Adversity introduces us to ourselves.
So I started the audiobook of this right after it originally came out. Still, due to the transition from one to another and I'm not overly fond of audiobooks, I only made it about a quarter of the way through. Enough that I knew I was into the story, and to learn I really need to stop giving audiobooks a chance. They just aren't my jam. So sadly this book went back on my TBR and got kind of forgotten about until this year thanks to our yearly book BINGO challenge. One of our squares was a book we started by never finished. Devolution was my first thought.
This was my first book by Max Brooks. His other book, World War Z, never really caught my attention because zombies aren't my favorite creepy creature. But, Sasquatches on the other hand have always been a favorite of mine. I grew up watching Harry and the Hendersons and then moved to Pacific Northwest as an adult. Oddly enough those two things have little to do with each other, but both lay a big role in why I wanted to read this book.
I don't live terribly far from where fictional Greenloop would have been located. So the setting was perfect for me because I didn't have to imagine most of what Kate was talking about, or what she was hearing while listening to the radio. I've been on the highways, driven past those woods, and while I haven't made the trip to Rainer I've seen it. So it was easy to put me in her surroundings.
What kept me reading though was Kate and Mostar. At the start of the book, Kate is timid, passive, and afraid of any kind of confrontation, and all of that made her the best main character. I was a little worried though about halfway through the book that I was going to be sick of her self-doubt and inability to put her foot down. Because there are a few pages where it looks like she's never going to find her voice. But, adversity introduces us to ourselves. That's my favorite quote of the book, and really the main theme of the book. Watching these characters change as they are given a choice: survive or be eaten.
I'm not surprised how we last a few characters. They were destiny to be fodder in the long scheme of things, but Kate wasn't the only one to surprise me. Carman, who I hated from the first time she spoke, seemed to grow on my little. And, nothing gave me greater joy than watching Yvette get eaten.
Brooks did a great job of showing our groups of people can come together when times get tough, and how things times can change even the timidest of the group. How previous strategies can give strength to a character like Mostar who is the reason they even survived the first couple of weeks to be attacked. Oh Mostar, I liked her the best, from her first introduction to the way her story ended. Without her, Greenloop would have never survived that long, and I don't think Kate would have ever found her voice. She was the push the all needed, but she also made mistakes. Learned from them, and moved on.
Somehow Brooks weaved a lot into almost three hundred pages: backstories, events happening outside of Greenloop, the aftermath of the volcano, and the search for those missing. He did all of this without overdoing it. The entire story flowed into each other. The time jumps, back and forward, made sense as they happened, explanations to events that had already happened. News reports explained they no one had found those in Greenloop. It all weaves into a creepy isolated environment where you're not really as alone as you think are.
I will say the farther into this book the creepy it got for me. Laying in bed reading, in the dark, it started to feel like someone was watching me. This didn't start until I was a third into the book. A hundred percent it had to do with how Kate talks about being watched all the time. I started to feel too, even though not even the cat was awake at that point.
The was also pretty graphic in the kills, personally, I don't mind the gore. But, Brooks had a way of making them almost visceral, like I could the sounds in my head. So props for that. Anything that makes me question, why I'm eating and reading this at the same time, is a winner in my book.
Lastly, I loved the ending. I'm always a sucker for when a horror book has an open ending like this. What happened to Kate and Pal? Four good scenarios were laid out, each of them all disturbing in their own way. I've heard this had been picked up for a movie, or mini-series. Which I'm excited about, but I hope they keep the open ending. I don't want them to attempt to "fix" it by explaining what really happened.
Because I know which scenarios I wanted to believe in, I doubt it's the one they'd choose.
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