Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. It’s worth noting that Magary even nails the ending with a Twilight Zone twist that would have Rod Serling nodding with approval.Īn eerie odyssey that would be right at home in the pages of the pulpy Warren comics.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. It all unfolds much like a video game does, so readers who don’t enter this weird world with a lot of preconceived notions should have a blast. But this path opened up and any time I leave it, something tries to kill me.” It seems that Ben is in an alternate dimension, one with two moons, death clouds, and time travel. Along the way, Ben is told his only solution is to find a demigodlike character called only “The Producer.” “I don’t even know if I’m still on Earth, or if I ate some kind of bad mushroom or something,” Ben tells his only companion, a talking crab named Crab. He’s left messages with his name on them that read, “Stay on the path, or you will die.” He’s kidnapped by a cannibal giantess named Fermona who forces him to fight a man to death in her arena, and that’s before she sics the dwarves on him. Ben is soon pursued by a pair of killers who wear the disembodied faces of skinned Rottweilers. For starting out with such a grounded setup, Magary isn’t shy about getting weird fast. We meet Ben as the suburban family man has left his family in Maryland and arrives at a hotel in rural Pennsylvania for a business meeting the next day.

Magary channeled postmodern horror-comedy in his first novel, The Postmortal, and here taps into a similar vein that posits an Everyman in a video game–like setting, with a Kafka-esque transformation thrown in for good measure.

The second, equally creepy novel from Deadspin columnist Magary ( Someone Could Get Hurt, 2013, etc.).

The hike drew