mysterious town written on the piece of paper. Diane's teenage son, Josh, is a shapeshifter looking for his absentee father. A trip to the deadly Night Vale library is about to change everything in the strange desert town called Night Vale. 416pp., 150K, Auth res: Cranor: NY |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Kirkus Reviews | 08/15/2015 |
| All hail the glow cloud as the weird and wonderful town of Night Vale brings itself to fine literature. Creators Fink and Cranor offer fans of their (oc)cult podcast Welcome to Night Vale a fantastic addition with a stand-alone tale of the mysterious desert town that also offers loyal listeners some interesting clues about the nature of the place. Readers who are unfamiliar with the podcast shouldn't be put off--they still get an eccentric thriller with a specific sense of humor that mimics the omnipresent spookiness of Twin Peaks. Artist Kate Leth, who collaborates on the podcast, once described the project this way: "It's like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman started building a town in The Sims and then just...left it running. For years." Fortunately, the writers are firmly confident in their creation. "Look, life is stressful," the book tells us. "This is true everywhere. But life in Night Vale is more stressful. There are things lurking in the shadows. Not the projections of a worried mind, but literal Things, lurking, literally, in shadows. Conspiracies are hidden in every storefront, under every street, and floating in helicopters above. And with all that there is still the bland tragedy of life." The main plot largely centers on two characters and their search for a hidden city. Perpetually 19-year-old Jackie Fierro runs the local pawn shop and is perplexed when A Man in a Tan Jacket gives her a note reading simply "King City." Meanwhile, PTA mom Diane Crayton loses her teenage son and must join forces with Jackie to find this mysterious place. It's all pretty far out there on the weird-ometer, but the novel is definitely as addictive as its source material. The book also pays fan service by punctuating its chapters with original broadcasts by Night Vale narrator Cecil Gershwin Palmer and cameos by fan favorites like Old Woman Josie, Carlos the sexy scientist, and the aforementioned Glow Cloud. A delightfully bonkers media crossover that will make an incredible audiobook. 416pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2015. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 10/01/2015 |
| Joseph Fink claims he's calling from a New Jersey beach. I prefer to imagine that his spotty cell reception is actually because he's calling from a dark bunker in an undisclosed location. That somehow seems more appropriate for a co-author of Welcome to Night Vale, the new novel based on the wildly popular podcast of the same name. In case you're late to the Night Vale party, here's a quick recap: Fink, along with Jeffrey Cranor, created a podcast called "Welcome to Night Vale" in 2012. A traveling live show based on the podcasts came a couple of years later. Night Vale is, as Cranor describes it, "in the non-specific American southwest desert, where ghosts and government and angels are commonplace and people go about their lives." The Night Vale podcasts are presented as a radio show hosted by a guy named Cecil Gershwin Palmer, who shares news about the town in a soothing, friendly and NPR-ish voice. Slate named the pilot episode as one of the best podcasts ever. The shows are somewhat in the vein of "A Prairie Home Companion," only completely weird and surreal. In a recent episode, a sentient patch of haze with a wicked Midwestern accent, Deb, comes on the air with Cecil to bring a message from sponsor Jo-Ann Fabrics. Also, the highway department presents a public service announcement, read by Cecil, in which they remind Night Vale residents to buckle up, then hunker down, then forget everything, remember everything and open their eyes to what is really going on. "Time doesn't work in Night Vale," someone says in the book. And they're right. The podcasts are unsettling, funny and deeply addictive, and the novel is a pitch-perfect spin on them. But back to the phone call with Cranor, calling in to talk with us from New York City, and Fink, calling in from a secret location that we all know was not really on the Jersey shore. Though the two have written together for five years--they wrote and performed a play in the East Village of Manhattan before they started Night Vale--they say co-writing a novel based on a beloved podcast was an exhilarating challenge. "We just trusted each other," Fink said. "We would build on what the other person was writing." "At the very get-go, it was a completely different medium than the podcasts or live shows, where all our writing goes in someone's ear," Cranor says. "Once I recognized that challenge, it was a lot easier. There is a nice benefit of having built the Night Vale world already. There is some shorthand. So when Fink says, 'Let's have a scene take place here,' I know where that is. We decided early on how we would explore the town--new and old characters--and give them a life not from Cecil's point of view." In the novel, Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro, who has been 19 as long as she can remember, is handed a piece of paper by a stranger. The paper reads, "KING CITY." Jackie has no idea what to do with this paper or what it means, and despite her efforts to wash the paper down the shower, throw it away or burn it, it keeps returning to her hand. Even after an accident requires Jackie to get a cast on her arm, she knows the paper is still there. "When this comes off, I'll be holding a paper that says 'KING CITY,' and I'll keep holding it for centuries, not growing old, not growing at all, still in Night Vale, like I always have been," she says in the hospital. "I'm never going to get my life back. I'm never going to get a life. I'll be 19-year-old Jackie Fierro, no purpose, one slip of paper, forever." Jackie finds herself obsessed with finding out the meaning of the note. At the same time, in the same town, Diane Crayton is a single mom struggling to raise her son Josh, who is a teenager and--of course--also a shape-shifter who... Review exceeds allowable length. Amy Scribner. 416pg. BOOKPAGE, c2015. |
