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If there's one thing you learn from an early age down here in Australia it's this simple thing:


Come to Australia. You might accidentally get killed.

Seriously, down here, you fucking RESPECT nature. Our spiders and snakes can bite you to death, our kangaroos will kick you to death, our platypuses will make you pray for death, our Vegemite will make you....well you can only imagine....

So in a lot of ways, Max Brooks's Devolution's core concept is familiar stomping ground. A bunch of bougey nature lovers retreat to an isolated commune in the middle of the mountains, only for an earthquake to cut them off from the world. And then the supplies run low. And then the wildlife vacates the area. And then the sasquatches come out to feed....

So right off the bat, the format of the story is an eye-grabber.


OW!

Instead of a standard narrative, the plot is played out in a series of after-the-fact interviews with a park ranger and the author of a website article written on the incident, who also happens to be the brother of the story's main protag - Kate Holland. So points right off the bat for doing something different. The pacing is decent with Kate's diary entries moving along at a smooth pace and the interview excerpts not feeling too intrusive.

Brooks also make a point of developing a solid buildup to the sasquatches when they finally appear. There's enough early tension to make their eventual grand reveal feel earned. And when Bigfoot shit does inevitable hit the fan, its strikes that motherfucker like a ballistic missile. The final climactic scene is written fast and short, with things happening quickfire with little time to process things as they come.

I got to give Brooks credit. After reading Bill the Vampire I never thought sasquatches could be scary. But Brooks went from making them out to be this:



To this:


Pants successfully shat.

So if the pacing is solid and the horror is well-paced and punchy, why only a middle of the road score? Well....



With a story that is incredibly focused on the characters like you'd expect, the characters are sadly a mix of okay to barely there. Kate starts out as a milquetoast, easily rattled, passive character and it takes her a looooooooooooooong time to finally come out of her shell. It says a lot that one of the other commune residents - a woman named Mostar - has more personality than she does, in part because Mostar is so much more proactive. The other characters meanwhile suffer because their personalities range from paper-thin to barely existent. And while it might make sense to say that since the diary entries are from Kate perspective, this limits characterisation, that theory goes right out the window because there are specific sections devoted to both Tony and Dr. Reinhardt, and even those don't do enough to flesh them out.

Seriously, the characters are as follows:
- Dr Reinhardt, the uni professor who's never lived a day in his life outdoors
- Carmen and Effie, the lesbian couple who've adopted an overseas refugee child they name Palomino
- Vincent and Bobbi, the vegan pacifist couple
- Tony and Yvette, the Elon Musk wannabe and his yoga wife
- Kate and her 'artist' husband Dan

More than likely, all of those descriptions have conjured images in your heads and I can say with certainty that those images are 100% accurate. It's like the commune is nothing but a whole pack of Timothy Treadwells.


For the record, I don't have sympathy for Treadwell. I have sympathy for the people he hurt because of his stupidity and selfishness.

The other major problem with the book is that ultimately, its predictable. Devolution has a message and while that message doesn't detract from the story too much, its all but expected how the plot will play out with all the story beats you can expect. Given that the story begins knowing that the commune is gone and the residents are either dead or missing, it's not a fair leap to guess what will happen.

Devolution is decent, make no mistake. It's competently written, the pacing and chills are solid, but the characters are thin as a vegan's breakfast and the plot lacks any real meat to the bone. I've never read World War Z so I can't judge if this is typical of Brooks's output but there is something here. This just doesn't hit the right notes, but rather stumbles out a rendition of Chopsticks and then shits in the piano.