The Last Werewolf

Let me start off by saying that I've never read in the werewolf genre before, so I didn't know what to expect. It doesn't matter though because this book is special by all standards. It completely took me by surprise on all levels. I will even venture to say its a masterpiece! That's not to say it's not flawed, but the flaws are minimal compared to what the author managed to accomplish.First, and foremost, the prose is top-notch. Duncan is obviously well-read and knowledgeable about his craft. He can play with words in a way that will make you stop, pause, and re-read a sentence. There's some beautiful phrases in this book that I highlighted so I could come back and read them again. Personally, I believe the writing in this book rivals some of the literary classics that we're taught in school. That's not to say it's perfect, because it's not. In fact, Duncan's writing can be problematic at times. He has beautiful allegories, metaphors, and similes, but sometimes he overdoes it, and could be even accused of writing purple. But it's not often enough to distract, in my opinion. What is distracting, sometimes, is the complex and, frankly, confusing ways he tries to describe things. For example, take this sentence: "I remembered Harley's description of him: magnificently abstracted, carries with him an inscrutable scheme of things next to which your own feels paltry" . Yeah, what? I re-read that like 3 times and I'm still not sure I completely grasped what he was trying to convey. It doesn't occur too often, but often enough that is stands as a flaw. He can pull the reader in with his intelligent and eloquent prose, but then he also sometimes pushes the reader away with it as well. Still, I think he's a fantastic writer.Second, the protagonist, Jake, is everything I love in a protagonist- very flawed and not very sympathetic. But he evokes sympathy anyway because of his circumstance. He's a prick, really. And a narcissistic, chatty, and cynical prick at that. Slowly though, you start to realize that Jack is who he his because of the 'curse', and the length of time he's been on earth (200 years), mostly without love. That will make a prick out of anyone. Speaking of which, the death of his wife was written so well that I had to put the book down for a day. It was so expertly described and so visceral that I honestly pondered whether it was possible that Duncan himself could be a werewolf or know one. lol! I know how crazy that sounds, but that's the beauty of this book. Jake really does feels like a real werewolf. There's no sugar coating anything, and it's terribly dark, lonely, and bleak, but too fascinating to shut out.Another flaw though. Jake often goes off on tangents, which can be irritating. Sometimes I wondered if Duncan purposefully wrote him this way or if it was Duncan himself who was too chatty. By the end, I realize, it may be a bit of both. In fact, I think there's a lot of Duncan in Jake. I guess that's true of all protagonists, but here, it seems really obvious.Third, there's a twist in the middle of the book that's just awesome. Just when I had gotten used to Jake's morbid perspective, Duncan introduced a shocking surprise that took the book to another level. I won't reveal it here, but I will say that I love that Duncan turned Jake's perspective on its head, and shows the reader that even a 200 year old werewolf who has seen it all doesn't know everything.I will say that I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. It was very jarring for me. I was not expecting it to end the way it did, and I have mixed feelings about that. But I have a lot of feelings about this book. Duncan brought out some strong emotions in me and engaged me in a way that's rare. I haven't been this wrapped up in a story since 'A Song of Fire and Ice' series. So I will definitely be reading the follow up to this book, and whatever else Duncan has written. I'm a fan.flag

