Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre (2020)

TYPE: Novels - Science Fiction

FORMAT:

AUTHOR: Brooks, Max

REFERENCES:

COMMENTS:
Reporter narrates the story.


The plot focuses on the investigation being done by a reporter 13 months after the titular Sasquatch Massacre occurs in the community of Greenloop, Washington.
The narrator is guided into the events of the massacre by the brother of Kate Holland, one of the residents who is still missing. The narrator combines Kate's journal entries and additional interviews with experts on zoology, a Forest Service officer and others, in order to provide the reader context about the nature of the Bigfoot.

We learn that for therapeutic reasons, Kate was asked by her psychotherapist to maintain a written record of her thoughts, feelings and experiences in Greenloop. The initial entries describe her troubled relationship with her husband Dan, her lifestyle and the quirky upper-class neighbors of her small Greenloop community.

Upon the eruption of Mt. Rainier, the residents decide to shelter in place and wait for rescuers to arrive, relying on the capabilities of their technological homes and rationing to carry them through the coming days. As the National Guard and local officials try to regain control of the Mt. Rainier eruption area, including Seattle, the residents of Greenloop slowly realize how cut-off and unprepared they are.

It is then that the wild animals and worse, the sasquatches appear. The journal entries (and therefore, the book that we are reading) then become a record of the residents' battles against the sasquatch.

Set in the wilds of Washington State, Greenloop was once a model eco-community—until nature’s wrath made it a tragic object lesson in civilization’s fragility.

Offering a glorious back-to-nature experience with all the comforts of high-speed Internet, solar smart houses, and the assurance of being mere hours from Seattle by highway, Greenloop was indeed a paradise—until Mount Rainier erupted, leaving its residents truly cut off from the world, and utterly unprepared for the consequences.

With no weapons and their food supplies dwindling, Greenloop’s residents slowly realized that they were in a fight for survival. And as the ash swirled and finally settled, they found themselves facing a specter none of them could have predicted—or even thought possible.

In these pages, Max Brooks brings to light the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own investigations into the massacre that followed and the legendary beasts behind it.

If what Kate 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 zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.”
Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.”

UPDATED: 01-18-2022