The hit podcast is absurd and hilarious, and as a book it’s similarly entertaining, but the cosmic horror satire makes it difficult for readers to invest in the story
Welcome to Night Vale is not only one of the biggest success stories for the podcasting era, it’s also one of the strangest. When Night Vale creator and co-writer Joseph Fink began posting the biweekly, half-hour fictional show online, no one paid any attention to it. Today, it’s been downloaded over 100m times. On the iTunes charts, it regularly outperforms This American Life. It is successful enough to sell merchandise, live tours and now, apparently, a novel of the same name, co-written by Fink and his writing partner, Jeffrey Cranor.
The premise of Night Vale is that you, the listener, have tuned into the community announcements of a rural radio station in the American southwest. Except this community isn’t like any other. As your host Cecil Palmer (voiced by the actor Cecil Baldwin) ticks off the week’s goings on, you realize that you are in a place where every conspiracy theory is true, and creatures and concepts from cosmic horror shape day-to-day events. The city council may be immortal and at the very least certainly isn’t human. Interns at the radio station have a habit of dying under sinister circumstances. The town’s dog park, possibly an alternate dimension in and of itself, is patrolled by mysterious hooded figures. The sheriff’s secret police announces a search for local resident Hiram McDaniels, who turns out to be a six-meter tall, five-headed dragon. Later, he runs for mayor. (He loses.)
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