Devolution, by Max Barry (EDIT: Brooks, d’oh!)
Ebook, library
Sep 15 - October 2nd, 2020
Same author as the zombie survival guide and world war z, and oh boy, he is not a very good writer. It’s an epistolary novel, supposedly the discovered writings of a person who survived a Sasquatch massacre, and the way he uses the form makes it suffer, heavily, in believability. He adds so much detail that it becomes ridiculous that you’re reading a journal, spoiling any of the ‘found drama’ idea. When I was a kid I loved the ‘is this real?’ framing Crichton put on Jurassic Park and some others, but in this novel that goes right out the window. He also has numerous interstitials with experts and friends, and they read like attempts to amplify the drama. I skimmed the final 70 pages of it.
Barry’s real skills lie in scenario design and he’s got a really good setup here. It’s an isolated group of high-tech cabins, and it lets him comment on tech bro invincibility, lack of disaster preparedness, lack of connection to the actual world we live in, and a lot of other associated things. that stuff is quite well done. I think he’d be an excellent dungeons and dragons module designer.
Best part: It got me back into disaster preparedness!