The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

Book:  The ImmortalRules

Author:  Julie Kagawa

Publisher:  HarlequinTeen

Date:  April 24, 2012

Source:  Publisher and Netgalley

My grade:  A+

In a future world, Vampires reign. Humans are blood cattle. And one girl will search for the key to save humanity.

Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a vampire city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten.

Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them. The vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself is attacked—and given the ultimate choice. Die… or become one of the monsters.

Faced with her own mortality, Allie becomes what she despises most. To survive, she must learn the rules of being immortal, including the most important: go long enough without human blood, and you will go mad.

Then Allie is forced to flee into the unknown, outside her city walls. There she joins a ragged band of humans who are seeking a legend—a possible cure to the disease that killed off most of humankind and created the rabids, the mindless creatures who threaten humans and vampires alike.

But it isn't easy to pass for human. Especially not around Zeke, who might see past the monster inside her. And Allie soon must decide what—and who—is worth dying for.

My Review

Holy bloodsuckers, Batman!  This was some kind of vampire novel!!

Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, “Tammy, a vampire novel?  Really?  Everyone is sooooooo tired of vampire novels.”

Oh ye of little faith!  I say to you, you have not read a vampire novel written by Julie Kagawa!

This novel was incredible!  I did not want to put it down and I swear I cried a few tears when I realized I had reached the last page of this book.  This book does vampires in a way that I haven’t seen vampires before.  This is the premise:  the world has been decimated with a plague and many of the people have been turned into these rabid zombie/vampire creatures.  In the meantime, the real vampires have created these vampire cities where they herd in humans and protect them from the rabids, but they basically use them as cattle to feed their blood thirst.  In other words, if you’re human, life sucks.

I really liked the cast of characters in this book.  Allie is a great leading lady.  She is strong and in many ways she is hardened by her life.  But once she becomes a vampire, we see that she really wasn’t as hardened as we, or she, thought!  I really liked Kanin and I’m hoping to see more of him in the next novel.  And then there was Zeke.  I have to admit, it took a while for him to grow on me, but in the end, I really liked him too.  I think that Julie Kagawa is great at creating complicated characters that are believable and interesting.

Now, I was not a huge fan of Julie’s Iron Fey series.  I mean, I liked them a lot and I was totally Team Puck until the last novel, but I wasn’t one of those people who went crazy over them.  I am definitely one of those people going crazy over The Immortal Rules.  This is a vampire novel with everything:  rabid, monster vamps, soulless, evil vamps who look at humans as snacks only and a few vampires who sit around feeling bad about being vampires and struggling to retain shreds of humanity.  Now, drop all of that down into a dystopian world and WOW!

This plot was non-stop action.  I really did not want to ever stop reading.  I read until 1 and 2 a.m. on school nights and today, I might have curled up on the sofa in my classroom and read during my whole planning period.  Maybe.  ::whistles and looks around::

My grade for this is an A+.  I really thought that I might even be done with vampire novels for a while, but this novel has restored my faith in the goodness of the undead!  If you like vampires, go read this book.  Even if you don’t like vampires, go read this book.  You won’t be sorry!

Thanks to HarlequinTeen and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review this book.