Scan barcode
plaidthrowcushions's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars, maybe even 4. Interesting read. Not your typical supernatural book!
arienne311's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
alykat_reads's review against another edition
slow-paced
0.5
Safe to say I will not be reading the sequel to this one. People calling this intelligent writing make me question humanity even more than I already am, which is a shit ton, by the way.
I didn't care for any of the characters and we got the point after the first 100 sex scenes (seriously, half of the book is Jacob having sex described only using the words cock, cunt, and anus). Yikes.
I didn't care for any of the characters and we got the point after the first 100 sex scenes (seriously, half of the book is Jacob having sex described only using the words cock, cunt, and anus). Yikes.
itskatehill's review against another edition
1.0
1.5. I am so glad to be done with this. I think this is the first one star I've given.
I listened to the audio book for this one, even though I do have a physical copy, and not even Robin Sachs's magical voice could save this.
This furthers my track record with being thoroughly underwhelmed or disappointed by books published in 2011. The day I find a favorite that came out that year will be truly special.
I remember buying this book yeeaarrsss ago, and it has sat on my bookshelf ever since. (Hobby of buying books and reading books are two entirely different things). And I'm glad it'll no longer be there.
Men shouldn't be allowed to write about women anymore. I am sick to death of male writers constantly having to mention breasts in every f*cking thing they write. It's obnoxious. I have never read the words 'breasts,' 'cunt,' and 'anus' so much in my life. I found myself constantly detecting the phantom smell of shit wafting through the air because of how often Duncan also likes to mention bowels and excrement.
The misogyny in this book is ripe. Duncan regularly mentions rape, and seems to have no issue with it. Later in the book Talullah is with one of her captors and has a vision of him quote "sodomising a young girl." Wtf. Oh yeah and while we're on that note, how about this: "I've always said women make the best agents. Deceit comes naturally to them. It's hardly surprising: If you were born with a little hole half the population could stick its dick into whenever it felt like it you'd learn deceit too. Biology is destiny. You can't blame the women." Excuse me...WHAT? There was another instance in which another character told Jake to relax because they all know "it's" your girl, the "it's" being Talullah. Like shut tfu. And of course Talullah is a powerful werewolf but what does she care about at the end? Makeup. That's right. Because of course she does. The way he treats women in general is deplorable.
If the misogynistic tone wasn't bad enough Duncan insists on using weird turns of phrase constantly throughout the book. He actually used 'autism' as a descriptor at one point.
This whole novel just had me constantly saying wtf. He kills his wife in cold blood because of course he does. I don't know whether Jake or Duncan or both are just horribly arrogant or what but I can say that I never gave a single fuck about Jake. If it's not bad enough that Talullah is trying to express vulnerability in a scene and Jake decides to slip a finger into her 'anus', there it is again that damned word Duncan loves so much, he has no redeeming qualities in my eyes.
Other random tidbits: Duncan randomly throws in a Lolita reference which...why? What is he inferring? Does he know what Lolita is about? Oh and his cock thickens or twitches all the fucking time. At seemingly nothing. Stop it.
And of course it ends with Talullah being pregnant. Once again, personally, I'm tired of reading about motherhood being the only reason for characters to keep on living. Why not just be a badass werewolf with your other badass werewolf husband? But then I guess it wouldn't be "The Last Werewolf." There are plenty of women in the world who do not want to be mothers. We have other motivations and reasons for living.
I am shocked to see that the next book, based around Talullah, is the best reviewed of this trilogy. I loathe to admit I'm actually interested in knowing what happens to her, because who wouldn't want to read about a female werewolf, the last one on earth supposedly, but I'm sure Duncan will waste no time in talking about anuses, rape, wombs that supposedly feel something (again, men need to stop writing about women and our anatomy they have no clue what they're saying we do not feel things in our fucking womb), makeup, and whatever else that makes Talullah a werewolf, but not the powerful kind, no, the lesser than kind because she's female, terrified and applying mascara. Eye roll.
I listened to the audio book for this one, even though I do have a physical copy, and not even Robin Sachs's magical voice could save this.
This furthers my track record with being thoroughly underwhelmed or disappointed by books published in 2011. The day I find a favorite that came out that year will be truly special.
I remember buying this book yeeaarrsss ago, and it has sat on my bookshelf ever since. (Hobby of buying books and reading books are two entirely different things). And I'm glad it'll no longer be there.
