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A review by emaree
Welcome to Night Vale by Jeffrey Cranor, Joseph Fink
3.0
First up: get the audiobook. I ordered the hardback, but if I hadn't also bought the audiobook I would have gotten sick of the 'weird' prose a lot faster.
As for the actual review... man, I'm conflicted. I *love* Night Vale, but in a full novel the usual weirdness of the show gets quite grating. Too much of the narrative feels quirky, trying too hard -- I got so tired of weirdness for the sake of weirdness, adding nothing to the world. The houses having pointless thoughts. The tarantula. Even the Faceless Old Women felt out of place here. So much of it felt like it was only there to liven up another dull scene, to add colour to otherwise dull conversations and transition scenes. If it had all been building up to something, that would have worked fantastically, but since none of the weirdness *went* anywhere it felt like a let down.
Another big issue is how damn *dull* the main characters are. Jackie is a 19-year-old who says "dude" and "man" a lot. Diane is a mother who loves her son. These two don't really develop or change in any meaningful way... I think they tried to have them change by the end of the story, but it felt forced -- they did something brave and have therefore 'changed' even though their personalities remained exactly the same.
Also, in a Night Vale-y fashion, very few of the actions taken by the characters have consequences. Bad things happen, but it's all very apathetically handled, and had no real lasting effect on anyone.
I dunno, man. It's a debut novel so the team can definitely move onwards and upwards from this, but it didn't sit right with me.
As for the actual review... man, I'm conflicted. I *love* Night Vale, but in a full novel the usual weirdness of the show gets quite grating. Too much of the narrative feels quirky, trying too hard -- I got so tired of weirdness for the sake of weirdness, adding nothing to the world. The houses having pointless thoughts. The tarantula. Even the Faceless Old Women felt out of place here. So much of it felt like it was only there to liven up another dull scene, to add colour to otherwise dull conversations and transition scenes. If it had all been building up to something, that would have worked fantastically, but since none of the weirdness *went* anywhere it felt like a let down.
Another big issue is how damn *dull* the main characters are. Jackie is a 19-year-old who says "dude" and "man" a lot. Diane is a mother who loves her son. These two don't really develop or change in any meaningful way... I think they tried to have them change by the end of the story, but it felt forced -- they did something brave and have therefore 'changed' even though their personalities remained exactly the same.
Also, in a Night Vale-y fashion, very few of the actions taken by the characters have consequences. Bad things happen, but it's all very apathetically handled, and had no real lasting effect on anyone.
I dunno, man. It's a debut novel so the team can definitely move onwards and upwards from this, but it didn't sit right with me.