THE LAST WEREWOLF by Glen Duncan

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.

There is a lot of hype surrounding this book. Many people are claiming that THE LAST WEREWOLF will do for werewolves with the TWILIGHT series did for vampires. Maybe.

At the beginning of the book, 200-year-old werewolf Jake receives a phone call from his closest human friend.  Another werewolf has been killed by a secret society whose mission is to wipe out all werewolves.  now, Jake is the last one.  He now knows he only has until the next full moon before the society comes for him.  And it doesn't bother him.  Jakes is suffering from profound depression and ennui.  He is ready to die.   His deep loneliness has taken its toll and he cannot find solace anywhere.  Jake begins to prepare for the end by getting his affairs in order and makes peace with what is going to happen. Until an unexpected event takes place that will change everything.

The werewolves in this book are not pretty. They don't turn into sleek lovely wolves.  They turn into ugly 9 ft hybrids whose only desire is to kill and eat humans. In this state, they feel no remorse or conscience of any kind. Their sole purpose is sex and killing. Werewolves can only procreate by biting a human.  If the human survives the attack, he or she becomes a werewolf. No new werewolves have been made in 100 years, however.  There seems to be some sort of virus preventing the transformation so that now Jake is the very last one.  The werewolf hunters are about to put themselves out of business.

What surprised me about this book was how well written it is.  Duncan is an excellent writer.  This may be the first really literary werewolf novel.  However, the book is also extremely explicit in sex, violence and language. This may be off-putting for some readers. It is somewhat amusing at first to read about a werewolf having an existential crisis but I thought it was a clever take on this genre and made the book more interesting.  The twist that comes halfway through the book was also clever although not quite as successful. The book became a little bit silly and the ending was very predictable.  Still, for fans of the horror genre, there is much to like here. Duncan's take on werewolves is definitely original.

BOTTOM LINE: Recommended with reservations.  I really appreciated Duncan's writing style. Very well written. He lost me sometimes with the explicit nature of the story and some of his plot choices.  I was really disappointed with the ending. Still, this book could revive the whole werewolf genre.  Not for the faint of heart!