TALULLA RISING

Werewolves and vampires are again at each other’s throats.

This sequel to Duncan’s The Last Werewolf (2011) follows the life of Tallula Demetriou, one of Jake’s lovers.  Her mother had always told her she’d been a “Very (pause) Bad (pause) Girl,” and in this story she continues to follow her wicked ways, for after all, she’s a self-acknowledged “agent for the forces of darkness.” Early in the novel she discloses that she’s pregnant and being cared for by her friend Cloquet. For convenience, they’re keeping Kaitlyn, a young woman, in the basement for when “the Hunger” strikes, but on the night of a vampire attack, Kaitlyn finds herself freed in the confusion and Tallula gives birth to a son, quickly stolen and whisked away by the vampires. But wait...Tallula unexpectedly has a second child, a fraternal twin she names Zoë. In a bow to the plot of his previous novel, Duncan again resurrects the World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena, a group that is once more realizing that they’ll be putting themselves out of business if they do in fact track down and kill all the werewolves. Walker and Mikhail, a couple of rogue agents formerly with WOCOP, introduce Tallula and Cloquet to a mythic book of vampire lore that predicts the return of Remshi, a kind of vampire deity who’s expected to return and inaugurate an age of vampire ascendancy. The Age of Remshi seems prophetic indeed when rumors spread that vampires are now beginning to walk in daylight. Through Tallula and her ilk, Duncan reacquaints us with the extreme notion of the Hunger, which is inextricably linked to both sex and violence, libido and id.

Duncan leaves no doubt about his commitment to the intellectual and the bestial traditions of werewolves and vampires, for he sustains a tone both brainy and vicious.