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| Booklist | 09/01/2015 |
| Here's the print incarnation of the popular eponymous podcast, a horror/sf dystopia whose newscaster narrator, Cecil, blithely mingles rants from The Old Woman without a Face, PTA updates, and decrees from the shadowy World Government. Nineteen-year-old pawnbroker Jackie Fierro and PTA treasurer Diane Crayton are given perplexing notes labeled "King City" by a man wearing a tan jacket. The man instructs Diane to give the message to her shape-shifting teenage son, Josh, but she has no intention of involving him until she understands what King City is and why the note won't detach from her hand. Then Josh's deadbeat father, Troy, returns to Night Vale and begins cheerfully stalking Jackie. Determined to recapture Night Vale's version of normalcy, Jackie and Diane reluctantly team up to investigate King City, the tan-jacketed man, and Troy's appearance. Sporting all of Night Vale's oddities with the podcast's trademark nonchalance, this debut is bound to please the podcast's fans, but newcomers may want to take a listen first to avoid missing the inside jokes. Tran, Christine. 416p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2015. |
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| Library Journal | 09/01/2015 |
| "Welcome to Night Vale" is a popular podcast of public radio broadcasts presumably from the fictional town of Night Vale, a uniquely surreal place isolated in the desert. Inspired by the podcasts, this first novel from creator/writer Fink and writer Cranor focuses on a few residents: pawn shop owner Jackie, who has been 19 for many decades, and Diane, an office drone and PTA member whose son, Jack, constantly changes his physical form. At the pawn shop, a strange man in a tan jacket sells Jackie a piece of paper with the words KING CITY written on it. She tries to destroy the paper, but no matter what she does, she's always holding it. Meanwhile, one of Diane's coworkers vanishes and everyone else denies his existence. These mysteries converge as Jackie and Diane begin a quest to discover the secret of the man and his indestructible paper, which might even lead to their venturing out of Night Vale. Their journey eventually takes them to the library, considered the most dangerous place in town--its librarians have toxic blood. VERDICT Fans of the podcast will enjoy learning more Night Vale lore, and fantasy readers may also enjoy, depending on how tolerant they are of non sequiturs. Others, though, may not find enough to sustain a novel of this length. [See Editors' Picks, p. 28; Prepub Alert, 4/13/15.]. Kate Gray, Boston P.L., MA. 416p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 04/13/2015 |
| Surely you've heard of Night Vale, that funky little town in the eponymous (and bubbling-over popular) podcast and touring show created by Fink and cowritten by him and Cranor. The library figures largely there, one reason we're pleased to welcome the authors to this year's Day of Dialog. Ghosts, angels, and aliens also sweep through the town, and government conspiracies are part of daily life. In this novel, based on the podcast, 19-year-old pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a piece of paper containing the words KING CITY by a man with a deerskin suitcase and later finds that not only can she not shake the paper from her hand but that no one else recalls a thing about the mysterious stranger. Meanwhile, PTA Diane Crayton must contend with cranky, shape-shifting son Josh and repeated sightings of Josh's father, looking the same as he did when he decamped years ago when they were teenagers. The podcast has been No. 1 on iTunes, the shows have been known to sell out in 20 seconds, and the fan base (embracing a healthy YA crossover audience) includes 209,000-plus Facebook fans and 269,000-plus Twitter followers. So what are you waiting for? With a 150,000-copy first printing. Barbara Hoffert. 416p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 04/27/2015 |
| Fink and Cranor, co-creators of the popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast, successfully expand the mythology of their strange desert town. The novel follows Diane Crayton, whose shapeshifting son's absentee father has just come back to town, and Jackie Fierro, who's been the 19-year-old proprietor of Night Vale's pawnshop for the last several decades. After peculiar, half-remembered encounters with a man in a tan jacket, both women keep coming back to the same phrase: King City. Diane and Jackie have to work together to peel back the mysteries surrounding King City while trying to protect their loved ones. Though the book meanders a bit in the middle, the end is satisfying, with a surprising origin story for one of the characters. Fans will find it refreshing to see Night Vale from different perspectives and to meet characters who have only been mentioned before in passing, but knowledge of the podcast isn't required to follow the story. This unusual experiment in format-shifting works surprisingly well. (Oct.). 416p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2015. |
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9780062351425,dl.it[0].title
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