Devolution

Honestly? I was really excited for this, but overall: MEH.This totally lacks texture and nuance. The characters are drawn as black & white, good and bad. The main narrator is unsure but on the side of Right Thinking; Mostar is Always Correct Despite the Doubts of the Feebleminded; The rest of the residents are at best moronically naive or at worst Selfish Narcissists. Oh, and there's an appreciable amount of fat shaming thrown in to paint one of the Willfully Blind residents as particularly gross and selfish.Perhaps worst of all, people don't act like normal humans. It doesn't make sense for Mostar to jump to all the conclusions she does (she's put in that role because she's the Always Right character.) Meanwhile, it also doesn't make sense for the rest of the residents to be as blithely unworried as they are (they're put in that role to demonstrate how Mostar is Always Right.)This is annoying on multiple levels. I love Max Brooks's other books. I can see lots of possibilities here and I did like the arcs of Unsure CPA Wife and Depressed Husband responding to a survival situation. Mostar's backstory is gestured at but never explored. There was no reason behind the perplexing actions of some key characters.I honestly thought there was going to be a surprise where the Evil Violent Ape-Creatures were going to be shown to have more nuanced motivations. But no, they're just Evil Violent Ape-Creatures and the whole point is to . . . I don't know? Demonstrate how sucky nature is? Make fun of people who venerate nature? Have an excuse for detailed battle descriptions? (Which I find incredibly boring, in contrast to the tongue-in-cheek but somehow compelling analyses in [b:The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead 535441 The Zombie Survival Guide Complete Protection from the Living Dead Max Brooks https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320562270l/535441.SX50.jpg 818].)On average, it's OK. Judy Greer's narration of the audiobook and the inclusion of other great voices were a saving grace. But don't go into this expecting [b:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War 8908 World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War Max Brooks https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1528312647l/8908.SX50.jpg 817]. This is better than the movie adaptation of that book, but nowhere near as good as the book itself.

I had received a free audiobook for review from LibroFM.
tldr
Great audio. really slow build, final chapters it really gets good. then it's over. more questions

Greenloop. A self-sustaining town located near Mt Rainier Washington. Off-grid living at it's finest.
We receive an account of this entire story through the journal entries of Kate, who seems to have been tasked the journaling from a therapist or a doctor. Her first hand account puts us in the (at some times scatterbrained) mind of a city girl getting her first hand experience at country living.

The first half of the book is mostly about learning about the town and the various side characters within it and i felt that it wasn't really necessary to go into that much length about the way the houses are wired or her husband becoming a handyman. It all felt a bit slow to start and we haven't even gotten into any accounts of the Sasquatch yet. So for the opening and the middle i was a bit bored.

Then the final third to a quarter of the book has the pieces that I've been waiting for, the confrontation, the defense, the primal instincts and brutality is where it all picked up, then then it was all over and more questions opened up.
What was with that shut-in family? and that weird old lady? Is it truly over?
These questions were asked in the epilogue by one of the voices we learn has ties to main characters, which I thought was pretty cool.

I really loved World War Z when I read it years ago because the journalist account of a fictional global crisis was such a neat idea and really well executed.

This follow up book is much smaller scale about one incident to one small group of people, but still tries to tell the story in a similar way with having a few different experts and related characters interviewed as well as the majority of the story being told in journal entries of a single character who was present for the events. It mostly just feels like a standard first person narrative though with this journal conceit clumsily fit over top of it.

The story itself is fine, some of it is thrilling and there are ideas here and there that piqued my interest, but it honestly took way longer than I expected to get rolling (the first third to half of the book is just setting up the community location and it's cast of characters) and it wasn't particularly interesting or unique.

Giving this a two because I wouldn't recommend it. Read World War Z instead.