Book Review: Max Brooks' "Devolution"

Not actually Erin.

Picture by KJ Photography.

Used with permission.

As a general rule, "prepper fiction" tends to be either 

1. Competence Porn (stories featuring competent characters carrying out difficult tasks with great aptitude).
2. Survival (stories featuring characters struggling to survive in dangerous conditions).
3. All of the above.

The survival horror subgenre seems to be hit or miss for us; some preppers dismiss it as unrealistic, while others (such as myself) will watch practically any show featuring zombies. 

But what about a story where a bunch of soft urban yuppies create a high-tech utopian "green enclave" deep in the woods of Washington state, an hour away from civilization and dependent on weekly food drops, who then get cut off from society when Mount Rainier erupts? That's definitely a survival story. 

(Of course they don't have guns. They're too enlightened for that. They barely have equipment for a day hike). 

Now what if these soft, urban yuppies then had to survive attacks from a tribe of hungry sasquatch, who had been displaced from their usual hunting grounds because of the volcanic eruption? 

That's the basis of Max Brooks' novel Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre.  

https://amzn.to/4g7sqTD

If you've read Brooks' previous novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, you know exactly what you're getting: first there's significant worldbuilding via backstory, then the inevitable Bad Thing happens, and then things get a lot worse because people are unprepared or react poorly, and people only survive by wising up and adapting to the situation. 

Fair warning: this is anti-competence porn, by which I mean that the characters are deliberately depicted at first as being annoying and blind to the situation around them. I was rooting for all but one of them (Mostar) to die for most of the book. They adapted or they died, and I was fine with either outcome. (I watch zombie movies for much the same reason.) You'll likely be rooting for the Sasquatches for most of the book like I was, and that's okay. 

As a friend of mine observed, "the central conflict hinges on you believing that there's an entire enclave of wealthy  eco-separatists  and none of them have a toolbox or a gun."

Some would say that the story suffers because of that, but to be blunt there'd be no story if someone had a gun. Slasher movies have the same flaw, and you just accept that going in. And yes, I can easily imagine a group of eco-yuppies living out in the middle of nowhere, utterly dependent upon drone drops for supplies, yet somehow thinking they're being "green" and "off grid" and maybe even "living off the land." They're engaged in the same kind of totemic magic thinking as people who believe that owning a gun is a talisman against harm, and so they don't need training.

In conclusion:

• Is it a book about prepping? No. It's more like a cautionary (and fantastic) cautionary tale about what might happen if you don't prep for emergencies. 
• Is it entertaining? I thoroughly enjoyed it, but some people might not be able to get past the whiny people. I tell those people "They'll either get smarter or you'll enjoy their deaths." For me it was a win-win. 

Is it nonsense? Setting aside the sasquatch issue for a moment, I found it highly plausible. There may have been things which I missed due to my own gaps in knowledge, but considering I was reading it as entertainment and not an instruction manual, I wasn't worried.

However, about that sasquatch business: I just want to say that the Mount Rainier area has the highest density of Bigfoot sightings in the US, and that many soldiers and airmen who have been stationed at Joint Base Lewis–McChord (JBLM) say that there's just something "off" about those woods. A friend of mine says "There's some sh*t down in Rainier Training Area. Avoided Lewis since '94."

I say this not to convince you of the existence of Bigfoot (I'm skeptical of that myself) but to give readers, who would otherwise dismiss the entire idea as preposterous, a reason for entertaining the possibility that it might not be. 

Regardless of your feelings about cryptids, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think most preppers will too. It's available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook from Amazon.