The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Simile – noun – a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is a rose”.

Lots and lots of similes – nouns – distracting and annoying, as in “similes are like mosquitoes because they buzz around you and you want them to go away”.

OK – there is my stubborn opinion and prejudice again. I can't help it. When something annoys me, well, it just annoys me. It just makes me crazy. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan was a little, no, a lot like that – too many similes amongst other things.

I know, I watch the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club too, and most of them enjoyed it and found it intellectually stimulating. I agreed with them for the first few pages. Interesting character in Jacob Marlowe and great name for a sophisticated, intelligent werewolf. I assumed he was handsome, well dressed, well read and clever. He has an offsider who is willing to go to vast lengths to make sure he survives, a vampire clan after him, a man who has enlisted an army to kill all occult phenomena especially werewolves, and a Lone Rangerette who wants to save him for her own villainous reasons. There is someone else who enters late in the piece but we'll keep that a secret just in case you want to give this one a go. Whatever else I am, I am not a spoiler of surprises – I know how to keep my mouth shut.

As I was saying, in the beginning I thought this was going to be a great read. Full of Kant-like philosophies on the meaning and meaninglessness of life right alongside bodice ripping sex scenes and descriptions of wolf-eating-human scenes. Not for the squeamish. But pretty soon I felt like I didn't know what I was reading. Is this a dime-store paperback werewolf story or a treatise on the value of life? The dichotomy was too much for this supernatural loving reader. Nope, didn't cut it.

Now, I have been happy with Sookie Stackhouse silly vamp stories (Charlaine Harris needs to give it up though because now they are just getting stupid) or the deeper Sergei Lukyanenko vampire novels. I have also loved some philosophical novels – Rand, Orwell, Woolf (no pun intended), Tolstoy – but Duncan gets the two confused and by mid book you can feel it. Which is it going to be? Unfortunately neither ends up working very well. The flow is not there. One minute you are in the adventure, sex and murder and the next you are reading a diatribe (with lots of similes) on the longing and disappointment and the regrets of a life long lived.

Werewolves live two lives – one as a savage beast and one as an ordinary walking-around person. Duncan writes as if he has two persona as well but I didn't know which one to believe and unfortunately neither came across as very authentic. This book was written to be a movie script right from the start. In fact there was even some music written to read the novel by - http://www.antiquebeat.co.uk/thelastwerewolf/ - and it's been done before so many times. The unhappy outsider who...no, I have to stop there or I'll give it away. Just think Blade meets Kate Beckinsale. Even the last chapter feels like a Sarah Connor voice over.