Hardcover format. Recommended!!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The #1 New York Times bestselling author of World War Z is back with “the Bigfoot thriller you didn’t know you needed in your life, and one of the greatest horror novels I’ve ever read” (Blake Crouch, author of Dark Matter and Recursion).
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. 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.
Praise for Devolution
“Delightful . . . [A] tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Green Hand Bookshop's review:
Max Brooks' new book is, necessarily, different from its predecessors. However, it does draw upon the same steady buildup of everyday-gone-wrong that World War Z utilized so effectively. This time he gives readers a linear storyline, interspersed with interview segments and epistolary musings from those sifting through the wreckage of events, trying to put together what happened from the fragments they can gather.
The whole thing is put together cunningly. At the start of the book, because of the way it is introduced, the reader feels like they know what is going on. Kate's journal entries are innocuous enough, a little neurotic and anxiety-ridden, but in the Covid-era world, we can all understand how life drives you to previously unknown extremes due to stress, and how after a certain point, whatever has to be done to fix that will be done come hell or high water.
The other characters are introduced, and one is lulled by the normal weirdness of living isolated overall, but in close quarters with other people you might not have gotten to know so well before (again, Covid-era folks, we all know this feeling).
And then the slide begins. A cataclysm, distant but with near effects. Then side effects, then WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING NOW??? Once again, Max Brooks sneaks up and wallops readers six ways to Sunday, and leaves us shaken and deeply stirred by a very human, perhaps too-close-to-home at moments tale.
If you're looking for a good distraction, it's here. Better get it before it gets you.
On a personal note: Brooks (as always) has done his research. The conditions in this sequence of events are in some ways very similar to a series of happenings in my home state of Maine that I have been researching while writing my upcoming book, Bigfoot in Maine. Just consider that.
Note to publishers: If you have upcoming horror or speculative fiction titles which you would like to send to my shop for review in the form of a print copy, please do so. I cannot promise to review everything received, but I will do my best. I do not read egalleys, I'm an old-fashioned bookworm. Review copies can be sent to me at: Michelle Souliere, Green Hand Bookshop, 661 Congress St, Portland ME 04101
