It Devours!

I don't know, now that I've listened to all of the podcast, and the first two books, I really am not sold on the possibility of Night Vale as a long-form story. The first WTNV book was uneven but had its charming moments (and Easter eggs / references for the podcast audience) as it struggled to impose some kind of narrative and causality on Night Vale. This second book seems to have over-corrected by trying overly hard to be accessible to people who know nothing about WTNV, thus excising most of what made the first novel bearable.

Also, there are weird continuity errors between this and the podcast (most notably in Carlos' personality and memories of the otherworld, and the nature of the Smiling God). The characters don't have much interiority or personal arcs and a lot of the book just dragggggggggs and is really repetitive. Entire chapters could have been removed without affecting the story at all. Honestly this would have made a better WTNV podcast episode. I truly love a lot of Joseph Fink's shorter writing, but I think he's floundering trying to translate that into a long-form medium. [Spouse and I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by Cecil, which worked well for the first novel but I think made this one wear out its welcome.]