Max Brooks of “World War Z” has written a futuristic horror book that will keep readers awake at night. The subtitle, “A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre,” provides the reader with some idea of what the future is going to hold, as does the form of the book, which is a combination of journal and interviews with scientists and park rangers reflecting back on what happened after Mount Rainier erupts.

Kate is our youthful journal writer. She and her partner Dan have travelled up from California to live in her brother’s home, which is a part of the small, planned eco community of Greenloop. Greenloop is an experiment that is supposed to allow residents to commune with nature by living sustainably in the middle of the forest, while still being very connected to civilization through high speed internet and drone deliveries. The small group of villagers are diverse in opinion and background. They have great community dinners where wine and conversation generally flow freely. The one oddball resident is an older woman named Mostar, a glass artist with no first name and a mysterious background.

A series of small earthquakes lead up to Mount Rainier’s eruption, which devastates the Puget Sound region. Massive lahars thunder down the valleys and cover Tacoma and Puyallup in layers of mud. Seattle is cut off from the rest of the country and the population quickly turns lawless. Needless to say, no one is going to be sending drone deliveries to Greenloop nor are they going to be rescued. They also have no two-way radios so can’t even alert the outside world to their need for rescue.

So much for being connected to the world.

The villagers of Greenloop don’t initially realize what a pickle they are in, except for Mostar, who relies on a past history with starvation and sieges to direct Katie and Dan into action. They immediately start building a garden inside their garage with what seeds and beans they can find. They also pool their food, tally up all the calories, and create a rationing plan. Mostar is hopeful that they can make it through the winter.

But then they start to realize that they are not alone on their mountain slope. It initially seems crazy to suspect that the Sasquatch is real but they are quickly provided with proof. The residents aren’t just going to run out of food, they are also going to become food.

I am writing this review during the beginning months of the COVID-19 quarantine and I live in the Pacific Northwest, so imagining the eruption of our beloved Mount Rainier as well as considering our mythical Sasquatch as a hostile species was an unsettling place to be as a reader. Being this unsettled is a great place to be when you start a horror story. Max Brooks took his time and helped us to care about some of the residents in Greenloop, including our anxious narrator Kate. When the Sasquatch problem shows up, it is larger and more vicious than any of the residents could have imagined.

I definitely recommend this book. A wide variety of readers will enjoy this read, including individuals who don’t normally consider themselves to be fans of horror.

4.5 The guy who brought us World War Z follows zombies up with Bigfoot! The tension builds as articles and historical accounts are interspersed with missing Kate Holland's journal entries recounting her experience in the new high-tech eco-community before and after the Mt Rainier eruption. Set in the midst of a disaster, it really resonated while in this pandemic. The titlular devolution and who it ends up referring to made me like this book so much more! Plus there are some great characters, especially Mostar! Highly recommended for creature feature lovers!

When Mt. Ranier erupts, the resulting natural disaster dislodges not one, but an entire group of sasquatches. They are hungry, which does not bode well for the people who live in a techno village that is cut off from civilization. On the one hand, we have humans who are so far advanced that their food is delivered by drone. On the other, we have humanoids, or at least human-like beasts who may be evolutionary missing links. Are the two really that different, though?

While this was definitely not the wisest reading choice during a pandemic -- I wrongly thought a Bigfoot survival story would be good escapism -- it was a scary, wild ride that I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. finishing. Told through diary entries and interviews, <i>Devolution</i> takes place in the near future during the fictional eruption of the very real Mount Rainier. Unfortunately for the citizens of a tiny eco-friendly community called Greenloop, they are trapped by the eruption, and thanks to the destruction and dwindling food sources, another much more dangerous community is drawn out of hiding. Spoilers: it's Bigfeet ... and not the cute <i>Harry and the Hendersons</i> kind. What follows is a stressful, thrilling fight for survival (with a little satire about our reliance on technology and our eco-conscious efforts thrown in for good measure). It's not quite <i>World War Z</i> perfection, but it's pretty damn close.

One word: SASQUATCH. I'm in!!

When a small group of environmentally conscious folk move into a "smart-community" (named Greenloop), in the Pacific northwest, everything seems to be just perfect. They are off the grid, groceries are flown in via drone, and they are self sufficient...until nearby Mount Rainier erupts. All of a sudden it becomes painfully clear that they are not capable of surviving very long without internet access, (can't order up those grocery drones now), and with the roads wiped out by lahars, there's no escape. Then, they start noticing noises from the woods and as all the local wildlife begins to run, they run into something deadly. Will our plucky group escape from Greenloop with their lives? Or will they stay and try to defend the lives they've built? You'll have to read this to find out!

