He sounds posh, his diction is precise, he is never short of breath, never hesitates and never flubs his lines. In the podcasts, “Cecil”, the host, main character, and narrator, is played by real voice actor Cecil Baldwin in a deep, eminently clear and soothing voice. (Check out YouTube.) They have a large and passionate fan base, which has allowed them to produce books based on the podcast scripts, run road shows, sell merchandise and have meet-ups with fans. It is the script, verbatim, of a podcast series created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, that has been running since June 15, 2012, and is still going. Now that I have your attention this is what the entire book is about. And that’s why it is a publishing phenomenon. There is a reason Night Vale is a phenomenon You know, just a typical day in small-town USA. In every chapter, “Cecil Gershwin Palmer”, the town’s community radio announcer, broadcasts the happenings in the town – what inexplicable thing has appeared or never actually happened (since it was a mass hallucination) places that do or don’t exist aliens that run for mayor a mayor who is an alien a scientist, new in town, called “Carlos”, with beautiful hair and “teeth like tombstones in a military cemetery” who comes to investigate the place angels glowing clouds that rain down dead animals, and so on. Every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard of is being played out there.

But at the same time, everything is surreal and weird.

Inside, there are stories about the town of “Night Vale”, somewhere in a desert in America, where strange things happen. “Welcome to Night Vale” it says on the cover. Once you are aware of it, that purple moon/eye catches your attention everywhere.

It devours night vale