Max Brooks’ World War Z is one of my favourite horror novels, so I was pretty excited to jump into Devolution. The premise seemed pretty cool – group of characters stuck in their town following a natural disaster, stalked and hunted by mysterious cryptids.
I have to admit though, I came away from the book a little disappointed. It does a lot of things pretty well – the setting is evocative and atmospheric, and Brooks is good at slowly building the tension until it escalates into craziness, just like with WWZ. There are some thrilling scenes scattered throughout the story.
But a lot of Brooks’ weakness as a writer are really emphasized here. For one thing, the characters are all forgettable and mostly undeveloped. This wasn’t as much of an issue in WWZ as that was more like anthology with a worldwide scale. Here, with only a few characters in focus in a much smaller setting, the lack of compelling personalities is glaring. The protagonist, Kate, was barely even the main character. It felt like she had very little agency or control of the narrative. If anything, Mostar, the old Eastern European lady, felt like the real main character.
Brooks is also not much of a writer from a technical standpoint. The prose is basic and elementary at best. But I guess it’s a popcorn horror thriller so that’s not too big of a complaint.
I also found the ending, where Dan somehow programs a bunch of explosions through his iPad, kind of ridiculous. Even in a novel like this, it stretched believability.
The climax as a whole though was still pretty intense and exciting, and the book does a good job overall with its pacing. It just felt like it could have been so much better, but maybe I’m using WWZ as an admittedly very high bar.
by Monkey-on-the-couch