Review: The Immortal Rules

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa
Young Adult
Release Date:
Source: Netgalley, Harlequin Teen
Overall: 5/5

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.

The world has been broken up into district cities. Each city is ruled by a master vampire who requires that registered citizens donate blood. In exchange they get protection from the rabids who run on the outside of the city's wall.

Rabids are similar to zombies, that began when hybrid virus that grew from a simple plague into a frenzy seeking edible flesh. Highly dangerous and very contagious. Which is one reason why people avoid the ruins.

Allie is a survivor. Growing up on the Fringe, she has had to scavenge, hunt, and steal to stay alive. As an unregistered no one will care if she dies, except for a few of her unregistered friends. As an Unregistered citizen, Allie is not subjected to the required twice a month blood donations, but she also does not get any meal tickets and she does not get any protection from guards who believe that since she does not exist as an unregistered that they can pretty much do whatever they want; target practice, beatings, etc.

With surviving being Allie's main goal, she and her small group of friends set out for the ruins. After being attacked by rabids, Allie is slowly dying along with her friends, but Kanin, a vampire, discovers her and gives her a choice - die, die as a rabid, or take his bite and hope you get turned into a vampire.

After Allie's past, she hates vampires with a passion, but being a survivalist she chooses vampirism. Once a vampire, Allie struggles finding a balance between her humanity and being a vampire. At first she struggles with her sense of predator and prey.

Kanin is an unusual vampire who has done a few things in his life that he regrets. The way he speaks and his body language shows that he really is inhuman. His speech slow, calm, and steady, but with an attitude that says 'this is all amusing, but I can still kill you.' He really grew on me, and I really look forward to seeing more of him in the second book.

As things should have it, Allie is stuck on her own in the ruins. Where she runs into a group of humans looking for Eden. A city where there are no vampires, no rabids, and everything is peaceful. Being out in the ruins, there are not a lot of people to feed from. So on the off chance, Allie joins up with them in hopes of a future meal.

She did not expect to meet Zeke, a boy who is about her age with the biggest heart in the world. Zeke helps everyone, gives as much as he can, and appears naive. All of this draws Allie to Zeke and she wants more than to just bite him.

Julie Kagawa created a great cast of characters, each one more different than the other. The vampire dystopian world she created is genius. A feed lot of people, solely depended on vampires to stay safe from rabids. I truly enjoyed Immortal Rules and I really look forward to reading more of Allie's adventure.

Julie Kagawa was born in Sacramento, California. But nothing exciting really happened to her there. So, at the age of nine she and her family moved to Hawaii, which she soon discovered was inhabited by large carnivorous insects, colonies of house geckos, and frequent hurricanes. She spent much of her time in the ocean, when she wasn�t getting chased out of it by reef sharks, jellyfish, and the odd eel.When not swimming for her life, Julie immersed herself in books, often to the chagrin of her schoolteachers, who would find she hid novels behind her Math textbooks during class. Her love of reading led her to pen some very dark and gruesome stories, complete with colored illustrations, to shock her hapless teachers. The gory tales faded with time, but the passion for writing remained, long after she graduated and was supposed to get a real job.
To pay the rent, Julie worked in different bookstores over the years, but discovered the managers frowned upon her reading the books she was supposed to be shelving. So she turned to her other passion: training animals. She worked as a professional dogtrainer for several years, dodging Chihuahua bites and overly enthusiastic Labradors, until her first book sold and she stopped training to write full-time.
Julie now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where the frequency of shark attacks are at an all time low. She lives with her husband, two obnoxious cats, one Australian Shepherd who is too smart for his own good, and the latest addition, a hyper-active Papillon puppy.
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