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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607003075929 | Adult Fiction | FINK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Joseph Fink is a writer and editor. He is the co-owner of Commonplace Books and has two collections of short works. He and Jeffrey Cranor write the hit podcast and touring live show Welcome to Night Vale. It Devours!, is their second book. It was published in October 2017, and is a New York Times bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
"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 © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.