The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home by Joseph Fink
Ever heard of the Night Vale podcast? I didn’t until I read the first novel Welcome to Night Vale, which I had had my eye on for some time. It was a delight, funny and weird and full of wonderful characters – even the lesser ones. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is pegged as book 3 in the series after It Devours, but it’s really more of a prequel. It’s also not really about Night Vale, but one of the characters, the titular Faceless Old Woman. In Night Vale, she lives in everyone’s house at once and is part nanny, part mischief-maker and part vigilante. TFOWWSLIYH is her origin tale, while also, but less so, gives her centre stage in this book.
As I said, this is an origin tale. This is about TFOW (I could have sworn they gave her a name in the book, but I can’t for the life of me remember and the internet is throwing up brick walls) when she was a mere mortal like the rest of us. When her father, a smuggler, is murdered, it sets her on a trail of revenge that takes her through much of the nineteenth century. This is not a bizarrely fun urban fantasy, but a murder mystery historical fiction (take that, genre lovers). TFOW takes over the family business but uses it to seek revenge. The main story (the history bit) traverses 60 or so years as she sails the Mediterranean chasing down the mystery gang who were responsible, and then the head of the organization who proves even more elusive. The story is quite the roller-coaster, joy, anger, sadness and all that jazz, but it also fits in with the current story that pokes up now and again. If I had one complaint, I felt it started to drag in the last (maybe) 100 pages) but the ending was more than worth it and gave interesting background to her actions. In some ways, this book could appeal to a broader audience outside of The Night Vale masses, but in another sense, mixing Night Vale with a historic tale might narrow the audience even more. Personally, I liked it. Certainly not as much as WTNV, but I was entertained for the most part.
