It’s as if Brooks wanted to recreate the magic of “World War Z” but on a much smaller scale, with a much smaller pool of interviewees. Basically Mount Rainier erupts, stranding a group of unlikely yuppie caricatures (and one even more unlikely Eastern European siege survivor) in a remote wooded location. The eruption also unbalances the local ecosystem, which brings a group of violent sasquatch types into conflict with the bumbling humans. The majority of this book is directly quoted from the diary of one of the stranded individuals, which makes the book weak mostly because she is incredibly weak, and also eye-rollingly naive. That said, Brooks is a more than competent writer and the prose was easy enough that I still had a pretty good time.
Tag: author-max brooks
Minecraft: The Island, by Max Brooks
This felt like it was written for children (and my kids loved it!) – really simplistic and repetitive narration, very slapstick action. I didn’t really enjoy the tone or the framing of the book, but I did like the ending which tied it together well, and I also liked the wry acceptance of how things in the Minecraft world don’t quite jibe with normal physics.