Men shouldn't be allowed to write about women anymore. I am sick to death of male writers constantly having to mention breasts in every f*cking thing they write. It's obnoxious. I have never read the words 'breasts,' 'cunt,' and 'anus' so much in my life. I found myself constantly detecting the phantom smell of shit wafting through the air because of how often Duncan also likes to mention bowels and excrement.
The misogyny in this book is ripe. Duncan regularly mentions rape, and seems to have no issue with it. Later in the book Talullah is with one of her captors and has a vision of him quote "sodomising a young girl." Wtf. Oh yeah and while we're on that note, how about this: "I've always said women make the best agents. Deceit comes naturally to them. It's hardly surprising: If you were born with a little hole half the population could stick its dick into whenever it felt like it you'd learn deceit too. Biology is destiny. You can't blame the women." Excuse me...WHAT? There was another instance in which another character told Jake to relax because they all know "it's" your girl, the "it's" being Talullah. Like shut tfu. And of course Talullah is a powerful werewolf but what does she care about at the end? Makeup. That's right. Because of course she does. The way he treats women in general is deplorable.
If the misogynistic tone wasn't bad enough Duncan insists on using weird turns of phrase constantly throughout the book. He actually used 'autism' as a descriptor at one point.
This whole novel just had me constantly saying wtf. He kills his wife in cold blood because of course he does. I don't know whether Jake or Duncan or both are just horribly arrogant or what but I can say that I never gave a single fuck about Jake. If it's not bad enough that Talullah is trying to express vulnerability in a scene and Jake decides to slip a finger into her 'anus', there it is again that damned word Duncan loves so much, he has no redeeming qualities in my eyes.
Other random tidbits: Duncan randomly throws in a Lolita reference which...why? What is he inferring? Does he know what Lolita is about? Oh and his cock thickens or twitches all the fucking time. At seemingly nothing. Stop it.
And of course it ends with Talullah being pregnant. Once again, personally, I'm tired of reading about motherhood being the only reason for characters to keep on living. Why not just be a badass werewolf with your other badass werewolf husband? But then I guess it wouldn't be "The Last Werewolf." There are plenty of women in the world who do not want to be mothers. We have other motivations and reasons for living.
I am shocked to see that the next book, based around Talullah, is the best reviewed of this trilogy. I loathe to admit I'm actually interested in knowing what happens to her, because who wouldn't want to read about a female werewolf, the last one on earth supposedly, but I'm sure Duncan will waste no time in talking about anuses, rape, wombs that supposedly feel something (again, men need to stop writing about women and our anatomy they have no clue what they're saying we do not feel things in our fucking womb), makeup, and whatever else that makes Talullah a werewolf, but not the powerful kind, no, the lesser than kind because she's female, terrified and applying mascara. Eye roll.
foiltheplot's review against another edition
4.0
Full Review at Foil the Plot
"Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend--mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century--a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way, deeply human." –Amazon.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Werewolves. They are stinky, vulgar and probably the most under-celebrated monster of the horror world. Our poor perception of these mythical beasts tends to ride in tandem with our unadulterated love for their sexier, glamorized, undead foes. Well, Glen Duncan is here to change all that. Meet Jake Marlowe—he's the hero (and I say that in the loosest sense of the word) at the center of Duncan's novel, The Last Werewolf. Jake is a 200 year old werewolf with a voracious libido. He loves good scotch, chain-smoking and philosophical musings. He's also the last of his kind. When a secret paranormal organization seeks to exterminate him, he struggles to figure out his place in the world. Does he continue on with this violent, lonely existence or attempt to find some peace by giving up his life? Written in journal-format, we're given an insider's peek at Jake's moral dilemmas, random musings and darkest secrets.
The Last Werewolf is not what you'd expect for a book about werewolves. Just take a look at the author and I think it becomes clearly evident we've exited the realm of the ordinary. No, seriously. Look at the photo on the back of the book and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Now you see why this story has so much potential. And yes, I'm saying that I do judge a book by its cover, so to speak. But I digress. Duncan's crafted an interesting dichotomy where the fiction sits somewhere in between horror and idealism. Make no mistake, folks, cultured as he is, our protagonist Jake isn't a very nice guy. He has rampant sex with hookers and murders people in the most gruesome of ways. That is where the “horror” comes in to play. I mean, sure—a werewolf's gotta do what a werewolf's gotta do—but Jake's so much more than that. We're taken inside the mind of a man who's at the end of his rope. It's a story about the internal struggle to come to terms with the monster inside and make sense of how to keep on living when everything and everyone he loves is stripped away. It puts ethics to the test by asking, how does the human deal with moral accountability when the wolf comes out to play? In other words, it delves into some serious psychological stuff.
