Devolution
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. ~ from dust jacket.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
4people
2022–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- No super recent but I listened to Devolution by Max Brooks (World War Z author) while trail running in the PNW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_(Brooks_novel)
It's read by Judy Greer (among others) and I liked it a lot.
- Probably not a classic for the ages, but I enjoyed the new Max Brooks novel, Devolution. It does for Bigfoot what World War Z (the book, not the film) did for zombies by injecting a bit of versimilitude and detail stolen from reality.
Freeze Frame Revolution by Peter Watts combines epic mind bending ideas with some hard sci-fi details.
Piranesi by Susanna Clark was very Iain (M) Banks style epic fantasy.
- Here are the 29 books that I read but I probably read another 100 children books.
• How AI Works: From Sorcery to Science — Ronald T. Kneusel
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values — Robert M. Pirsig
• Martín & Meditations on the South Valley — Jimmy Santiago Baca
• Akira, Vol. 6 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 5 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 4 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 3 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Akira, Vol. 2 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Poems & Prayers — Matthew McConaughey
• Akira, Vol. 1 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Time’s Arrow — Martin Amis
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter — Stephen Graham Jones
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly — Anthony Bourdain
• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism — Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever — Joseph Cox
• Source Code: My Beginnings — Bill Gates
• The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon’s Enduring Impact on America — Mark Whitaker
• Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction — Becky Kennedy // I would not recommend this book to anyone.
• Interior Chinatown — Charles Yu
• Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection — John Green
• Dark Matter — Blake Crouch
• Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things — Adam Grant
• Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D — Fabien Sanglard
• Jurassic Park — Michael Crichton
• Killing Commendatore — Haruki Murakami
• James — Percival Everett
• Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre — Max Brooks
• Last Argument of Kings — Joe Abercrombie
- I just started The Hobbit a couple days ago. For the last 3-4 months I've been checking out library books on the Kindle and reading as a bedtime ritual to help get me to sleep. It's been working pretty well, I rarely lay there unable to go to sleep.
I just finished Devolution by Max Brooks, it was good but not really in my wheelhouse. I didn't realize when I started reading it, but he also did World War Z, which I felt the same way about, and also recently finished reading
Before that I finished Artemis by Andy Weir, good but not great. Read because I had recently finished The Martian and absolutely loved it.
