N.B.: You don't have to have listened to the podcast to read the book, but it might be helpful. Meaning, reading this review could spoil some parts of the podcast for you. You can listen on iTunes, YouTube, Bandcamp, and I think some other places, too. The podcast is weird and wonderful. You shall not regret it.
"It is a friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale" (1). We fans know these words well. They are, after all, a perfect description of the strange town that we have fallen in love with.
In this strange town, Jackie Fierro, the perpetually nineteen-year-old owner of the pawnshop has her life disrupted. One day, a man wearing a tan jacket and carrying a deerskin suitcase, and whose face and name are impossible to remember, brings a piece of paper to the pawnshop to be pawned. The paper reads "KING CITY" in pencil. Jackie gives the man thirty dollars and an idea about time and takes the paper. And can't let go. Jackie quickly realizes that the piece of paper that won't leave her hand and tells her "KING CITY" every time she looks at it has changed her life forever. But tracking down the man in the tan jacket is difficult, considering that no one who has seen him can remember him, or even seems willing to talk about him.
Diane Crayton has been struggling to raise her son Josh, who is a fifteen-year-old shape-shifter. But Josh, who rarely talks to her, has begun asking questions about his missing father again. Diane does everything she can to keep Josh from finding his father, but it doesn't help that she's been seeing him all over town, and that everyone at work thinks she's crazy when she insists that an employee who no one can remember has vanished.