My first initial impressions of this book weren't all that great, if I'm being honest. I found the writing to be a bit tedious and wordy. But once I got past the blatant “oh-woe-is-me” monotony of the first few chapters, it transformed (much like Jake, himself) into something much more poignant and exciting, something not unlike a James Bond film, actually. It gets gritty, dark and in places, kind of campy. There are secret organizations, beautiful women, guns, cars and cliffhangers galore. But that's also what keeps it from being too bogged down with intensity. That and amusing quips like “Reader, I ate him.” You can't help but root for a guy like that, even if he is a "bad one." Character development isn't Duncan's only strength though. He holds our suspension of disbelief and brings the magic of transformation to life in his detailed descriptions of Jake's physical and mental change. This is a real-world example of the old writer's adage “show, don’t tell,” one that I've really come to appreciate. We're given a clear sense of Jake's world, both pre and post infection. Yep. There's even a bit of sci-fi sprinkled in there. Duncan flips the script on what we know about vampires, werewolves and the supernatural world and I have to say, it's a refreshing change for the horror genre.
I know it sounds like there's a lot going on and there is, but it's good stuff if you can just push through it. If you're looking for “light reading” then this definitely isn't the book for you, but for those enjoy a great piece of literature full of substance, you've found a sure winner. Duncan has done a superb job of creating an interesting albeit morally ambiguous protagonist. Jake Marlowe is someone I'd love chat with over a fancy dinner; ya know, provided there’s not a full moon that night. He's cultured, wry, morose and deeply jaded, and despite all his tragic set-backs, we come to see that he's still a man underneath all that monster. So I leave you with this, dear Reader: “In the meantime there's the Curse to get through. Tonight's the full moon, and the Hunger doesn't care what you've been through or what your fears are or where you'll be next week. There's a comfort in it, the purity of its demand, its imperviousness to reason or remorse. The hunger, in its vicious simplicity, teaches you how to be a werewolf.” And wouldn't you know--that's something I've always wanted to know.
"Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend--mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century--a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way, deeply human." –Amazon.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Werewolves. They are stinky, vulgar and probably the most under-celebrated monster of the horror world. Our poor perception of these mythical beasts tends to ride in tandem with our unadulterated love for their sexier, glamorized, undead foes. Well, Glen Duncan is here to change all that. Meet Jake Marlowe—he's the hero (and I say that in the loosest sense of the word) at the center of Duncan's novel, The Last Werewolf. Jake is a 200 year old werewolf with a voracious libido. He loves good scotch, chain-smoking and philosophical musings. He's also the last of his kind. When a secret paranormal organization seeks to exterminate him, he struggles to figure out his place in the world. Does he continue on with this violent, lonely existence or attempt to find some peace by giving up his life? Written in journal-format, we're given an insider's peek at Jake's moral dilemmas, random musings and darkest secrets.
The Last Werewolf is not what you'd expect for a book about werewolves. Just take a look at the author and I think it becomes clearly evident we've exited the realm of the ordinary. No, seriously. Look at the photo on the back of the book and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Now you see why this story has so much potential. And yes, I'm saying that I do judge a book by its cover, so to speak. But I digress. Duncan's crafted an interesting dichotomy where the fiction sits somewhere in between horror and idealism. Make no mistake, folks, cultured as he is, our protagonist Jake isn't a very nice guy. He has rampant sex with hookers and murders people in the most gruesome of ways. That is where the “horror” comes in to play. I mean, sure—a werewolf's gotta do what a werewolf's gotta do—but Jake's so much more than that. We're taken inside the mind of a man who's at the end of his rope. It's a story about the internal struggle to come to terms with the monster inside and make sense of how to keep on living when everything and everyone he loves is stripped away. It puts ethics to the test by asking, how does the human deal with moral accountability when the wolf comes out to play? In other words, it delves into some serious psychological stuff.
My first initial impressions of this book weren't all that great, if I'm being honest. I found the writing to be a bit tedious and wordy. But once I got past the blatant “oh-woe-is-me” monotony of the first few chapters, it transformed (much like Jake, himself) into something much more poignant and exciting, something not unlike a James Bond film, actually. It gets gritty, dark and in places, kind of campy. There are secret organizations, beautiful women, guns, cars and cliffhangers galore. But that's also what keeps it from being too bogged down with intensity. That and amusing quips like “Reader, I ate him.” You can't help but root for a guy like that, even if he is a "bad one." Character development isn't Duncan's only strength though. He holds our suspension of disbelief and brings the magic of transformation to life in his detailed descriptions of Jake's physical and mental change. This is a real-world example of the old writer's adage “show, don’t tell,” one that I've really come to appreciate. We're given a clear sense of Jake's world, both pre and post infection. Yep. There's even a bit of sci-fi sprinkled in there. Duncan flips the script on what we know about vampires, werewolves and the supernatural world and I have to say, it's a refreshing change for the horror genre.
