A review by vacantbones
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks

5.0

It's great to live free of the other sheep until you hear the wolves howl.

edit: 2 years later and I think about this book all the time. Weekly, at least. Who am I kidding? I'm throwing another star on this one.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not big on creature features, but I can't deny that I had a lot of fun with Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre!

Our narrator, Kate, has just moved to a progressive and isolated eco-conscious community with her directionless husband and is documenting the experience in her journal. Little does she know that a volcanic eruption is about to send a herd of hungry, oft-mythologized creatures their way.

I liked the way that Devolution was formatted as a book within a book, combining Kate's discovered journal with interviews and tidbits of Sasquatch lore. I even enjoyed the characters, despite their being realistically insufferable, and the pacing was to my taste.

This was almost a perfect read for me, and one of the reasons it wasn't is *entirely* my fault. We are told from the very beginning that Kate has never been found. This is not a secret! Even so, I had hoped for just a bit more resolution with the ending. I still found the conclusion to be satisfying, but the gap between when Kate stopped writing in her journal and her disappearance from the community seemed to be full of stuff I would've loved to read about (spoiler:

Spoiler

Sasquatch jerky, are you kidding!!!!

).

Probably going to have Bigfoot nightmares tonight. Or every night. I don't know. Still, super fun read.