By Blood We Live

Glen Duncan has an infernal ability to grab you by the figurative genitals and not let go until bits of you are strewn throughout his novels; your heart, your throat, your entrails, and the sceptre of your passion in this instance (with apologies to Nabokov). With every one of his books, I get more and more fretful as the pages dwindle (I still read real books) because I want them to go on forever and I always despair that the endings will be somehow unsatisfactory. But I should know better, because they never are. If I had my way, and Duncan had 20,000 years, I'd be happy if this turned from trilogy to a tricentilogy or some other ridiculous neologism for a trilogy of more than three parts.Some books take aeons to read because we like to dwell on every delicious phrase and soak up the beauty of the writing. Other books drive us at 100 pages an hour through rollicking story and excitement. (Other stuff should just be set ablaze because it has neither of those things - Twilight and other twaddle, for instance). Duncan, however, combines eye-wateringly beautiful prose with a raging excitement and, somehow, all the beauty languidly seeps into your heart, while the story powers you forwards like a silver bullet from an AK-47. I use index cards as bookmarks and scribble asterisks in margins where pieces of prose make me gasp, noting the page number and gist on the index card; I filled both sides with this novel.Duncan is honest, startling, and brutal (sometimes), but tempered with love, compassion, and tenderness (always). His sheer bravery never fails to amaze me. He has a rare gift of clarity in his writing and observations, making you aware of things about yourself that you'd forgotten or didn't know in the first place. His writing, un-clichéd and vibrant, or self-deprecatory with a knowing wink, is unforgettable. Occasionally I find myself reading his words out of the corner of my eye as I almost don't want to bear the weight with which the next paragraph is inevitably laden. He is dark, but light always prevails. Sometimes, when reading Duncan, you feel like the world you know is being sucked away from you. How one man can understand so much about us, his readers, is astonishing. Apart from all this, I think he's quite good.Well, at least this is spoiler-free. In a nutshell (albeit a coconut shell), this is a wonderfully written, thrilling novel, full of rare delights and chewy morsels. It is a beautifully fitting end to a trilogy which was seen by some as Duncan selling out. I think he's proved that he has absolutely no talent for selling out, but instead has shown that he can write a thriller and a genre novel while retaining his remarkable observations and intuitions, presented so gorgeously with the finest prose.[As an aside, I'm English and live in England and if I hadn't ordered Talulla Rising and By Blood We Live from the lovely people at amazon.com, I would have a shelf containing a trilogy of two mismatched hardbacks and a third, different again, paperback. What a publicity mess. It's no wonder Duncan is frequently seen to be enraged by his treatment by the literary world. To not even publish this last of the trilogy as a hardback is a disgrace and Canongate (Duncan's UK publishers) ought to be ashamed of their treatment of him and their contempt for his readers. It seems his American publishers are far more aware of the stupefying talent they have in their libraries and I heartily thank Knopf for such tasteful and beautifully presented tomes. I hope Mr Duncan sends a werewolf after the eejits at Canongate who treated his novel and his readers so disdainfully.]Ta for reading. If you got this far, that is, without wanting to throw yourself in front of a ravening lycanthrope.

Both THE LAST WEREWOLF and TALULLA RISING were outstandingly original takes on the werewolf mythology that could also be considered by many to be bone fide "literature" by virtue of their vocabulary, complex interesting sentence structure and the way discussions of morality were woven deep into the matrix of the stories. BY BLOOD WE LIVE has the same literary qualities, but for some reason didn't catch me quite as strongly as the first two.Perhaps it is simply a case of the novelty having worn off. The wolf and the wulf are well known to us by now and "#$%@killeat" is not as shocking as it was the first few times. On the other hand, we do get an origin story for the werewolves that is interesting and novel and also the possibility of a cure to keep us hooked. WOCOP, having been dispensed with in the last novel is now replaced by a branch of the Catholic Church called "Militi Christi", also bent on destroying all werewolves. There is a sense of "been there, done that" to the group and their interactions with Talulla and friends.The narration switches constantly between Talulla, Remshi the 20,000 year old vampire, Justine, his newly turned "daughter" and Walker, but it is sort of hard to tell who is taking at times, because their voices are so similar.This sounds like an awful lot of criticism for a 4 star review but in the end I did like the novel and don't think that anyone who has read the first two will be able to (or should) stay away from this one. Despite its flaws, it is still a very good, well writtenand fast-paced read. While the ending provides closure to many or most of the issues raised in this entry, it also leaves open the possibility of another sequel, although I sort of have the feeling that Duncan might be done with werewolves and vampires, at least for a while.Recommended.J.M. Tepper