I know it sounds like there's a lot going on and there is, but it's good stuff if you can just push through it. If you're looking for “light reading” then this definitely isn't the book for you, but for those enjoy a great piece of literature full of substance, you've found a sure winner. Duncan has done a superb job of creating an interesting albeit morally ambiguous protagonist. Jake Marlowe is someone I'd love chat with over a fancy dinner; ya know, provided there’s not a full moon that night. He's cultured, wry, morose and deeply jaded, and despite all his tragic set-backs, we come to see that he's still a man underneath all that monster. So I leave you with this, dear Reader: “In the meantime there's the Curse to get through. Tonight's the full moon, and the Hunger doesn't care what you've been through or what your fears are or where you'll be next week. There's a comfort in it, the purity of its demand, its imperviousness to reason or remorse. The hunger, in its vicious simplicity, teaches you how to be a werewolf.” And wouldn't you know--that's something I've always wanted to know.
bookswithlukas's review against another edition
5.0
This book blew my mind.
This was a book that I had pretty low expectations for, I mean I knew nothing of the author, or the story going in, and was simply thinking this would be another in your urban fantasy type series. Oh how wrong I was. While yes, the books main subject matter is werewolves, this is a more literary take on the wolf myth, and a surprisingly touching story of loneliness.
The best thing about this book was it’s narration. It’s not often that a book can set up it’s characters and it’s overall tone within the first few pages but this is what this novel does. Our main character Jake, ‘the last werewolf’, has lived his life alone for the last 70 years and is finally beginning to ponder the idea of suicide. (In this world werewolves live for hundreds of years.) He has decided that he has nothing left to live for, and when a bounty is placed on his head by the son of one of his victims, he decides to accept it as fate and give himself up.
Then something happens. (which I won’t go into because, SPOILERS)
This was like a werewolf book written by Bret Easton Ellis, the narration was quite depressing and witty at the same time, with a sort of blunt unemotional coldness that was really evocative of Ellis’s work. I didn’t know who Glen Duncan was when I started reading this, but I will definitely be hunting out his other works now. I was actually unaware he had written ‘I, Lucifer’ which has been on my radar for quite some time now.
Another thing this novel did well was dealing with the aspect of werewolves killing people, and making something unsympathetic quite sympathetic in a way. In this world, werewolves MUST kill people during the night of the full moon to live and if they don’t they will die. This means that our main character has killed people over the years, he sees it as ‘you either give up and die, or you live with the pain and deal with it’, and weirdly, it works.
I could talk about what works in this novel for days, but I’m just going to leave it by saying that I highly recommend this book if anything I have said above has appealed to you. Overall, 5 freaking stars, oh yeah.
This was a book that I had pretty low expectations for, I mean I knew nothing of the author, or the story going in, and was simply thinking this would be another in your urban fantasy type series. Oh how wrong I was. While yes, the books main subject matter is werewolves, this is a more literary take on the wolf myth, and a surprisingly touching story of loneliness.
The best thing about this book was it’s narration. It’s not often that a book can set up it’s characters and it’s overall tone within the first few pages but this is what this novel does. Our main character Jake, ‘the last werewolf’, has lived his life alone for the last 70 years and is finally beginning to ponder the idea of suicide. (In this world werewolves live for hundreds of years.) He has decided that he has nothing left to live for, and when a bounty is placed on his head by the son of one of his victims, he decides to accept it as fate and give himself up.
Then something happens. (which I won’t go into because, SPOILERS)
This was like a werewolf book written by Bret Easton Ellis, the narration was quite depressing and witty at the same time, with a sort of blunt unemotional coldness that was really evocative of Ellis’s work. I didn’t know who Glen Duncan was when I started reading this, but I will definitely be hunting out his other works now. I was actually unaware he had written ‘I, Lucifer’ which has been on my radar for quite some time now.
Another thing this novel did well was dealing with the aspect of werewolves killing people, and making something unsympathetic quite sympathetic in a way. In this world, werewolves MUST kill people during the night of the full moon to live and if they don’t they will die. This means that our main character has killed people over the years, he sees it as ‘you either give up and die, or you live with the pain and deal with it’, and weirdly, it works.
