Talulla Rising

By: Glen Duncan

Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins

When I change I change fast. The moon drags the whatever-it-is up from the earth, and it goes through me with crazy wriggling impatience.... I’m twisted, torn, churned, throttled - then rushed through a blind chicane into ludicrous power.... A heel settles. A last canine hurries through. A shoulder blade pops. The woman is a werewolf.

The woman is Talulla Demetriou. She’s grieving for her werewolf lover, Jake, whose violent death has left her alone with her own sublime monstrousness. On the run, pursued by the hunters of WOCOP (World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena), she must find a place to give birth to Jake’s child in secret.

The birth, under a full moon at a remote Alaska lodge, leaves Talulla ravaged, but with her infant son in her arms she believes the worst is over - until the windows crash in, and she discovers that the worst has only just begun....

What follows throws Talulla into a race against time to save both herself and her child as she faces down the new, psychotic leader of WOCOP, a cabal of blood-drinking religious fanatics, and (rumor has it) the oldest living vampire. Harnessing the same audacious imagination and dark humor, the same depths of horror and sympathy, the same full-tilt narrative energy with which he crafted his acclaimed novel The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan now gives us a heroine like no other, the definitive 21st-century female of the species.

©2012 Greg Duncan (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“The horror genre at its best - wildly imaginative, written with wit and intelligence, wickedly entertaining.” (The Times [UK])

“Irresistible... As with The Last Werewolf, Duncan writes with caustic edge and pop-culturally relevant humor... His gorgeous prose makes these books more than just werewolf-genre flashes in the proverbial pan.” (Dallas Morning News)

“The arch relationship Duncan establishes with his readers - along with his scathingly intelligent psychological insights and flat-out killer writing, his companionably high-mannered narrative voice, and his mad plot chops - makes Talulla Rising a high-calorie blast... Duncan delivers with intelligent humanity a monster we want to track and befriend, even knowing she would happily eat us alive.” (Heidi Julavits, New York Times Book Review)

Every bit as good as “The Last Werewolf”

If you can’t take gore-splashed horror; don’t go here.
If you can, and if you appreciate it delivered in stylistic prose and with a large of psychological self-examination, then go for it. “Talulla Rising” is every bit as good as “The Last Werewolf”.

No fairy tale monsters here

What made the experience of listening to Talulla Rising the most enjoyable?

Action and character development

Who was your favorite character and why?

Talulla herself, who grows and develops embracing her personal faults and strengths as she continues forward

What three words best describe Penelope Rawlins’s voice?

not my favorite

Who was the most memorable character of Talulla Rising and why?

Mystery surrounding Marco pricks at the memory

Any additional comments?

How could the monsters be portrayed so clearly without the language, personal desires and actions that some of the previous listeners complain of? We are listening to philosophic ruminations of a monster, after all. This novel is not represented as a fairy tale or a story to make us imagine ourselves transformed. I certainly cringed at some passages but enjoyed the story too much to be sidetracked. I was more disappointed with the faulty pronunciation of certain words. I got used to the reader and have no problem dealing with issues of accents and such when the story is superior.

Literary force applied judiciously, and shockingly

I've listened to The Last Werewolf (the prior book in this series) more than once - the prose is often of a quality that invites reflection, like one may indulge in a particularly fine food.

Talulla Rising is similar, though with a main character who is, naturally since she's much younger, is somewhat less refined in speech and depth of experience - but also less bogged down by the past, and more ruled by the immediacy of her situation. Not yet weighed down by a lifetime or two worth of being a monster, she's, as of yet, free to experience life with new eyes.

It does lead to a different tone at times - it is naturally far less cynical than the prior novel, as bitterness has not had the time to develop. The inevitability of bad things is still present, as it was in the first - and the daunting nature of the world is still there, naturally. Simply expect young Talulla, along with most of the other characters, to grapple without the benefits or burdens of experience alike.

Some may struggle with the vulgarity of the subject matter itself, but it's ultimately delivered with very finely crafted words - just don't expect to be shielded from the nature of the subject matter.

In fact, that someone capable of this sort of verbal depth, combined with a lack of shyness, applies himself to matters often glossed over and given a sparkly, superficial Twilight sort of way, it's utterly enthralling. Some will come looking for junk food, which goes down easy, gives a sugary thrill, feeds a sort of unthinking addiction, so forth. This book, like it's predecessor, feeds more particular and complex tastes - some will love it, and others will reject it outright. But that's where this particular series will inevitably reside - a sharp flavor, which will reward those who can appreciate it.

A few final notes -

The voice actor's style grew on me in time, though the accent for Talulla herself can be a little uneven. A learned Queens style, which only becomes very evident in a few words, a little too evident. Forgivable, though, just overly noticeable.

It's really delightful to have multiple strong female leads - and it's touched on, but not overstressed.

There are certain avenues I really crave to hear more of - but I think I'll need to wait for the next book. The possibilities are clearly there for it, by the end.