Duncan's mature writing is a brilliant display of keen psychological insight and absolute mastery of capturing ephemeral nuances of mood, thought, and feeling in language. This is actually very very difficult to do; like capturing an extremely fragile exotic butterfly in amber, which forces/invites you to closely observe and analyze minute details that are so fine/fleeting that they pass before you do the intellectual alchemy of crystallizing them in organized thought/language. I read a lot (a lot) and truly very few writers have that insight or ability. He does this flawlessly & precisely, both through his descriptions (concise, precise,& super-concentrated) and sentence structure which actually requires you to re-read his sentences & not just glide over them on auto-pilot . The fact that the plot is about vampires or werewolves or immigrants or terrorists is largely irrelevant (although people like me who enjoy dark mythology will also like the tropes he selects). He is really exploring the existence/relevance of ethics, morality, and survival psychology - the choices/psychological accommodations we all make to survive & succeed in the world, both in the material and the psychological senses. Many of his topics are dark (& sometimes difficult/unpleasant to read, like his visceral descriptions of child abuse) and while in his earlier works this felt (at least to me) gratuitous, in his later works it is intricately relevant & thought-provoking. The first in this trilogy (The Last Werewolf) is by far the best, but since he refuses to write as much as i would ideally like to read by him, I strongly recommend you read whatever flows from his mental pen.

I enjoyed it however it felt like two stories, the vampires and werewolves and neither were resolved properly. There is also a bit too much tortured navel gazing, but it's balanced out somewhat by the slaughtering of Christian fanatics. A good read

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy, so read this with a sense of high anticipation, and in many ways it didn't disappoint, leading up to a (fairly predictable) conclusion of sorts and leaving the door wide open for further developments. Duncan swaps between characters to relate each chapter from their own perspective, and that I like very much. The main characters are drawn well and you can certainly feel an empathy with both the werewolf (Tallulah) and the vampire (Remshi) but I felt that many of the supporting players were pretty one-dimensional. Many of the 'hide/chase/escape (or not)' sequences are repeated right out of the second book in the series, and I have to say that I found the constant sexual references unnecessary and in some instances even detracting from the narrative, but the violence (certainly not for the squeamish) is well handled with a leavening of wry humour to take the edge off what would otherwise be a relentless gore-fest.So, in summary; glad I read it, but could have been better and felt a bit rushed.

Everything I loved about the first two books in this trilogy is all still present and correct here. I love the way Glen Duncan describes things and uses the first person perspectives to weave this wonderfully epic werewolf/vampire tale. It's rare I read a book and am left digesting not just the characters and plot but the actual way language has been used too. Glen Duncan is a superb author. Werewolves and vampires may seem an overdone genre these days but this trilogy has plenty of it's own twists and style to mark it as what the other weaker efforts in the genre should aspire to. This book is so well written you could just pick it up and enjoy it as a stand alone novel but you would be doing yourself out of how great the whole trilogy is. The language is very grown up still so if the "c" word offends you won't like this. There is no fear in dealing with the more adult aspects of werewolf and vampire life here. Glen Duncan has given me an ending I think fits the gritty and up to date tone but also teased with the possibility that there could be more of the tale to tell. I really hope he writes more in this werewolf/vampire world that he has created. Superb!

I really like Glen Duncan's thoughtful prose and subject matter, and , whilst accepting that the werewolf series has been a tip of the hat to commercialism I really enjoyed the first two books.This one, however, left me cold. The characters were not real to me and had no differentiating features in terms of their tone of voice. I really didn't care for any of the characters, not even Talulah, who had been a strong voice in Book 2.The book felt disjointed, messy and overlong.A real disappointment from Duncan, who needs to go back to what he does best.Frankly, the other major problem I have with this is that I'd recently read the Wolves of Midwinter where the characters carried the book in true Anne Rice style and where you care for the werewolves and their coterie. Perhaps the comparison is unfair- I get what Duncan was trying to do with his visceral style- I just don't think this book delivered on a number of levels.

I am a huge fan of Glen Duncan's work so I came to The Last Werewolf trilogy already biased, and they don't disappoint. I re-read The Last Werewolf and Tallula Rising before embarking on By Blood We Live to remind myself of the story, and now I want to go back to the beginning and start all over again because they are such a joy to read. The plot twists and turns at a rapid pace with such intelligence it elevates what could have been a run of the mill horror story into something altogether more worthy of your time as a reader. Read them all and then if you haven't already, invest in I, Lucifer, another of Duncan's masterpieces.