Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

DEVOLUTION by Max Brooks

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An epistolary novel by Max Brooks (WORLD WAR Z), DEVOLUTION tells the story of the Mount Rainier Massacre through interviews peppering the journal entries of one of the people who was there. This one took me a long time to get the motor of engagement started, but once it did, it really roared.

The story begins with a young urban couple moving to a remote eco-community called Greenloop. Here, the residents live close to nature while maintaining all the comforts of the big city. When nearby Mount Rainier erupts, all these comforts evaporate. And worse: The eruption has forced an animal migration, including a particularly monstrous, hungry, and previously hidden type of beast: the thing we call Bigfoot.

The narrative plays out primarily through the wife’s journal. Over time, we get ongoing snippets of interviews from experts, park rangers, and others. The two work together pretty well, with the journal bringing us there as the events unfold and the interviews adding context, background, a look at the bigger picture of the Rainier eruption, and so on.

Not gonna lie: It took me a while to get into this, so much so I put it down a while ago and only recently came back to it. For one, I didn’t find the protagonist particularly likable to a level I could invest. It’s kind of the point, as she’s been pampered by civilization and eventually transforms under the pressure to adapt and survive, but the preamble describing Greenloop and daily life there through her eyes wasn’t particularly engaging for me. Besides that, I have an odd bar for willing suspension of disbelief. As with other epistolary works, I had to get past the mental hurdle that she spent an enormous time writing in her journal so that I could just accept the convention and go with the flow.

Once Rainier blows its top, however, things get very, very interesting. The community slowly realizing its predicament, the transformation to self-reliance, the advance warnings something horrible was coming and all of its reveals, the drive to survive, and the various tactics the residents use to defend themselves against an incredibly powerful and ferocious predator were all pretty much perfect.

By the end, I can’t say I fell in love the way many readers did–the book has more than 8,000 reviews on Amazon with an average 4.4 rating, and I can see why–but I did like this one a lot. It’s a clever, realistic, and informed take on Bigfoot; an excellent thematic view of survival and adaptation; and overall a very strong survival horror story.

DESERT CREATURES by Kay Chronister

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I recently enjoyed Kay Chronister’s DESERT CREATURES, a novel about a future slow apocalypse due to environmental catastrophe.

In this story, toxic rain has driven humanity into the desert, where clever businessmen have set up a religion based in Las Vegas to establish and maintain their power and wealth. In this dangerous and evolving world, Magdala, a child, struggles to survive and wants to make a pilgrimage so that a saint will heal her clubfoot, a deformity where the foot is turned inward. The novel follows her life in a world that is slowly dying along with a heretic priest who may be able to perform miracles.

This is an odd one, I have to say that first. The environment is hostile but also evolving, developing new strange life forms and imposing escalating pressure on human biology and society until it is barely subsisting and seems ready to simply join the desert itself. There is a lot of religion. The narrative jumps protagonists and then forward in time, with a lot of wandering and frustrated hopes and no clear theme, making the story feel a little disjointed with some readers likely wondering, what’s the story here, and where is this all going?

Yeah, okay, but I liked it. It’s less one thing than a collection of things, and the mosaic they formed caught me. The new desert life in particular was interesting and weird, I liked the adaptation of Christianity to cowboy saints and casinos, the ongoing degradation of society is pretty bleak, and the story drags you through the dirt and dust while maintaining a mythic feel to it, with some fantasy elements as strange as the landscape.

Overall, I admired what Chronister was trying to do here in this ambitious, different novel. It didn’t quite come together for me as a reader to make it a favorite, but I enjoyed the aspiration and what I received, enough to say, hey, take a look and see if this one might be for you.

THE DRIFT by C.J. Tudor

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C.J. Tudor’s THE DRIFT is a terrific apocalyptic thriller with clever construction, a cascade of page-turning thriller elements, and a strong thematic focus on how crisis brings people together and tears them apart.

The story follows three main narratives, each with its own protagonist. Hannah, a student at an elite Academy, awakens on a crashed bus that was evacuating the school to a secure mountaintop facility called The Retreat due to an outbreak of a viciously persistent disease that is slowly destroying the world. Former detective Meg awakens with several strangers on a cable car suspended above a snowstorm; they were on their way to The Retreat, but the power is out and they’re stranded. And Carter, who works at The Retreat, struggles to survive with a small band of other survivors, but there may be a murderer in their midst.

Tudor proves herself a thriller master, as each of these storylines quickly portrays clear, easy-to-remember characters, sets up a locked room and ticking time bomb, and then bombards them with an avalanche of obstacles, problems, and escalating threats. By the end, we get to know their backstories and why they’re here, how the narratives tie together, and what it’s all adding up to.

I liked almost everything about this book. The pandemic is handled in an interesting way, the thriller style keeps the pages turning at a swift pace, there is some engaging reader detective work about how the storylines tie together, and there’s a solid thematic focus on how crisis unites and then breaks societies. As a fan of apocalyptic fiction, I’ve always been interested in how people would react to something like say zombies. I’ve always been a believer that humans are primarily cooperative animals and that this trait helped us reach the top of the food chain. This cooperation, however, is based on the principle of reciprocity–if I do for you, you do for me. Eventually, that principle may break down, and then it’s every person for themselves.

One potential downside for readers, particularly apocalyptic fiction fans, is there isn’t a lot of backstory on the state of the world and the pandemic itself. Almost all the events in the book happen in isolation, with the story’s focus being on these characters and their immediate survival. And if you’re new to thrillers, be prepared for a veritable kitchen sink of sudden obstacles.

