Frankly, I found Tallula Rising a disappointing sequel to The Last Werewolf. I've read quite a bit of Glen Duncan and I would put this at the bottom of the pile. Like Duncan's other works, Tallula Rising is a fast-paced and gripping thriller with plenty of blood and gore, oodles of sex and a healthy dose of existential angst mixed in for good measure. However I feel it is badly missing the wit, intelligence and creativity of The Last Werewolf or indeed Weathercock (two far superior Duncan novels IMO). While Duncan tries hard to flesh out (pun intended!) Tallula's character, I spent much of the book wishing that Jake (the protagonist of TLW) would make a sudden re-appearance. Whereas Jake is exciting, interesting, unpredictable and mysterious, I found Tallula too humdrum and a bit too human. I get the sense that Jake is really Duncan's super-ego, his Frankenstein's monster, a macabre and hilarious extension of his personality. Tallula in contrast seems too fabricated, too imagined, too boring. Despite these shortcomings, I really enjoyed the first third of the book until Tallula and Cloquet leave Alaska. This section is genuinely suspenseful in places and displays touches of the brilliance that Duncan ably demonstrated on every page of TLW. In contrast, the last third of the book in particular is poor and it reads like Duncan's run out of ideas, having already poured all of his creative wizardry into Jake leaving nothing for Tallula. The scenes in the country cottage with her werewolf friends (towards the end of the book) are excruciatingly mundane and the interactions between the werewolves and their WOCOP pursuers appear clichéd and undeveloped. In summary, this is a book for diehard Duncan fans or werewolf genre obsessives. For everyone else, read The Last Werewolf and finish there. A great improvement to The Last Werewolf. Again though, I got more enjoyment out of the later half of the novel. I think I enjoyed this much more because there was a specific outcome to the plot: child must be saved and help is needed. I think that having a simple goal made it a much easier read to get through and it was much less vulgar in it's language.I really enjoyed scenes with Caleb, for some reason, and I think Walker has become a favourite character of mine (along with Cloquette and Trish.)I am more "excited" (if that's the correct term) to get to the end of the trilogy than I was when reading the first (atrocious) novel. Perhaps this is a series that's worth sticking through, if not for content then at least for subtle curiosity.Pick it up, give it a go and enjoy! ^.^Gén
What do You think about Talulla Rising (2012)?
Brutal, harsh, good. Reminiscent of Interview with a Vampire.
—aaaaaaaaa
Werewolf! Twin! Babies! How could I not like this.
—mike