I could talk about what works in this novel for days, but I’m just going to leave it by saying that I highly recommend this book if anything I have said above has appealed to you. Overall, 5 freaking stars, oh yeah.
ameschreiber's review against another edition
1.0
Bestial and crude
Rambling plot, too ambitious
Characters were dull
Rambling plot, too ambitious
Characters were dull
shonaningyo's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 out of 5 stars
I rated it that based on two things: One, my enjoyment of the book was marred and hurt by the extreme 'literariness' of the book. It was beautifully written, but the fact that I couldn't follow or completely understand what Glen Duncan was attempting to convey with the English language put me off.
The English language is actually pretty flawed, when you think of it. Many different languages have a word or term for a specific thing or type of person or a weird event; the English language rarely, if not never, has that sort of thing occuring. And words that are meant to describe complicated emotions are equally complicated in their definition and rarely find themselves to be strung along in such a way that an average reader could understand. That's what frustrates me about this book.
I could not decipher around 1/5th of what this book was trying to describe and 'paint' in terms of the inner musings of Jake, the protagonist. It was almost to the point where I thought about abandoning this book, because, though I am well-versed in the English language and can easily grasp things I am interested in, reading the ramblings of a werewolf who has lived a long life and has made it his mission to describe to the reader in flowery language his thoughts of everything around him with a sense of sardonic, detached nihilism is not my cup of tea.
It did read like an 18th century novel, though, which the back of my copy had expressly warned me it would be. I was not disappointed; it was more thoughtful than most books I've read, and since it was written during this time, I was lucky to find this to be a believable story and not the work of a pretentious writer who thinks they're hot shit because they write in this fashion in this current time period.
The story itself was rife with Jake's potent sexuality and extremely high libido, which all werewolf and vampire fans have suspected (correctly) they possess. I didn't bat an eye at his dropping the 'cunt' and 'cock' bombs so casually; with the narrator being a 400 year + werewolf, things such as modesty are just an aesthetic he couldn't care less about.
The action and progression of the book was written so that ... it's hard to explain. You had to read the book very closely or you'd miss something important... here's an excerpt as an example:
Glen Duncan's ideas and personal spin on the werewolf's senses, transformation, and the thoughts and sensations while in werewolf form and when about to transform are unique and interesting to read; it's as if these are text book thoughts and memories of a true-to-life werewolf, and I commend him for that.
I rated it that based on two things: One, my enjoyment of the book was marred and hurt by the extreme 'literariness' of the book. It was beautifully written, but the fact that I couldn't follow or completely understand what Glen Duncan was attempting to convey with the English language put me off.
The English language is actually pretty flawed, when you think of it. Many different languages have a word or term for a specific thing or type of person or a weird event; the English language rarely, if not never, has that sort of thing occuring. And words that are meant to describe complicated emotions are equally complicated in their definition and rarely find themselves to be strung along in such a way that an average reader could understand. That's what frustrates me about this book.
I could not decipher around 1/5th of what this book was trying to describe and 'paint' in terms of the inner musings of Jake, the protagonist. It was almost to the point where I thought about abandoning this book, because, though I am well-versed in the English language and can easily grasp things I am interested in, reading the ramblings of a werewolf who has lived a long life and has made it his mission to describe to the reader in flowery language his thoughts of everything around him with a sense of sardonic, detached nihilism is not my cup of tea.
It did read like an 18th century novel, though, which the back of my copy had expressly warned me it would be. I was not disappointed; it was more thoughtful than most books I've read, and since it was written during this time, I was lucky to find this to be a believable story and not the work of a pretentious writer who thinks they're hot shit because they write in this fashion in this current time period.
The story itself was rife with Jake's potent sexuality and extremely high libido, which all werewolf and vampire fans have suspected (correctly) they possess. I didn't bat an eye at his dropping the 'cunt' and 'cock' bombs so casually; with the narrator being a 400 year + werewolf, things such as modesty are just an aesthetic he couldn't care less about.
The action and progression of the book was written so that ... it's hard to explain. You had to read the book very closely or you'd miss something important... here's an excerpt as an example:
"...Jake in a reverie at a stately pace, yes, but with aura madly vigilant, trip-switched, motion-sensored, hair-triggered, so that when the figure launched itself from the trees' murk I was ludicrously ready.
It happened to me very fast, the reversal..."
Glen Duncan's ideas and personal spin on the werewolf's senses, transformation, and the thoughts and sensations while in werewolf form and when about to transform are unique and interesting to read; it's as if these are text book thoughts and memories of a true-to-life werewolf, and I commend him for that.