: The Last Werewolf
Author: Glen Duncan
I really wanted to like this and it seems like the kind of book I would like. It’s not all action but a lot of existential angst, which should have made things deep and thought-provoking. Unfortunately the novel is sluggishly paced and tediously boring, and without context, the philosophizing is just random noise.
For example, our main character’s a 200-year-old werewolf, the last of his kind. He moans and groans about how he killed his wife (I guess we’re supposed to sympathize that he’s such a monster) but since we only know about that event via sketchy flashbacks, there’s zero emotional impact. Eventually I ceased caring about anything.
There is a bit of a plot, eventually, as our hero is being preserved for something by people he doesn’t know for reasons he doesn’t understand, but the payoff of that mystery isn’t that great and it’s not worth hundreds of pages getting there. The very end of the book is actually not bad, with a tiny twist or two and something interesting happening, but by that point my disillusionment with the novel was a foregone conclusion.
There are some interesting moments and a few intriguing ideas, but this is definitely not a book for all tastes. I imagine it’s a love-it-or-hate kind of thing and I didn’t love it.
Topic: [/book] |