Werewolves Rising

Would you consider the audio edition of Talulla Rising to be better than the print version?

Hard question, but yes, I think so.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Tululla, of course, followed by Madeline and then Cloquet

What does Penelope Rawlins bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Her young, vibrant voice makes her more of a contrast than I thought when I read the book. At first I was a bit put off by her voice, but after a while I came to appreciate the contrast of her voice to her ominous potential as a werewolf.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

not sure, but it would be best not to make this a film until the prequel was made.

Any additional comments?

I look forward to a sequel of this book, the adventures of Zoey and Lorcan.

Oh I'm So Disappointed!

I really (pause) really (pause) wanted to like this book. I absolutely adored "The Last Werewolf". Everything I loved in that book is absent in this one. The tale is told from the perspective of an oversexed, barely adult narrator. She whines about pretty much everything. She is annoyingly introspective, without much experience to look back on.

I didn't much enjoy Penelope Rawlins performance - though I don't think the author gave her much to work with. There is nothing like the lyrical prose of the first book. I trudged on to the end of this work, hoping against hope that something interesting would emerge. Alas, I did not uncover any gems.

This, my friends, is a dud.

I should have just read the first book.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would not recommend this book. The story in this book was not as good as the first book. Just too much randomness and happy accidents. And one of the more interesting story points carried over from the first book (the one that involves a certain old book) was just skimmed over and never really talked about in detail till the very last of the book and even then there was no explanation. My other big problem with it was the narrator. Penelope Rawlins does a fine job reading and the different voices she can come up with are great, except for the voice of the main character. The main character is American and although I do not know for sure I would guess that Penelope is Australian. Americans do not use soft R's nor do they say the word skeletal as ske-ly-tle. This went on through out the book in more ways than I could ever begin to list here and really started to drive me crazy about half way in. It actually got to the point that I would turn the book on just hear how the narrator will mispronounce words.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Blah, not a big deal.

Would you be willing to try another one of Penelope Rawlins’s performances?

Probably not, unless she is not trying to perform with an American accent.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

I am pretty sure I already have. (Underworld.....)

A Must Read for the Wolf-fan!!!

What did you love best about Talulla Rising?

After reading The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan and having a hard time getting into the story at first, I was a little hesitant to pick this one up. BOY AM I GLAD I DID!!!

I have always loved werewolf stories, but of late, they seem to only be in romance novel disguised at horror or silly teenage heart-throb tales with shiny vampires... Though there is plenty of romance, this is not a PG-13 tale of teenage longing. It is a visceral, violent adult story with true horror, lust, sex and gore.

What did you like best about this story?

Following the main character's (Talulla) development as she expands her acceptance of what and who she is, while reluctantly embracing motherhood is a fascinating joyride into a beloved genre that is often abused and given little depth. Instead of lip-service, Duncan dives headlong into the tough questions of morality, love, and parental torment as he bring the raw being of his characters to the reader in full spectrum. His unblinking glimpses their reality are sometimes unpleasant, unclean and unrelenting but by the end you find your appetite ready for more...

Worst. Narration. Ever.

This is a sequel to The Last Werewolf, which was a great book with a great narrator. Tallula Rising is a pretty good book with a terrible narrator, which ruined the book for me. I assume Penelope Rawlins is a good narrator for particular roles, but this was NOT one of them. The third book is due out in 2014 and I'm begging Glen Duncan: PLEASE do not use this voice actor again!
Let me elaborate. The main character of this book is a 30-something cynical woman from Brooklyn who becomes a werewolf. The narrator of the audiobook sounds like a 20-year-old girl and has a neutral, middle-East Coast patois, but randomly slips into a Bostonian/Bronx accent with words like "orchard" (awwchud) and "pattern" (pat'n). If the whole narration was done as a New Yorker, she might have pulled it off, but it's so arbitrary that it sounds like an amateur mistake and gets really annoying by the halfway mark.
More annoying is the frequent and bizarre mispronunciation of common words. How can a professional voice actor repeatedly mispronounce "capillary" and "Haitian"? This happened so often that I found myself correcting her out loud, in my car, my house and on the street. By Chapter 20, I was shouting. People stared.
Even so, I have to admit that I really enjoyed the storyline. A warning: the author is rather obsessed with the word "c*nt", and there's a lot of gore (it IS about werewolves), but as long as that doesn't bother you, it's a great storyline. If I had read the traditional, paper book, it would have gotten 4.5 stars.

Why did we change the voice of Talulla?

Story was good. very good, but the voice actresses voice was off some how. too sweaky.

Great Werewolf Read

I liked this book a lot!! I Was nearly put off from purchasing because after reading the first in the series and hearing Robin Sachs - is there any other narrator??!!! Of course it had to be a female narrator and once I got past this is turned out to be a great read. A little more gore - or maybe the gore was harder to take from a female wolf - but really great nonetheless!