Max Brooks

The #1 bestselling author of World War Z takes on the Bigfoot legend with a tale that blurs the lines between human and beast--and asks what we are capable of in the face of the unimaginable. As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing--and too earth-shattering in its implications--to be forgotten. In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate's extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the legendary beasts behind it. Kate's is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity's defiance in the face of a terrible predator's gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death. Yet it is also far more than that. Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us--and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity. Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it--and like none you've ever read before.

A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

Devolution

Somehow Max Brooks continues to blow my mind with his entertaining, sobering and original storytelling. This book is everything I wanted and more in a Bigfoot survival horror.

Joe Mccaffery 

Zugzug

Brooks managed to tell a visceral tale through an interesting medium of character journal pieces and interviews of characters. This leaves the reader to piece some parts together but not in a way that was ever frustrating for me. A lot of tension and build up towards the middle of the tale, but the pay off is satisfying. I would like to say more but keeping this spoiler free. 

One last note as a person living in the PNW I can safely say there are enough local points referenced for it to be familiar yet the main setting of the story is far enough off the beaten track to keep it new. Well done and not sure I will look at another bigfoot bumper sticker in quite the same way again.

Amulya Garimella

honestly v gripping and compelling! my main beef is that i ended up rooting for kate a lot so the "devolution message," while chilling, didn't get enough time to hit home just right. i loved everything about mostar — she added some much-needed grounding to the story, and besides, is just a complete badass.
my secondary beef is that i wish pal got speaking/pov time (this is a pretty big beef now that i think of it). besides her, i thought it was nice to see the initially one-dimensional (but also v funny) characters get more depth as the story progressed
i think this book hit the perfect tone — lighthearted, fun, and cheesy at some points; horrifying, chilling, and stomach-dropping at others. i also noticed this in world war z, but i remember that WWZ contained some large parts that i found really boring. didn't have this problem here, the epistolatory style worked really well and the different documents were really nicely balanced. i read this in one or two days because i just needed to know more!

Lara Engle

I wish I hadn't spent my time reading this book and I'm glad I didn't buy it. The first half was incredibly slow, and while it did pick up, I wouldn't go so far as to say that I liked it. It's written in an epistolary style, which can be fun, but the diarist, Kate, is not a very interesting person. Being limited to her perspective is a definite minus. She and others do have some growth as characters, but I couldn't bring myself to care. The reason for the second star is the way the author compares the conflict with the sasquatch to the way humans have often preyed upon one another in war. This story would probably make a pretty good movie, but as a book it was a dud.

rumbledethumps

Really liked this, especially for the attempt to make Sasquatch seem like an actual animal, and not a supernatural being. Horror/suspense was great, and the audio version leant itself really well to the narrative style.

Although I wasn’t a fan of the journal narrator’s energy, the second half of the book made up for it. The survival aspects, the possibilities, much more endearing than the neurotic narrator at the start. 

Janice Hopper

Well, now I'm afraid to go into the woods. O.O

This was a chilling and thrilling story about a small community that became isolated by an eruption of Mt. Ranier. The eruption also caused lots of wildlife to flee the area, including a group of previously unknown primates. Unfortunately, the primates are hungry, and they're getting bolder.

It kept me reading, and made me nervous and anxious. So yeah, effective as a thriller.

The book uses excerpts from a journal kept by one of the residents of the isolated community, interspersed with interviews with NPS people and others, as well as historical accounts. If you've read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, this is similar. I found it annoying at first, but it gets more exciting/gripping as the story goes on. 

And, hand to heart, I hope I never meet a Sasquatch IRL.

McKayla Bohnsack

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good grief, this was amazing! The audiobook cast nailed this story of an isolated, “smart” community and their encounter with a Sasquatch tribe in the wake of an eruption of Mt. Rainier. It was thrilling, chilling, and had characters that I loved.

Cheri McElroy

Maggie Gordon

Got going to lie, I am a sucker for found documentation stories, and Sasquatch hasn't got a lot of play in the monster genre lately. Unsurprisingly, Devolution sucked me in quick and kept my hooked with a fast and brutal narrative. If you liked World War Z, this is a similar style, though from fewer perspectives. Definitely a good read for the month of October!

Elizabeth Neill

First off I have to say that I am obsessed with anything bigfoot/Sasquatch, so I knew I would be picking the book up. Then add a found journal and like found footage films is another obsession of mine. I was already drawn in with bigfoot and found journal that I knew I would enjoy the book. This is the first Max Brooks’ book I have read and I will be picking up WWZ soon. Now what I liked about this book was the characters, there were ones you loved and ones you hated. I really got into the head of Kate the MC cause I felt like she could be me. The pacing of the book was at a good speed. The notes the author put in were great and it made me love the book even more. Though I just wish it was a little more scary and more bloody. I am getting my dad to read the book and can’t wait to talk about it with him along with our friend. I don’t want to give out too much of the book, just know that it is a good book for those who love bigfoot.

