Her compatriots were all appreciable characters too, fitting into colourful yet recognizable archetypes that supplemented her story well. Just when I thought I had certain paths figured out, a curveball would be thrown my way to keep me guessing. Despite seeming very rote as a plotline, it had a surprising amount of twists and turns. There are a lot of ups and downs on this journey, with many successes and failures. So, with Edmond’s guidance and the help of her own motely crew of thieves, she endeavours upon a long campaign to see her own form of justice served. She was left in the hands of Edmond, her father’s friend and business partner, who sees her like a daughter, but he cannot douse her burning to desire for vengeance against the organization that killed her father. She rises in the criminal underworld of Europe, becoming quite rich off of her growing skills, but her true desire is revenge. Surviving such a loss, her complete descent into the world of thievery, piracy, and swashbuckling adventure begins. She begins to learn how to handle herself in the face of danger, but things take a turn for the worse, as they do, and her father is killed by much bigger fish in the criminal world. As she gets older, she learns that her father’s business is a little left of the law, which pique’s her interest as she shows a natural talent for it. There are especially evocative passages where she reflects upon her childhood with more olfactory descriptions that really stuck with me, taking what might otherwise just be window-dressing about where she grew up and giving the reader a more sensory understanding. There’s an idyllic warmth to her childhood that I loved for how starkly in contrasted with what we know she becomes. I liked how this highlighted that while the world outside of Night Vale may still be a little different from our own, the weirdness of that town is fairly unique to it. Though there are a few particular odd anomalies that crop up throughout her life, there’s nothing especially surreal or uncanny about her upbringing. She grows up in a fairly secluded estate on the coast of the Mediterranean with her father, a loving man who does the best he can for her. As we delve into her past, I was struck by how unlike the world of Night Vale the story felt, in a way that was quite refreshing. She’s creepy, she secretly lives in your home, and she might set your shoes on fire for her own amusement. The interludes with Craig are comfortingly familiar, with one of them opening the novel and affirming where fans and newcomers alike should be at with understanding the character. While your mileage may vary with how deeply they do delve into her history, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they struck a superb balance between revealing her history and keeping her the eerie spectre that we all love to fear. Giving an extensive look at who this character was, what she is, where she came from, and why she is in Night Vale ran the risk of making her too familiar and no longer creepy. We never knew how or why she was living in everybody’s homes, and we didn’t need to know. Part of what makes the Faceless Old Woman so interesting and creepy as a character in the series, when used sparingly, is her mystique. I look forward to all Welcome to Night Vale novels, but despite how much I like this character and love how she is performed by Mara Wilson, the premise of this novel inspired a lot of misgivings. Narrated by the Faceless Old Woman herself, this novel tells her entire life story, from her birth in the Mediterranean in the early 19 th century all the way to how she first came to Night Vale, intercut throughout with her meddling in the life of Craig, a young man living in Night Vale in the 2010s. Often menacing, yet sometimes obtusely helpful, who she might have been and where she came from had always been an unknown. The Faceless Old Woman is a mysterious, spectral figure who has haunted the homes of Night Vale in the series for years now. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor is the third standalone novel set in the world of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast series created and written by the authors.
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