Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

The formula here is simple enough. Take a group of what one might call "techno-hippies," place them in a state of the art planned community with all the gizmos one could ever want but without so much as a tool or a firearm in the entire neighborhood, isolate them by means of a natural disaster, introduce monsters, and see what happens. The result is a novel that has a surprising amount of depth, intellectualism even, than I would ever have expected from a Bigfoot story. Far from being just a fun horror story about a monster in the woods (though it certainly has plenty of that element), this book provides a rich and timely commentary on our growing dependence upon technology and our fading self-sufficiency.Admittedly, the book is slow to open. For the first third or so, I didn't think I was going to particularly care for it. I don't mind a novel that's a bit of a slow burn, but I honestly didn't find any of the characters particularly likable. They weren't only incompetent to deal with their situation, but they actively took pride in their own incompetence. However, as the novel progresses, the tension slowly starts to amp up and the characters begin to develop (sometimes grudgingly) into functional and adaptable human beings. What I initially perceived as a flaw in the novel ultimately grew into one of its assets because it provides fertile ground to explore how crisis shapes human psychology.Brooks' "documentarian" style of writing is not always my favorite, but it mostly serves well here. Part of the problem with any first person narrative is that it immediately raises questions of how much the narrator's knowledge of the story's conclusion affects his or her telling of the earlier stages of the narrative. In this case, the story is told primarily through journal entries, occasionally punctuated by snippets of other supporting texts. Because the narrator is never more than a day or so ahead of the reader, this helps keep the tension alive, though there's a certain trade-off in that the epistolary format necessarily telegraphs certain elements of the story's climax right from the first page. Nevertheless, though *much* of the ending was entirely predictable, the *details* of the ending were still interesting to discover page-by-page, and the ultimate conclusion, wasn't quite what I expected.I ultimately found it to be an imperfect but still quite enjoyable read. Once you get past a sluggish opening, you'll likely want to finish the remaining two-thirds or so of the novel in a single sitting. And perhaps some readers will, in addition to enjoying a classic monster story, take the novel's subtext as a warning and learn to be a little more self-sufficient and a little less techno-dependent. Or so we can hope.

I rarely bother writing reviews, but I found this to be such a completely disappointing read for a book Amazon reviewed as a Best of the Month that I wanted to express my thoughts.I’d read and loved Brooks’ “World War Z”, and looked forward to this one, given its advance praise. But it’s very slow-moving, and the writing mostly comes across as merely an excuse to try and be macho. It’s like Brooks wanted to create these nightmarishly epic scenes but didn’t want to spend a lot of time having to do it. These creatures are basically described as nine-ft-tall, demon-like Hulks, but they’re actions and behavior are flat-out boring.Once they bombard the little village with mini-boulders they throw from a distance, another time they’re needing/wanting to single a human out from a group, even though they’re demon-like Hulks, and another time one kills like a bad-a** stealthy assassin. Before the halfway point I was reading just to see if it got any better, and with still about 80 pages left I was simply too irritated with the writing and story to bother finishing it.I know this is and will stay a bestseller, but I’ll never have any more interest in reading any of his future books.

I’m a few chapters in and absolutely nothing has happened. It’s incredibly boring.Essentially I’m reading a diary of an incredibly annoying, not very intelligent young women talk about her boring life. What is this? I’m giving up on it. I loved WWZ but this seems like a short story that Max wanted to make into a short novel so he added a ton of pointless filler. So disappointing.

This one has everything. Annoying smug characters living off the grid in their eco – luxury development in the woods. An effective combination of a personal journal left behind, interviews with relevant characters in the present time, snatches of news from the eruption of Mt. Rainier (if you think Seattle is a mess at the moment, you ain’t seen nothing) and historical references to Bigfoot. It’s a really wonderful mashup and those smug characters really grow on you as, at least a few of them, evolve to deal with the threat.And, if you’ve read WWZ, you already know that Max knows how to write. And he does a really good job here. Enjoy!

I enjoyed World War Z a lot and this book is also very good, if different. Like many Steven King novels, the author take a while setting the stage. Introducing the community of Greenloop and its residents via journal entries from a new resident, intermixed with foreshadowing interviews with other people done after the main events in the book. You get brief glimpses of "something" in the woods as the book starts gathering steam...but - have no worries - by the end...the Sasquatches are definitely, literally in the house and all bloody hell is breaking loose. The violence is authentically graphic and the drama of what is happening is well presented. Because Mr. Brooks took time to setup the situation and characters, you actually do feel sympathy/concern for everybody once the action starts...which some other "Bigfoot horror" books I've read have not bothered to create. I am a bigfoot enthusiast but I feel this book would be entertaining to anybody who simply enjoys a well constructed horror story

Let down by the structure of the narrative, you are immediately aware of the fate of the main character (not a spoiler it literally tells you in the first few pages).The heroine and her husband are unlikeable over emotional and largely useless.Although it is a deliberate set up as part of the plot, I cannot believe even a colony of eco intellectuals would be so helpless as to have no DIY or even gardening tools that couldn't handily be used as weapons when the s**t hits the fan.It seems to be such a deliberate decision by the author it annoyed me immensely-I mean who owns a house but doesn't even seem to have a toolkit?Why wouldn't the tech company that owns the place have sent helicopters in to rescue them? It's specifically said they have helipads.Poor plotting and sloppy decision making throughout. It reminded me of Crichton's Congo which at least had no pretensions of being anything but a pot boiler adventure novel.

