Talulla Rising (The Last Werewolf 2) (The Last Werewolf Trilogy, #2)

by Glen Duncan

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Glen Duncan’s back with the follow up to the brilliant 2011 novel The Last Werewolf. I’ve been looking forward to see how the story continues as I personally felt the last novel left off with a bit of a cliff-hanger. Talulla Rising continues the story, now from the point of view of Talulla Demetriou; an exciting strong female protagonist, whom I loved simply because she is both kick-ass and full of inner torment. The novel kicks off with a brief look back at Talulla’s life before being turned, a slightly too small of a glimpse but enough to give you an idea of the type of woman she was before becoming a werewolf.

Like the last novel, Talulla Rising continues the memoir style; not only is there a focus on the inner struggle between the human and wolf side but now Talulla has her mother’s side thrown into the mix. WOCOP (World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena) have taken Talulla’s newly born son and she is racing to save him before he is used in a horrible blood-drinking ritual. While she is trying to get her son back she is still getting hunted by WOCOP (as Glen Duncan puts it in the book, think CIA meets Keystone Kops meets Spanish Inquisition) as well. As the story progresses you get a sense of just how twisted this organisation.

Talulla Rising is a fast paced, exciting novel; dark, gritty and over sexed. I really love how Glen Dunan takes a popular genre that has been selling well and makes it literary and enjoyable to read again. If the constant excitement of this novel doesn’t keep you going then the dark humour throughout this book will. From the slight pokes of other authors in literature to Talualla remembering that her first human tasted like onions and whiskey; the humour in this book was pleasing. But when it comes done to it, in the end, the thing I loved the most about this book and the one that come before this, is the internal struggle; there is something about that that always pleases me. I’m looking forward to seeing how Glen Duncan wraps up this trilogy when he releases By Blood We Live; hopefully next year.