This is the first book I've ever read by Glen Duncan, and he's written eight books. Where have I been? I wonder. I have a lot of catching up to, because I loved this book. I love werewolf stories. There is something appealing about a character who is compelled to commit monstrous acts, but whose nature does not give him any choice in the matter. The werewolf is a tragic sort of beast, don't you think?Enter our werewolf protagonist, Jake Marlowe. Jake has just been given some bad news: as of a couple of nights ago, he is now the last werewolf on earth. This news is delivered apologetically by his long-time friend and human protector, Harley, a man dedicated to shielding Jake from "the Hunt," a very determined group of werewolf hunters. According to Harley, Grainer, the head werewolf hunter, will have the honor of killing Jake himself on the next full moon. A complicated game of cat and mouse ensues as Harley and Jake try to prevent this from happening.Two things set this book apart from other monster stories. First is Duncan's writing style. Glen Duncan is not just a writer. He's a writer's writer. Which means not only can he write a rip-roaring tale filled with action, danger, humor, sex, shady characters and redemption, but he writes it beautifully. Reading his prose is like sipping liquid chocolate while soaking in a hot bath under a starry sky in a mountain-top retreat. A starry sky with a full moon, of course. The book is full of gorgeous sentences, like this one, where Jake attempts to describe a girl he has just noticed: "Certainly not `beautiful' or `pretty' but Saloméishly appealing, visibly smudged with the permissive modern wisdoms." After only a few pages of this sort of writing, one almost doesn't care what's happening to the story.The second thing I loved about this story is the complete self-awareness of the monster. Unlike other werewolf stories where the human loses all sense of himself during the change and forgets what he's done afterwards, Jake knows exactly what he is and what he's doing as a werewolf. Becoming a wolf is a glorious, powerful, and erotic experience for Jake, whose first-person descriptions of how it feels to be in the wolf's skin give the reader a unique experience. We know from story and myth that werewolves have enhanced senses of sight and smell, but Jake's unique perspective turns these senses sensual. As Jake takes a life, the blood causes him to relive the victim's life, as though watching a film strip sped up. The experience of killing seems justified, and the reader falls in love with Jake the monster.If some of the story elements seem predictable, then Duncan can be congratulated on his ability to make the predictable seem fresh and exciting. I won't tell you what happens mid-way through the story. I can only say that Jake's tale becomes infinitely more interesting, and readers will tear through the book at a breakneck pace to find out what happens. What more can one ask of a great book?

Another reviewer remarked that this book is marred by 'excessive verbiage and gratuitous sex'. I agree. And yet...I did enjoy it. It took a while to get into because as others have remarked the author does seem determined to metaphorically club his readers over the head with his extensive vocabulary and although it's diverting at first to keep referring to the Kindle dictionary, it gets rather wearisome after a while. Even so, there was enough in the story to keep me reading and once it got into its stride I was charmed by the humour and intrigued enough to want to know how it ended. Jake was a sympathetic lead character- I couldn't help but be won over by a werewolf who found himself unable to kill a male model because he was 'too absurd'. Ellis was an amusing villain and I liked the way the vampires skated round the edges of the novel giving just enough to the plot to make it more interesting.Tallula was less interesting. She was the typical female lead character that's really only there for the male lead to worship and have sex with. I found the sex scenes crude and the language used to describe them schoolboyishly offensive. Neither I nor any of my female friends refer to our genitalia by the 'c' word - I'm sure some women do, but I suspect they're in the minority. It's not big and it's not clever, however much some men would like to believe otherwise. A pity because otherwise this was a fun book to read.

I bought this book in the middle of a tide of rave reviews from my fellow book bloggers - and happily, the hype turned out to be justified. It isn't the best book I've ever read, but it IS beautifully written, deftly plotted and extremely compelling.It is written in the form of an ongoing memoir belonging to Jake Marlowe, and begins at the moment he discovers another of his kind has just been killed, officially making him the last living werewolf on earth. Throughout his life the Hunt has been gradually chasing them down, one by one, and now, 200 years old, lonely and sick of the endless running and monthly bloodbath, Jake is ready to give up and go willingly. But before the next full moon arrives, when he plans to walk into his own death at the hands of the Hunt's top agents, everything is turned upside down. His friend is murdered, devious supernatural schemes start to surface, and he falls in love for the first time in his werewolf life. Suddenly he has something to live for - and he'll do anything to hold onto it. After all, life is all there is...If you pick this book up looking for teen romance and high-school thrills, you'll be sorely disappointed. This is literary fiction all the way - and definitely for the adult reader! It's bloody, provocative and downright filthy, yet it's written in the most exquisite, poetic language that flows like water. The only thing I didn't like was the repeated use of the 'c' word, not because of any moral objection, but because in sexual references it just sounds so horrible. A male-writer thing, perhaps. That aside, this is a fantastic, gripping read that expertly walks the fine line between gritty and gorgeous to build a novel that really sets itself apart from the supernatural pack (*groans*). Highly recommended.