I have been looking forward to Max Brooks next book since devouring World War Z numerous times.So, yeah. This is not a good book. I read it in two days and once it was over I knew that I would never read it again, which is a sure sign that it was a disappointment.Example, a chapter in this book ends with a character describing a large footprint as “what could have such a big foot?”. Yes Max, I see what you did there.Make up your own mind, but don’t expect something as clever and riveting as World War Z.

Max Brooks has done it again with another corker of a horror novel. Like World War Z, it's in the form of a journalist's account of a huge disaster and the eye witnesses of that disaster and the various events and combats that the slowly reacting individuals experience and participate in. Mostly told from the point of view of the main actual protagonist, a woman who moves with her husband into a high-tech and high-minded rich people's utopian community in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Yes,journal..This is found footage horror for the printed page, as was Dracula, so Brooks is filling some awfully big shoes here.And it works. The main narration shows more than it tells, so we have the satisfaction of realising what's going on in the people part of the tale while at the same time our heroine starts to notice what's out there in the dark and we get to watch and anticipate the characters' growing peril and stumbling failure to react quickly enough and effectively to an unfolding disaster they first respond to with denial and rationalisation. In common with WES, Brooks touches on the fragility of civilisation the unfiness of urban man for survival when the machines stop working, and the incompetence of government and the self-named intelligentsia in the face of big, but largely predictable problems that they would prefer not to trouble themselves with. Prophetic fiction for the spring and summer of 2020...The nature of the monster is obvious from the front cover and is mentioned in outline in the first paragraph of the narration but knock yourselves out if you want to imagine it's werewolves. A proper 5 star cracking read: not too long to drag.Buy it full price now. Why wait? Holidays are coming.PS. Politically, Brooks tends to wear his heart on his sleeve ( hint: it never clots! or scabs),, but as you read the events unfolding and see how the characters, no doubt types familiar to the author throughout his showbiz Coastal life, you could also imagine him to be an unreliable narrator..Let's .just say there's something for everyone in Devolution, and I tip my hat to him.

I rather enjoyed a story where city folk in the USA try to live completely off the grid in a manufactured "Eden", where they get all the benefits of city life while living in the wild, only for it to all blow up in their faces, literally, when a volcanic eruption causes catastrophe and cuts off the small community completely. The people who set it all up abruptly discover that, without access to the technology they are so used to, there is a very good chance that they will not survive in the wild through the winter-and they respond by insisting that the Emergency Services will save them.Fortunately, some of the people in the community are well aware that they have to stay alive through their own efforts until rescue, which could days or weeks or even months with a disaster on this scale, so they set up for the long haul as best they can. Including an unhappily Married young woman, whose diary tells the story. Only, one night, the young wife see's the impossible in the woods, then they find footprints so much larger than human they cannot work it out. Then Bigfoot comes into the community itself...The volcanic eruption forces the movement of Bigfoot to new hunting grounds, the new Eden just happens to be full of "food". With no weapons, little equipment, no communications and no escape from a being who can likely outrun a car? The community is in very, very serious trouble...The characters are a mixed bag, the successful businessman and his ex-model wife, a lesbian couple with an Adopted daughter, an old man in deteriorating health who is a successful author and others. But the story is clever in slowly cutting them away from weekly consults with Psychiatrists, failure in business efforts and the clout that money and power gives to show just who they REALLY are when they have nothing but what they can wield or create with their bare hands and a 3d printer. When you are being hunted right into your own home by a monster that can punch through stone and bend steel bare-handed while trying to catch, kill and eat you? Everything changes.Interviews with the brother of the woman who wrote the diary, who has since disappeared after the Eden was destroyed, a senior Ranger still trying to clean up the mess after the eruption and others help to flesh out the story. It also states that Federal Agents made all the evidence of what happened go away after the new Eden was rediscovered, not that anyone who has seen the place and had a chance to read the diary has any doubts...In conclusion, a good book with some very unusual "bad guys" which the author made work in his story. Not World War Z, but well worth a read.

This ultimately disappointing book started well as a satire of modern techno hippies but then lost its way .In seeking to point out that nature can be violent and not cuddly it then goes into mountain man hunter mode. There is no discussion or thought about humans straying on to the last bits of land left for large predators. In the end ,as always ,mankind must prevail and kill anything and everything that gets in its way.If these people represent our future then God help us.