The after-effects of a lahar:


I ended up loving characters that I nearly hated at first. Katie? I'm looking at you, girl! As the tale continues we learn more about each of the people living at Greenloop. Many of the important things about them aren't disclosed until much later in the book. My Google-foo was strong though and I discovered a lot of those particulars early on and that gave more depth to the tale. This entire group of people changed throughout, some in good ways, others not so much.

I thought that for a bigfoot story this tale was mostly realistic, though there were portions where I had a hard time suspending my disbelief. I cant say more about that without spoilers, but let's face it. This is a story about sasquatches, there's only so much realism there can be. And even though we're talking about somewhat of a creature feature here, the real focus is on the characters and not the cryptids. In that respect, it's not a creature feature at all, it's about the people.

DEVOLUTION is a quick read, fast paced and a lot of fun. There were gory scenes, lots of action and unexpected events popping up all over the place. It kept my attention, kept the pages turning and took my mind off this pandemic for a while. For these reasons I recommend it!

*Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*

I was really excited to read this because I love Brooks' World War Z! I enjoyed this novel, but not quite as much as WWZ. It was a lot bloodier and gorier than I expected. But it kept me hooked and I was eager to find out what happened and which characters would survive! Maybe not something to read before bed, though.

Well, this was fun.

To be honest, Bigfoot (Sasquatch) isn’t my favorite cryptid, but I was so curious about this I had to read it. I’m glad I did. This was so entertaining!

The author does a fantastic job of telling the story in a way that got me completely invested in our characters and our survival. I was so worried about them. (Um…the fact that the word ‘massacre’ is in the title tells you I needed to be!)

I’ll admit that I expected a little more of a ‘worldview’ than I got. I think, based on the World War Z chatter out there, I was expecting to hear more voices and a picture that, while not necessarily global, was maybe a bit more widespread. We did get quite a bit about how other people and communities were handling an ongoing disaster, which I liked.

I really enjoyed the book. The author is a fantastic storyteller and I’m fully onboard for whatever he bring us next!

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

Just as he did for zombies in World War Z, Max Brooks approaches the mythical Bigfoot from an entirely realistic, horrific point of view in Devolution. It's a slow burn horror story about the true nature of people and "the lines between human and beast."

Devolution is composed of individual accounts and interviews, including the journal of Kate, our protagonist. This style, plus the fact that the book is less than 300 pages, made for a quick and addictive read. However, I thought the overall story was missing something. Some of the characters didn't feel as fleshed out as they could be. And admittedly Kate was annoying at times, but it made the story all the more realistic.

Overall if you like realistic horror, survivalism, and Brooks' other work, you'll probably like Devolution.

Devolution is made up of a collection of diary entries and interviews about a small, insulated community near Mount Rainier that met its demise. Upon the eruption of Mount Rainier, this eco-community called Greenloop is completely shut off from the world and must start rationing their food and come up with a survival plan. All hope of survival is extinguished when a group of Sasquatch is awakened and begin to threaten them.

I thought this would be a fun, escapist read. I did not expect it to be so campy. There is *a lot* of cheesy humor and character stereotyping: you have the uppity city woman, the out of touch scholar, the older immigrant woman who seems off her rocker, the disconnected husband. I didn't care much for the because they seemed so fake. Pacing was also a huge problem for me: Bigfoot doesn't hit the page until halfway in! And when the creatures do come, they seem so absurd (they communicate by throwing rocks) I actually laughed.
If you like campy scary stories, you might like this. I was expecting something of the caliber of Blake Crouch, and instead got a story that reminded me of Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Content warnings: graphic scene of skinning a rabbit, violence (Bigfoot attacks the humans).

Largely first-person diary style narrative, detailing what happened to a tech-forward off-the-grid community that had to come to grips with post volcanic isolation and resource constraints. And yeah, some fuzzy visitors. For me, the primary voice falls flat and the character development for almost all involved is rather ludicrous.

Devolution is an quick read full of action, tension and excitement told via a "found" diary, with excerpts from interviews and commentary from the finders and other actors. Similar in style to Brooks' "World War Z", this story takes place in a small, technologically advanced commune in the mountains of Washington State, where wealthy individuals have chosen to relocate to be closer to nature, while attempting to not sacrifice the comforts to which they've grown accustomed. Brooks does a great job examining the fallacy of their decision, bringing a Crichton-esque feeling to his story - I got vibes of Congo and State of Fear throughout the book. His characters are interesting, drawing you in and making their decisions understandable to their emotions and positions. I enjoyed Devolution; while not as unique and fascinating as World War Z, the found diary/oral history model seems to work for Brooks, and I look forward to his next adventure.

