Review: The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

SUMMARY FROM NETGALLEY.COM:

MY VAMPIRE CREATOR TOLD ME THIS:

"Sometime in your life, Allison Sekemoto, you will kill a human being. The question is not if it will happen, but when. Do you understand?"

I didn't then, not really.

I DO NOW.

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 TAKE:

I don't usually read vampire novels, but considering that this was written by Julie Kagawa, I figured I'd give it a try.

In The Immortal Rules, a virus has killed a lot of humans and has left the rest to be servants of vampires. There's more than just vampires to worry about, though. Rabids and other humans are also a threat to the existence of humans who just want to survive.

This world is very chaotic and is basically a war zone. As you would expect, the humans and vampires in this book aren't weaklings or sparkly. Most of them, anyway. That is, they aren't weaklings. Nobody sparkles here.

Allie is a tough girl, which is great. She did get on my nerves, occasionally, though. The other characters did annoy me sometimes, too. There were very few characters in the book that I liked.

What kept me going was the plot. It reads like an episode of The Walking Dead or something. It's gruesome and gross and you definitely get the picture. I don't know if I'd read the next book in the series, but if you like vampire books, you'll like this one.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarlequinTeen for the e-ARC. Publication date of The Immortal Rules is on April 24, 2012.

THE GOOD:

1. Class A world-building.
2. No sparkly vampires.
3. Excellent writing.

THE BAD:

1. Some of the characters can be annoying.

FAVORITE QUOTE/S:

Because within the pages of every book, there was information of another world - a world before this one, where humans didn't live in fear of vampires and walls and monsters in the night.

READ IT IF:

1. You like your vampires tough.
2. You like kick-butt heroines.
3. You're tired of watered-down, fairy tale young adult books.

RATING:

SOUNDS INTERESTING?