Cindy Lieberman

Nothing quite puts isolation due to a possibly life-threatening virus into perspective as being isolated in a definitely life-threatening situation WITHOUT WI-FI OR CELLULAR SERVICE. Whilst grousing about all the things we can’t do because of COVID, I often turn to my spouse and say, “at least we have the Internet.” And by Internet I mean it all: streaming services, Zoom/FaceTime calls, online workouts and classes, ordering food and groceries online, and the library’s digital resources. If all that were gone, it would be time to panic. 
Max Barry imagines the residents of a small collection of smart homes suddenly finding themselves cut off from civilization following the eruption of Mt Rainier and the ensuing civil unrest in the greater Seattle area. (We currently have the latter.)
I highly recommend the well-produced audiobook with the voices of Judy Greer, Nathan Fillion, and other actors plus some that will be familiar to NPR listeners (Kai Ryssdal, Terry Gross). The centerpiece of the book is the journal kept by Kate (Judy Greer). Her therapist has suggested she make private journal entries to help with their sessions as she is trying to help Kate work on her passivity. So there’s a bit of naval-gazing about her marriage in the beginning, as well as Kate’s takes on their new neighbors in this earthy enclave of nature lovers.
Once Mt Rainier erupts and their small community is completely cut off, the stakes change. Brooks builds tension and writes action well. Plus it made me think. After reading this book there are quite a few items I’ll be adding to our emergency/earthquake supplies!

Lauren Attaway

Audiobook was as fun as the actual book for me, perfect to listen to as background noise while tackling a stack of work projects.

Rob Erekson

Max Brooks is a great storyteller and Devolution was a perfect story for his talent. While the story wasn’t perfect (but what story is?) I was completely unable to put the book down for at least the last 100 pages as it continued to build up to the finale.

Jeremy Anderberg

I loved Brooks’ World War Z enough to read it twice in the span of a year. It’s the best of the genre, without a doubt, and inspired one of my first Art of Manliness articles. So when I saw the subject of his new novel — a sasquatch massacre that followed on the heels of the volcanic eruption of Mt. Rainier — I couldn’t wait to dig in.

The story of World War Z was told as a series of journalistic dispatches on the origins of the zombie apocalypse; Devolution is structured somewhat similarly, mostly as the found journal entries of a terrified woman who can’t believe what she’s living through.

After the eruption of Mt. Rainier, a pack of sasquatch escapes the immediate vicinity only to run into a new sustainable neighborhood tucked away in the woods. It’s a diverse group of about 10 people trying out a modern, but environmentally friendly way to live. The problem is that it’s a pretty technology-dependent community and most of these folks don’t know squat about real survival.

As with World War Z, there are a lot of real-life lessons to be had within the pages of this bloody thriller/horror tale. In our Instagram age, we tend to view nature as something grand and cutesy which is mostly there for our pleasure. But those environments — the woods, the mountains, the canyons — and the creatures within them are not governed by any sort of Golden Rule; they are harsh places that turn very dangerous, very quickly when you don’t know what you’re doing.

Devolution isn’t as good as Brooks’ first novel, but it was damn entertaining nonetheless and well worth your time. (PS: It definitely did not lead to me spending too much time googling sasquatch stuff . . .)

Megan White

Deborah Kerr

I just don't even really know what to say about this book.

It wasn't bad in the slightest, it just didn't work for me at all.

I really loved the concept--an isolated group of people trapped due to Ranier's eruption finds themselves under siege from Bigfoot. Unfortunately, there was 0 urgency. Even during the action sequences, it felt like the characters were moving through cement. The pacing was inconsistent and partially non-existent.

Also: the majority of these characters are actual morons. They move out to the middle of nowhere to be "closer to nature/be in harmony with nature" and none of them even consider the possibility of how they'd survive if something went wrong? And maybe that was the point--like rich, city tourists trying to ride bison in Yellowstone on steroids--but it just didn't work for me. I genuinely could not have cared less what happened to this group of idiots with 0 self-preservation skills who ignored the danger knocking on their doors until it literally was unignorable. Mostar is the only character worth her page time.

While I appreciate the format of getting our information from a journal, I think it would've been more effective if we could've gotten even more perspective from the people living through the ordeal.

The thing about this book is, the entire time I was reading it, I wanted to like it. The whole time I was desperate to connect in some way and I just couldn't.

Kelsey Holtaway

This was SO FUN. The perfect Halloween read.

Melea Mullican

6.71 on CAWPILE

The good: The first half of this book was seriously creepy. Especially on audio. I loved the snippets of interviews with the park ranger or from scientific journals about Big Foot. It seemed so real at times, I wanted to google it just to see what was actually research and what wasn't. I love horror like this rooted with a science. I liked the survivalist atmosphere and thought it worked really well here. I also liked the non-traditional storytelling format. It is told in articles, interviews, etc.