Brooks turns his journalistic approach to prose to the infamous cryptid Bigfoot in this extremely tense, slow burn horror novel. Devolution is the story of a truly unbearable group of people settling the eco-friendly encampment Greenloop, built in the shadow of Mount Rainier. Greenloop seems like a naturalistic paradise, both high-tech and isolated in the mountains, until Mount Rainier erupts and sends all of Washington into disarray. The denizens of Greenloop find themselves cut off completely, and suddenly vulnerable to a new group of predators shaken loose from the shadows by the volcano.

Devolution is a book that demands patience. It's told through the journal of one of the Greenloop residents, interspersed with interviews and news articles that fill out the Bigfoot lore that Brooks is utilizing for his "found footage" narrative. Like World War Z, we already know what happens - no survivors are found at the Greenloop site. What matters is how the story of Greenloop unfolds, and the way that Brooks incorporates retrospectives and information from other characters. While I don't think this braided narrative packs quite the punch as World War Z - we spend maybe too long in the build-up, and not enough time in the confrontation - it's still a compelling survival narrative with a truly banger ending.

Devolution by Max Brooks is a great read! A real engrossing page-turner and worth the time of a read!!

This is the first time I’m finding myself hoping that Bigfoot ISN’T real. Yikes.
Great main character, great setting, and awesome way to use urban(?) lore to its full effect.

As a true 70s child, I have had a lifelong low grade obsession with Big Foot, aka Sasquatch. I was thrilled to have the chance to read Max Brook's latest thriller on the topic having enjoyed [book:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War|8908]. While this novel is technically in the horror genre, it read more like a parody of modern society and its idealization of nature and "green" living. The novel definitely had the feel of the theater of the absurd which kind of deflated the actual horror element. The author did a very good job of character development and of bring Sasquatch from a thing of legend to a creature that the reader begins to believe just might actually exist. The novel is quite visceral in its use of sensations, particularly smell, to place the reader in the situation and make the story feel real. Portions of the story become rather tedious as the author goes into great detail about weapon making techniques. Not having read it, I'm guessing he double dipped into his previous work[book:The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead|535441] for filler because that is pretty much what it felt read like. While by no means a great novel, it is entertaining and segues with the current fears of survival many of us are currently experiencing with COVID-19. I recommend this novel for fans of [author:Max Brooks|5791], the Sasquatch, or those who just want to escape for a bit.

DEVOLUTION by Max Brooks is mostly told through the journal of Kate Holland, a woman who moved to a tiny green community in Washington with her husband, Dan There's a volcano eruption nearby, Kate and her neighbors become cut off from the real world, and then some scary stuff keeps happening at night. It's Bigfoot. He's real, and he's hungry.

Devolution is a more than worthy successor to Brooks' wildly popular World War Z. This more recent work revolves around a group who has chosen to retreat to a remote, high-tech settlement near Mt. Rainier. When the previously dormant volcano erupts, disaster ensues, cutting the group off from their paths of travel. To make matters worse, as supplies dwindle and wildlife is driven from the surrounding forests by what the groups assumes is a result of the eruption, a yet-to-be-discovered species moves out of the cover of the forest to hunt for the only available food source.

A thrilling, captivating story populated by realistic, well-developed characters, Devolution is filled with insights into our modern view of self-reliance and the role technology plays in our lives. Brooks' masterfully incorporates humor and heart to achieve a balance of entertainment and sincere emotion. Some truly inspired passages express an almost meta-level acknowledgement of what constitutes terror for human beings, and sends chills up the reader's spine in the process. His inclusion of real and fictional source material with footnotes imbues the story with a special sense of gravity that sets it apart from others int he genre.

This book should be mandatory reading for those who enjoyed Darcy Coates' Hunted, fans of Scott Carson's The Chill and those who especially appreciated the thrilling battles and endearing characters of McCammon's Swan Song. Not to mention all you Zed-heads. This will easily be one of the best horror novels of the year.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC.

This is not the bigfoot that I grew up with. The big, shy fellow running from the cameras. This bigfoot clan was mean and nasty. Story was semi-interesting. skimmed at times. When I read a story I like to know what happened to the characters at the end. ARC provided in exchange for a fair review.

This book has a small group of people living together in an isolated, tech-forward commune. This idea works really well until a major disaster completely cuts them off from the world. It starts as a look into our over-reliance on the internet and slowly turns into a fight for survival. This was a fascinating read. The horror elements are light, but well done. Definitely a book to check out!

Well-written and thoroughly researched, the format of journal entries and interviews worked well together to form a fun narrative of survival of a neighborhood against a deadly group of sasquatches after they are trapped because of a volcanic eruption. Ultimately it only earned 4 stars instead of 5 because I was pretty indifferent about most of the characters so I had trouble rooting for them or feeling sad when there were casualties.
I'm glad Max Brooks is finally back to writing more original horror/survival fiction.