I really, really wanted to enjoy the new Welcome to Night Vale novel. As a faithful podcast listener who went to the live shows and enjoyed the first novel two years ago, I’d expected something as fulfilling and creative, but I was a bit disappointed in what I found.

The new novel focuses very little on the characters we all know and love from the podcast. Instead, Cecil, his family, and the protagonists of the first novel make a brief appearance, and Carlos shows up for a little while, but most of the action is concentrated on brand new characters. One is Nilanjara Sikdar, one of the scientists who arrived to Night Vale with Carlos. The other one is Darryl Ramirez, a faithful follower of the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God.

This novel is yet another attempt to approach the ancient debate between science and religion. The two main characters, unfortunately, are two-dimensional stereotypes with a fair amount of personality slapped on top. As they team up to investigate the strange phenomenon (or possibly a creature) that devours parts of Night Vale, the anti-religion scientist learns to accept unscientific things and hunches, while the super-naive religious guy reconsiders his beliefs and offers some moral pointers to Carlos and his merry team of scientists.

This novel has some great writing, and oh-so-many quotable passages, as well as little jokes that make Welcome to Night Vale so great. (“D-Day is short for Dog Day, which happened during World War II, when we defeated the Germans by not letting them come over to pet our dogs anymore.”) It has some insightful thoughts about the nature of humanity and the overall silliness of humans. But overall, it’s not an entertaining novel that was written to entertain the reader. It’s a story about science and religion, with some characters thrown in to keep it going and bring a preachy ending that’s relatively easy to see coming.

Without giving away any of the plot, let me put it this way: if you enjoyed the postmodern romance movie “500 Days of Summer,” which was cleverly written and shot but had a very non-traditional ending, you’ll enjoy this book. If, on the other hand, you want your leisure reading to have a concise story where everything ends well and everyone lives happily ever after, you might want to skip this book – or get it from the library.

Come to think of it, a good analogy would be the Narnia books by C.S.Lewis: it’s a fun and interesting story on the surface, but then you realize the author is preaching to you, and it becomes far less enjoyable. In this case, the preaching is balanced out and neither side is fully right, but that doesn’t make it better in my eyes.

I give this book three out of five stars.

Buy “It Devours” on Amazon, if you’re so inclined