Review: The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

The Immortal Rules

Author: Julie Kagawa
Series: Blood of Eden, #1

Summary: 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.

Review

This books is exactly as amazing as it sounds. It's phenomenal. It's fast-paced, heart-stopping, and leaves you dying for more!! The vampires are fierce, rule over humans and treat them like cattle, calling them pets. The humans that are registered are branded with the mark of their vampire prince and have free reign to food, clothing and other essentials. But people who aren't registered, like Allison, have to steal and scavenge for their basic needs and hope they don't get caught. If they are, the punishment is death.

Not only does Allison have to deal with vampires roaming the city at night, but she has to deal with rabids, who, lucky for her, can't get inside the city walls, but being caught outside them after dark means certain death. And Allison doesn't know which to fear more, the vampires or the rabids. The vampires in this book aren't sparkly. They can't walk in daylight, and animal blood doesn't suffice for the Hunger. It must be human blood. And if they go too long without it, they go mad. The Hunger completely takes over and they lose any sense of humanity they might possess, causing them to kill the human they feed upon. But don't make the mistake of thinking that rabids and vampires are the same thing, for they are not. Vampires, while vicious, can still maintain a part of their humanity. Rabids however, are a result of a disease called the Red Lung virus. People who catch the disease end up dying, but come back as a rabid, and the only thing that fuels them is their bloodlust. They are vicious creatures whose only desire is blood. Their eyes are completely white, they have claws and no sense of humanity whatsoever. Their clothing is ragged; that is, if they're still wearing any. And they will do anything to get the blood that they can smell from miles away. They don't relent until the sun starts coming up. 

That is a small amount of information about the world that Allison Sekemoto lives within. Together, with a few other people, she fights daily to survive, to find a small meal. They live in an abandoned school, and while they all survive together, they each know that if it came down to it, they would do what it takes to survive, even if that means leaving one of their own behind. One day, on a hunt outside the city walls for food, they are caught by rabids and in a last effort to continue to survive, Allison makes the choice to become the very thing she hates most in life: a vampire. Leaving her friends behind she sticks with her vampire creator Kanin, learning what it takes to survive as an immortal being. Learning to fight, how to feed, how to stay alive and keep out of the other vampires way. But after being discovered, Allison finds herself outside the city walls alone, wondering the world not knowing where she's going or what to expect, with the Hunger slowly creeping up on her. The longer she goes, the hungrier she becomes, until finally she stumbles upon two men, the Hunger taking over. She eventually runs into a band of people searching for a vampire free city called Eden. Allison knows that it's farfetched, and that the longer she stays with these people, the more likely it is that she'll be discovered, but she feels a strange pull to these people. She joins them in search of this city that she'll never be able to enter. Together, they discover more about the world than she ever thought was possible outside the walls of the vampire cities. And what she finds is both disturbing at times, and wonderful and enlightening at others. But she knows it's only a matter of time before Zeke realizes what she is and that her time with him is very limited. Not to mention, she has to keep her Hunger at bay, or else she could hurt the one person in the world she has come to care for more than any other.

It's a thrilling ride following Allison on her journey from being a human fighting to survive to becoming a vampire fighting to keep her Hunger from taking over her humanity. She struggles more often than she'd like, and she can't understand why she cares for these people she has only just met, but she feels it's her duty to see them through to Eden, to help them find the paradise they have all longed and searched for for so long, even if the discovery of what she really is turns them all against her. She faces rabids, vampires, and raiders all in search of a city that might just hold the cure for the Red Lung virus and the rabidism. A cure that could save the human race. 

This is truly the best vampire book I have ever read. As much as I loved the Vampire Academy series and my love/hate relationship with Twilight, this book takes the cake. It's filled with the vampires from our nightmares. The ones that can only come out at night, hide in the shadows, drink blood, and can seemingly blend in with humans when wanted, while also herding humans like cattle. They have some serious fighting skills, with movements that humans wouldn't even stand a chance against, especially when the Hunger takes over. It was fascinating to me to see that Allison's will to survive was stronger than her hate for the vampires and that she chose to become one of them rather than to face what came after death. I loved following her journey to keep her humanity and to show these people who hated vampires more than anything in the world, calling her a demon even, that she wasn't a demon, that she truly did care for them and wanted to help them. To keep them safe and see them reach their paradise that they weren't even sure existed. Allison, while having her faults, is a fantastic character; she's strong even when she's weak. She keeps going, fighting to keep herself and those she cares about alive, no matter the cost, and I'm anxious to read more about her and her world. And of course I can't wait to see what happens with her and Zeke, and if there might be a little spark ignite between her and Kanin in the next installment. 

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