The Faceless Old Woman was one of my favorite characters from Welcome to Night Vale and I'm glad she got to be a protagonist for once... Also, what a tale, my friends! What a tale!

I read this for work, as Joseph and Jeffrey were visiting (virtually) Town Hall.

This is the third of the Night Vale books, and I hadn't read the other two. I'll be honest, I've long known of Night Vale, and I know of Joseph and Jeffrey because of their involvement with PodCon, as a result of which I've even attended a few live tapings of Night Vale-adjacent content. But listening to the entirety of Night Vale even though I found out about it relatively early on in its life, has always seemed like such a huge endeavor, because it felt like I needed to start from the very beginning to know what the heck was going on. I might be changing my tune on that one, though, because this one felt just fine as a standalone. Would it have been more in context if I'd listened to/read the other Night Vale content? I'm sure. But The Faceless Old Woman... is a dramatic, full-scale, epic story of vengeance in the vein of The Count of Monte Cristo, and I loved it.

What?
What the actual exact fuck?
This nightmare of creativity and fantasy is exactly what I expected yet surprising af.
The story of a young girl growing up overlaid with the story of The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.
Yes, your home. Yes, you see her. Sometimes. Out of the corner of your eye in the mirror. In the sound of your young child in the other room talking to "no one".
The story takes turns, the girl growing up a while before The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home tells a little story, then we find the girl again, a little older and working towards her goal.
If you've never heard the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, you really should. I mean, you should listen to it anyway, but you should really listen to Episode 26 to get a feeling of what to expect. http://www.welcometonightvale.com/listen
Recommended.

Do you like ghost stories? This book is for you!

Do you like revenge plots? This book is for you!

Do you like ragtag teams of criminals? This book is for you!

Do you like bizarre alternate versions of historical Europe? This book is for you!

Do you like dark humor and bitterly harsh realities? This book is for you!

Do you like Welcome to Night Vale? Obviously this book is for you; that’s probably what brought you to this review anyway, right?

Do you like sweet and happy endings? Dear god, please don’t read this book; find yourself something more wholesome.

Like all of the content produced by Fink and Cranor, the creators of the hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale, this book is weird. Like, very weird. It probably only appeals to a very specific demographic, but–as you can probably tell from my enthusiasm already–I am a part of that demographic.

I’m a huge fan of all things Night Vale-related (though I must confess, I’m not caught up on this season yet), so naturally, I was excited about this book right from the moment I first heard about it. For those of you who are unaware, Welcome to Night Vale is a fictional podcast set in a deeply strange city somewhere in the American southwest, and a recurring side character on the show is the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. (Fun fact: on the show, she is voiced by Mara Wilson. You might know Wilson for playing Matilda in the movie Matilda back in the 90’s. Following that movie, she all but disappeared from acting; her time on WTNV is the first acting-related thing she’s done since the year 2000. The more you know!) This book is the Faceless Old Woman’s backstory, from her birth in Europe, centuries ago, through her adolescence and adult years, and up to the events that left her a faceless not-quite-ghost on another continent altogether.

First, something to clear up before I start: you can still enjoy this book even if you don’t listen to the podcast. While avid listeners will find plenty of inside jokes wrapped into this story (five-headed dragons, a man who is not tall and a man who is not short, a Brown Stone Spire, and so on), I think the narrative as a whole can be understood even by someone wholly unaware of what else exists in this strange town, because…well, the bulk of this book doesn’t take place in that town at all.

The story unfolds in dual timelines. One is in the 2000s, running up to the present, with the Faceless Old Woman speaking to a Night Vale resident named Craig, who she pokes and prods into living what seems like a happy life. She just also casually torments him along the way (the opening scene includes her burning his shoes in a trash can, for example). The other timeline starts in the 1800s, with her childhood on the Mediterranean. From a young age, she was always fascinated by the ships coming and going in the harbor outside her family’s home, especially the mysterious ships bearing a black flag with a white labyrinth logo. But then a childhood tragedy involving those ships occurs, sending her on a furious quest for revenge that wholly changes her life.

