Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Random House Audio and Libro.fm for my gifted audiobook copy of Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks.

What can I even say about this book?! It is a wild, wild ride, and weeks after reading it I still can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t read much horror, but I am so glad I read this one. It was truly horrifying and amazing and I couldn’t put it down.

Mount Rainier erupts and throws the Pacific Northwest into complete chaos. The little community of Greenloop is mostly forgotten about. But the brother of one of its newest residences starts digging. No-one has heard anything from the community at all, and by the time a rescue team gets there, all that that is left is the aftermath of a war zone. But what happened? Kate Holland’s journal makes for some horrific, yet riveting, reading.

This book was extra terrifying for me because I live near where the book is set, and I read it the weekend there was ash falling from the dark orange sky, thanks to all the fires. Things were feeling pretty apocalyptic on and off the page.

Apparently, over two-thirds of the bigfoot sightings reported are in the Pacific Northwest. It certainly makes one wonder…

The audiobook was phenomenal, coming in at 9 hours and 46 minutes. It was narrated by Judy Greer, Nathan Fillion, Kimberly Guerrero, and Max Brooks with special appearances by Jeff Daniels, Mira Furlan, Kate Mulgrew, and Steven Weber. The audio also included Terry Gross and Kai Ryssdal (as themselves). You can grab a copy of the audiobook using the button below, or get a physical copy here.

Synopsis:

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.

But 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.