What's the best thing about judging the Forward prizes? Free books? Reassessing a poet you hadn't paid enough attention to? Those are good, but the best might be the poems, and odd lines, that stick in your head. They may be from books that didn't even make the shortlist, but they've still made a mark – Dannie Abse's line "Men become mortal when their fathers die" from his collection Speak, Old Parrot, isn't going to leave me any time soon.

The phenomenal Dr Abse still prescribes verbal wit and human warmth, radiant memory and blazing perception, as remedies against a time of life when "all pavements slope uphill". This veteran flyer can still sing and swoop.

Dannie Abse's line "Men become mortal when their fathers die" from his collection Speak, Old Parrot, isn't going to leave me any time soon.

It’s a book packed with both feeling and swagger, a tumbling energy that belies the closing farewell.

There is much that could be said about this inspiring collection, and all of it positive. It should be bought, read and re-read.

Abse is still writing – and reading – at his mesmerizing best

Speak, Old Parrot shows that if art and humour will both be overtaken by death, they refuse to yield ground without a struggle. What will survive the endless nothingness is wit and love.

[I]n Rice's hands, The Wolf Gift evolves from a fantastical romp into an engrossing thriller. . .

Wilde at his height, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (like The Wolf Gift, a morality tale about transformation), is Rice’s true precursor. He preferred paradox to uncomplicated alternatives, and was most at home in the dark light of ghost stories, church shadows and fairy tales. This is the energy of The Wolf Gift. It is wit-filled, languid and vibrant, brainy and snarling. It will leave open-minded readers howling for more.

A superior thriller... the mix of ancient and modern, familiar and inventive, and the fact that Rice easily drops in elements that other people would save for a quick sequel – all this proves there is MORE in this book. And ultimately that means more satisfaction.

I didn't want to put it down for a second.

The Wolf Gift is pure Anne Rice. It is dark. It is romantic. It is fast-paced and gripping. It is engaging and perhaps most importantly, it is fresh. Anne Rice has done with werewolves, exactly what she’s done for vampires, witches and angels and given them a complete make-over and her individual twist on their background. She’s re-invented and re-written the mythology of the genre.

Anne Rice of the famous Vampire Chronicles is back, but this time she has put her fangs away and comes baring claws... This is sure to mark the beginning of a new saga for Rice and is equally sure to the guilty pleasure for many a fantasy horror fan.