Overall, I really enjoyed THE DRIFT and will be keeping an eye out for future works by this author.

FLICKER by Theodore Roszak

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Theodore Roszak’s FLICKER is a tour de force journey through the history of cinema and Hollywood, sprawling and lavish and finely written with believable, expert detail. While I quibbled with the beginning and end, it’s a hell of a ride, blending film theory, history, and an ancient conspiracy theory through the lens of an unsung horror movie director.

The book is the memoir of Jonathan Gates, a student at UCLA who seeks out foreign films for their titillating erotic honesty. After he meets Clare, the proprietor of an underground theater who is a genius critic in the making, he begins a love affair with both her and film. This leads him to the discovery of Max Castle, an obscure German horror director from Hollywood’s golden age whose abominable B movies hold a certain power. Eventually becoming obsessed with finding and documenting Castle’s work, he ends up on a journey that reveals a secret history of film, Hollywood, and an ancient religious conspiracy.

What a sprawling, interesting novel this is. Roszak certainly takes his time building his ideas, showing himself to be a master of pacing, the slow reveal, and how to tease out a massive and bizarre conspiracy theory that on the page feels utterly real. Engaged by the colorful characters, smart language, central mystery, weird eroticism, and thick film theory and history, I couldn’t stop reading. I found myself as invested in Max Castle and going ever deeper into the larger mystery as the protagonist was. I absolutely loved the idea of movies being planted within movies within movies. This is the kind of novel where the ideas are as intriguing as the story. The characters are wonderfully colorful, from pure inventions like Zip Lipsky, Castle’s belligerent cameraman to a fictionalized Orson Welles and John Huston.

As to the quibbles, the protagonist is pretty passive, he’s really there to observe, which works well but took some getting used to. The novel also took some effort before I found myself investing in it; the writing and story comes off a bit pretentious at the start, and it takes some time to get going. Similarly, the ending didn’t really tie off in a satisfying way. With so much great stuff in between, though, yeah, these were just quibbles for me. This is a terrific novel. As a novel of ideas, it’s actually quite epic.

Recommended for readers with the kinds of brains that eat language, readers who love film, and readers who love a great sprawling mystery.

THE LAST STORM by Tim Lebbon

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Tim Lebbon’s THE LAST STORM depicts an America dying from climate change, focusing on a young woman who can either save or destroy it. I liked this one a lot, but as it’s Lebbon, that’s not surprising. He’s a craftsman with a knack for telling new and engaging apocalyptic stories.

It’s the future, and desertification and super storms caused by a warming planet are slowly destroying America. In this hostile land, Ash, a young woman, sets out to build a device she instinctively knows how to create and how to use as a gift passed down through her family. She is a rain maker.

Unfortunately, given the state of mind of the person calling down the rain, water isn’t the only thing that gets through. Creatures may come as well, hungry and monstrous. As she travels in search of the parts she needs for her apparatus, her parents, who well know the cost of rain making, pursue and try to save her and the world from herself. And a young man sets out on a similar path, hoping for revenge.

As with novels like THE SILENCE, Lebbon is a solid craftsman, matching likeable characters to a titillating apocalyptic premise with supreme stakes. The lore of the rain makers–what they can do, the apparatus they use, and so on–is great, the characters are all terrific, and the action is great. There is a satisfying blue-collar workmanship about how Lebbon writes; his stories read like workhorses. Probably my only criticism is the same as with THE SILENCE, which is the villain. In both, Lebbon decided to add a villain to enhance the dimensionality of the conflict, but as a reader I didn’t feel they were necessary. In THE LAST STORM, the parents who wants to save their daughter from herself are in themselves a terrific antagonist for Ash. And of course, the creature element in both stories makes a perfect villain.

Overall, I ended up liking this one a lot, which again wasn’t surprising given the author. Recommended if you’re looking for something new in apocalyptic fiction.

HIDE by Kiersten White

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In Kiersten White’s bestselling HIDE, a group of fourteen contestants are brought to an abandoned amusement park to play a game of hide and seek for a big cash prize, only to find themselves playing the game for their lives. This had a fun premise, was very competently written, and has strong themes. I didn’t fall in love, but I enjoyed it.

The novel begins with Mack, an orphan who is the sole survivor of a horrific family tragedy. Guilt-ridden and with few prospects, she accepts a strange invitation to take part in a hide-and-seek competition hosted by a sporting goods company. Along with thirteen other contestants, she is taken to an abandoned amusement park. The rules: During the day, hide and don’t get found.

The writing is solid; White makes the pages fly by. The premise is great. Mack doesn’t have a lot of depth as a character, defined almost entirely by her tragedy and desire to disappear, but she’s likeable enough, and we get to know all the contestants more or less equally. There are themes criticizing capitalism that along with the premise are reminiscent of SQUID GAME.

There were a few aspects that kept me from falling in love. One is, well, hide and seek isn’t very exciting. Probably the biggest aspect was the mystery is fairly easy to unravel and ends up being at least partially explained early on. White does a great job tying together a lot of different parts to create a history of the town and park (there are a lot of moments where I said, “ah, so this or that makes sense”), but because the reader knows a lot of this stuff before the characters do, it robs quite a bit of tension; I was engaged with the characters but not always the plot.

Overall, HIDE is simple fun like hide and seek itself, a light summer horror read elevated by some punchy social themes.