Teaming up with a band of other misfits–a giant girl who despises what society says about physically strong women, an aro-ace boy who has no interest in marrying anyone even though his wealthy family expects it, and a Jewish girl with a knack for disguises who feels most herself when pretending to be someone else–our protagonist travels from fictional countries like Svitz and Luftnarp to more familiar countries like France and Spain. The book, of course, culminates in a collision of the two timelines as the questions are finally answered:

Why does the Faceless Old Woman live in Night Vale? Why is she faceless? And what does she want?

This book was at once everything I expected and nothing like I expected. The language in it followed Fink and Cranor’s signature blend of beautiful, image-heavy, profound statements, with glib, sarcastic, and absurd departures mere moments later.

And, in a move that summed up this entire book (and their entire Night Vale universe) in a single quote, they produced this gem:

"There’s a thin line separating humor and horror, and this was that line."

Honestly, that one line sums this book up beautifully. It is so many things wrapped into one, existing in the liminal space between terms that tend to be considered separate categories. It is too funny to be a drama but too heavy to be a comedy. It is too human to be a ghost story but too spooky to be realistic. It is too weird to be taken seriously, but too serious to be waved off dismissively. The formula is tricky, but like verbal alchemists, the authors have gotten it down to as precisely scientific as an art can be.

In terms of typical book review stuff, our protagonist is wonderfully complex, the pacing is remarkably smooth for a book that spans multiple centuries, and the plot managed to pull a couple twists that even I didn’t see coming. The ending was sad, but not surprising, and certainly not maudlin. The novel was, as a whole, more somber than typical Night Vale fare, but that was entirely fitting for this particular storyline and worked to its advantage. Plus, you know, I’m always here for any asexual rep we can get, and having a charming, sociable ace as a major secondary character just made it that much better. I could go on for ages, but all you really need to know about this book is that it is written well, it is written weirdly, and just because I loved it doesn’t mean you will.

Still–I hope you will give it a try. To me, this book was awesome beyond words, and I hope that some of you out there will be able to share in my enjoyment of this bizarre beauty of a book.

A wild ride from start to finish, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is another Night Vale masterpiece! Following the ubiquitous Faceless Old Woman, the present day hauntings are finally explained through her tragic backstory, with dangerous modern day ramifications. With sympathetic characters and marvelous world building, this novel ups the ante for future spin offs in the series.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Welcome to Night Vale is the most beloved podcast nowadays and with reason. It's the most original story I came across in the last years. I was thrilled when I learned about this book featuring my favourite character and her background. I was a bit scared the mystery behind her character was what sustained her and us learning more about her would spoil things but that's not what happened at all. It's as always fun, weird, spooky and so very clever.

Rating: 7.5/10

Thanks to the publisher and authors for an advance reading copy of The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home (Welcome to Night Vale #3) for review consideration. This did not influence my thoughts or opinions.

A swashbuckling origin story sure to fill the hearts of the Night Vale audience, though may be more lackluster for those who haven’t followed from the beginning. An intriguing story with a worthwhile ending.

I’ve been aware of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast for some time now, though I have never actually listened to an episode. My sister is a huge fan and even saw Fink & Cranor live a couple of years back. When I mentioned to her that I had received an early copy of their newest novel, on top of being stoked that she would have a chance to read it (LOL), she told me that if I enjoyed weird fiction, then this might be right up my alley.

And yeah, it’s pretty weird, but also very straightforward.

What starts out as a fairly strong horror story that takes a very ‘You’ approach to infatuation and vengeance turns into a full origin story about where this faceless old woman came from and why she is creeping in your home. Just from the title alone, who would have thought this would become a swashbuckling adventure story about smuggling, a rise in the criminal underworld, and ultimately, revenge. I just assumed, not having listened to the podcast to actually understand who this character is, that this was going to be a somewhat haunted house story.

Not to say this is really a bad thing; just…unforseen?

The story itself is told in flashbacks, which take up a majority of the novel. Tales from when she was a child through her death, including all of the nitty-gritty that comes with having a pirate’s life. The present story-line is brought in in chunks, giving an interesting voice to this character as she completely wrecks Craig’s life.

All in all, I am interested in taking a stab at the podcast and the first two (2) novels in the series: Welcome to Night Vale and It Devours!, just to see the rest of the fuss over the entire thing. Fink & Cranor have written a great story here with some very fascinating characters, though having more of a grasp on just what Night Vale is would probably help garner more interest.