I have never known Canongate Books to produce a bad book, and Glen Duncan's "The Last Werewolf" is no exception. This is a really smart, intelligent, witty, literary version of the werewolf story and I loved it. Jake Marlowe, The Last Werewolf of the title, is marvellously world-weary and just killing time until someone gets him with the silver bullet, until he discovers that he's not quite so alone as he first thought and suddenly has a reason for living. The action is fast-paced and exciting, with just the right amount of gore for the genre, and some really high quality writing. What I loved most about this book was the literariness of it. Duncan makes a really effective comparison between the craft of writing and the craft of "Wulf" finding "the where and the when and the who of the kill"; he consciously cites literary icon Susan Sontag's hypothesis that "something else is always going on" simultaneously with the main narrative voice and asks "the hell literature faces every day. It's a wonder anyone writes.)" and calls on other literary traditions (gently evoking Jane Eyre with his, "Reader, I ate him.") He pokes fun at his reader, asking if they're paying attention, hinting at current literary trends for a dark ending and accusing them of missing cues (You who consider yourself so well-read) (I may have misquoted that - I couldn't find the actual quote in the book, sorry). Jake as the narrator is refreshingly cynical, by turns offensive and lyrical, always having a neat turn of phrase to hand, crude and very well-read. I was less enamoured of the latter character of Tallula. She spoke too much in Jake's voice. In some parts I was left wondering if the narrative had flipped back to him again. I also don't like sequels - the last part of my Kindle edition was a preview of "Tallula Rising". I've got to say it put me off a bit - but that's just me. The Last Werewolf, in my opinion, should have been exactly that.Final point - I loved the way Jake's last stand was in Beddgelert with a 4x4 driver called Llewellyn - practically the only thing Beddgelert is famous for is the grave of a large dog (Prince Llewellyn's if I'm not much mistaken). It was a neat way to end the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from an author I had never heard of before. The book was only a couple of £ on the Kindle so I couldn't go far wrong.The story is set in almost diary form (though not in the typical day-by-day format, rather more like memoirs) and the author tells us how he became a werewolf, his fight for survival from the corrupt WOCOP, a government organisation that tracks down werewolves throughout the world in order to destroy them. He is the last werewolf in the world and now he is being hunted. There are vampires too which this organisation should also be hunting down but because many vampires are extremely rich they bribe the government into ignoring them. Werewolves and vampires in this book despise each other and generally have nothing to do with each other, but now something has changed; the vampires are hunting down the werewolves too but not to kill them; they have discovered that if a vampire is bitten by a werewolf they then are able to tolerate sunlight. Also it would seem that nobody is surviving werewolf bits anymore so our last werewolf is not even able to pass the "curse" on.A great book with a gripping and exciting story with plenty of action, and a lot of sex (though for you dirty-minded people; cool yourselves down - there are no full blown descriptions! :-P )This is the first book in a trilogy; the second is out ( Talulla Rising ) but I'm not sure about the 3rd.Note on the Kindle version; great! No proplems at all. Talulla Rising

I have always tended to be more attracted towards vampire literature but I've become increasingly disillusioned with how sanitised the novels have become and so I thought I would give this a go. It doesn't disappoint!Jake thinks he is the last werewolf and is being hunted by an organisation whose sole aim is to track him down. This doesn't really bother Jake, who after 200 years is tired of running and tired of living; that is until something happens that reawakens his desire and gives his life a purpose. He must then dodge the people trying to kill him, which amongst others, includes a bunch of vampires.The novel includes plenty of sex and violence as well as, almost philosophical, musings on the nature of good and evil. Certainly it's not one for the squeamish, the hunting and killing of human prey is described in graphic detail! Duncan also revels in language and there were times when I thought his deliberate use of complicated vocabulary, to describe the most basic things, could alienate some readers.The only irritations for me (and the reason it gets four stars instead of five) are his constant and relentless use of the phrase; `If this was a film..' blah, blah,blah and the fact that by page 100 I was keeping track of how many times he referred to Jake's erections (approximately 18 times from page 100 to the end of the book, in scenes that aren't technically sex scenes.) I understand that werewolves are primal creatures but enough already!That said, I really enjoyed this book and am eager to start the next book in the trilogy.