From the authors of the New York Times bestselling novel Welcome to Night Vale and the #1 podcast of the same name, comes a powerful new novel about two young people finding their place in the world, and the terrifying, toothy power of the Smiling God.
Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town’s top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and to Darryl, one of its most committed members. Caught between her beliefs in the ultimate power of science and her growing attraction to Darryl, she begins to suspect the Congregation is planning a ritual that could threaten the lives of everyone in town. Nilanjana and Darryl must search for common ground between their very different world views as they are faced with the Congregation’s darkest and most terrible secret.
Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town’s top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and to Darryl, one of its most committed members. Caught between her beliefs in the ultimate power of science and her growing attraction to Darryl, she begins to suspect the Congregation is planning a ritual that could threaten the lives of everyone in town. Nilanjana and Darryl must search for common ground between their very different world views as they are faced with the Congregation’s darkest and most terrible secret.
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Reviews
Clever, twisted, beautiful, strange, wonderful and sweet . . . this might be the best book I've read in years
I'm packing up and moving to Night Vale!
A marvellous book . . . full of people we love and root for, full of frightening things, and full of dramatic tension that pays off beautifully . . . shot through it all is the love and integrity that made Night Vale a success from the beginning
A splendid, weird, moving novel . . . it manages beautifully that trick of embracing the surreal in order to underscore and emphasise the real