The not great: I didn't like the journal format that was a big chunk of this book. It reduced the stakes and took away some of the realism. At times, it would be very journal format with shorten/spliced sentences. Almost to a fault in some action scenes. Other times it would be too detailed. No one is going to recount in a journal things people said down to quotation marks and appropriate speech adjectives. You also knew that as long as there was another journal entry, Kate was fine. I think it would have worked better if the smart house had video that caught the events or if she was using her phone to record things. The fact that her phone still worked in that regard was mentioned SEVEAL times.

The really not great: Kate, she was simply irritating. Her very peppy, gen X vocabulary was at extreme odds with the serious tone of the story. The interactions between her and the other lodgers was highly unrealistic and forced. The characters here just didn't work for me.

Trigger warnings for violence, gore, explicit depictions of death, and animal brutality (not necessarily cruelty)

Ashlie Oliver 

Bryan Alexander

Devolution is a survival thriller taking place in our present day, focused on a small Washington state suburb suddenly cut off from the world by Mount Ranier exploding. That explosion sounds exciting enough, but is beside the point, because the suburbanites are beset by Bigfoot. Actually, a whole troop of yeti.

Brooks shows again his ability to craft a gripping story, doling out a mix of speculation, gritty detail, suspense, and action through documents. Unlike World War Z., the events of Devolution take place on a very small scale in a short period of time, and that works well, giving us a sense of building danger.

Without spoilers, I can tell you that another difference from Z is that this book is anchored on a single character. Kate Holland's journal entries are the story's primary documents, and she takes on an ever more powerful role as things progress (or devolve). She begins as pretty clueless and somewhat irritating. Her transformation (or the titular devolution) is the book's main novelistic burden. Except for one, all other characters are thin, yet sufficient for the plot and genre's purposes.

The one other character is in many ways central to Devolution. Mostar is an artist living in the isolated community. We only see her through Kate's eyes until the end, and Kate initially views Mostar as awkward, even strange. Once the crisis sets in Mostar becomes the community's wisest and most practical person, thanks to her terrible experience in what her name signals. I don't think it's a spoiler to link a character's name to the city that in many ways symbolized the terrible Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. In full disclosure I visited Mostar in 1995, as well as nearby Split, Croatia, during the war, so this character electrified me. 

Devolution is also a pointed satire, a jab at contemporary America. The town starts off in an appealing way, but being cut off suddenly renders its inhabitants to be useless in many, many ways. Several people become survivors through shedding previous lives. Our dependency on modern conveniences - rich foods, easy transportation, above all the internet - weaken us, the book seems to say. Once those are removed we are pathetic, prey for beasts. (It would be fun to pair with JG Ballard's High-Rise.)

I'm not sure how wealth plays out in the book, and that might be an issue for it. The isolated community appears to be very expensive, attracting several families who are clearly loaded. It's not at all clear how Kate and her unemployed husband can afford to live there, nor Mostar. Is Devolution poking at the rich as effete and clueless parasites? Their enemies, the sasquatch troop, would appear as the most lumpen possible, if we include them in the picture. But I'm not sure if the book supports such a 1% reading.

Let me say more about a key point concerning gender behind politely raised spoiler shields: (view spoiler)[I remember World War Z as being a very male book, with most voices being men's. Devolution heads in the opposite direction, and I'm surprised at how rarely readers have commented on this. Our primary voice is a woman's, as I've mentioned. Kate gradually becomes the community/town/village/tribe's leader. Mostar is clearly the smartest and most experienced, the real leader until her death. Most of the male characters are some variety of useless: disgusting, stupid, unemployed, at best subordinate workers (Kate's husband grows into this role). The yetis mirror this, being lead by an alpha female, who totally runs her troop. Alpha and Kate and the book's primary antagonists. We can add more evidence to this gynocentric reading. Kate becomes a weapons master, crafting all kinds of tools; her husband's best achievement is figuring out how to detonate toilets, and only when Kate permits it. By the end only Kate and a little girl survive, becoming something like myth.

In this way Devolution connects with contemporary American gender politics, with today's feminism in terms of representation and roles. 
 (hide spoiler)]

One more note: I listened to this, rather than reading it, and the audiobook was very good. Brooks himself narrates the frame. Judy Greer (Archer's Cheryl!) is superb as Kate Holland. I enjoyed guest spots from NPR journalists as themselves, as well as a Kate Mulgrew appearance, but Mira Furlan - former Yugoslav, star of the criminally underrates Babylon-5 - broke my heart as Mostar.

Ryan Lane

Novel Ideas

As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing - and too earth-shattering in its implications - to be forgotten. In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate's extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the beasts behind it, once thought legendary but now known to be terrifyingly real. Kate's is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity's defiance in the face of a terrible predator's gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death. Yet it is also far more than that. Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us - and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity. Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it - and like none you've ever read before.

Devolution A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre

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