Book #54: The Last Werewolf
The Last Werewolf was a rollicking good time. I think the people who had a problem with this book couldn't (or wouldn't) take it for what it is, and that does it a disservice.
The narrator is Jake Marlowe, a Brit who happens to be the last werewolf. He is 200 years old and he is tired of living in a way only someone who used to be human and now isn't can be. But this is no overblown Anne Rice style soliloquy. Jake is smart, sarcastic, bitter, and arrogant as fuck. He's also an animal, in more than one sense. He has lived with the eating, the hunting, the Hunger, as he calls it, for long enough without committing suicide that he has found a wry sense of acceptance that helps us accept him. He's also intensely sexual, which is also a side effect of the curse. It's been a long time since I've encountered a novel in which words like "cunt" and "cock" are used both so freely and so appropriately.
Everyone is out to get Jake - the vampires, a group of humans bent on exterminating supernatural creatures, and all kinds of other surprise enemies as well. All he wants is to stand still and let someone take him out, but the world finds ways to draw him back in. The first one is a minor but interesting revelation, but the second is a bombshell, though honestly not too much of a surprise per se to the reader.
I appreciated how unique and real Jake's voice was. It is what carries a slightly over-the-top book like this and prevents it from becoming ridiculous.
The narrator is Jake Marlowe, a Brit who happens to be the last werewolf. He is 200 years old and he is tired of living in a way only someone who used to be human and now isn't can be. But this is no overblown Anne Rice style soliloquy. Jake is smart, sarcastic, bitter, and arrogant as fuck. He's also an animal, in more than one sense. He has lived with the eating, the hunting, the Hunger, as he calls it, for long enough without committing suicide that he has found a wry sense of acceptance that helps us accept him. He's also intensely sexual, which is also a side effect of the curse. It's been a long time since I've encountered a novel in which words like "cunt" and "cock" are used both so freely and so appropriately.
Everyone is out to get Jake - the vampires, a group of humans bent on exterminating supernatural creatures, and all kinds of other surprise enemies as well. All he wants is to stand still and let someone take him out, but the world finds ways to draw him back in. The first one is a minor but interesting revelation, but the second is a bombshell, though honestly not too much of a surprise per se to the reader.
I appreciated how unique and real Jake's voice was. It is what carries a slightly over-the-top book like this and prevents it from becoming ridiculous.