Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of By Blood We Live by Glen Duncan

By Blood We Live by Glen Duncan

By Blood We Live

by Glen Duncan

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Feb 2014, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

First Glen Duncan gave us his monstrously thrilling, genre-reinventing The Last Werewolf: the tale of Jake, a werewolf with a profoundly human heart, considering bringing to an end the timeless legend of his kind. Then Talulla Rising: Jake's werewolf lover, mother to newborn twins, on the run from those who want her destroyed. And now By Blood We Live: a stunningly erotic love story that gives us the final battle for survival between werewolves and vampires, and one last searing - and brilliantly ironic - look at what it means to be, or not to be, human.

The story opens: Talulla has settled into an uneasy equilibrium. With her twins safely at her side, and the devotion of her lover, Walker, she has what appears to be a normal family life - except for their monthly transformation into werewolves hungry for human flesh. But even this hard-won, tenuous peace is undermined for Talulla by nagging thoughts of Remshi, the twenty-thousand-year-old vampire who haunts her dreams. For his part, Remshi can't escape the feeling that he knows Talulla from many (many, many) years before.

Still, they have their distractions: Talulla is being pursued by a fanatical, Vatican-based Christian cult, and Remshi is following a trail of reckless feedings by a newly turned vampire bent on revenge. But, as the novel unfolds, Talulla and Remshi are inexorably drawn to each other - and toward the moment when an ancient prophecy may finally come to pass.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Duncan's style is animated, and he recounts the imperatives of vampire and werewolf brutality and sexual aggressiveness with particular gusto." - Kirkus

"Duncan's a gorgeous, daring writer even those horrified of horror can love." - Library Journal

"Fans of the first two books who have become attached to Tallula and her kin will be satisfied, but others may wonder what the fuss is all about." - Publishers Weekly

This information about By Blood We Live was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Glen Duncan Author Biography

Photo: Kim Teasdale

Glen Duncan was born in Bolton, Lancashire (UK) in 1965 to an Angli-Indian family. He studied philosophy and literature at Lancaster University. After working as a bookseller for some years, he traveled around America and India by train, before becoming a writer.

His first novel, Hope, was published in 1997, and has been followed by five further novels: Love Remains (2000); I, Lucifer (2002), shortlisted for the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Weathercock (2003); Death of an Ordinary Man (2004); and The Bloodstone Papers (2006), set in India in 1946, and A Day and a Night and a Day (2009), The Last Werewolf (2011), Talulla Rising (2012), By Blood We Live (2014).

Glen Duncan was named by The Times Literary Supplement as one of Britain's 'twenty best young novelists'. He lives in ...

... Full Biography
Author Interview

Other books by Glen Duncan at BookBrowse
  • The Last Werewolf jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.