Review: The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa





My rating: 5 of 5 stars




Source: Publisher via Netgalley


Synopsis from Goodreads:
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.

Book 1 in the Blood of Eden Series
I LOVED The Immortal Rules so much. I love it when a book gets me so completely hooked when I'm reading it, that I just HAVE to know what happens next! The story is an adventure with different stages and parts to it, so that it always felt new and exciting. It has everything I love in a book- a strong female lead, a sweet forbidden romance, action, adventure, and emotion.

Just when you think that vampires in fiction have been done to death (no pun intended there)- along comes something new and fresh that blows everything else out of the water. I knew from reading the Iron Fey series that Julie Kagawa is an amazing writer, whose depth of detail in her stories really gives the books that extra something, but she has done it again in The Immortal Rules with phenomenal world building- creating a futuristic setting that is dark, terrifying and believable, and characters that are so well created as to make them real and make you really care about them.

There are plenty of twists and turns in this book and distinct stages to Allison's journey. I loved reading about her struggle to survive as a human in a vampire infested world, her transformation into a vampire, and her time on her own in the wilderness before she joins up with a travelling band of humans. I thought Allison was so brilliantly written, that I felt so much for her in her darkest times. So is both brave and strong and capable, but also endearingly vulnerable at times, and needs the support of others around her.

The latter half of the book is all about her struggle to cling on to the remnants of her humanity. She doesn't want to hurt people or to turn into the monsters she has always hated. The question is whether she can live among the humans without them discovering what she is and believing her evil. But when they have a common enemy, they can work together well.

My favourite part of the book is when Allison is travelling through the woods with the humans. They are going the same way so it makes sense for Allison to travel with them- but she has to be constantly on her guard that they don't notice that she isn't like them. And Zeke (I love him- he is so sweet, and wants to look after everyone else all the time) can't understand why she keeps him and everyone else at arms length. I also loved bitchy Ruth, and the children who innocently adore Allison.

There are plenty of memorable characters in this story. Most intriguing is Kanin, the vampire who turned Allison- who is so secretive and mysterious that even when she spends months with him she still knows nothing about him or where he came from. He is better than most of the other vampires, who have no conscience at all, but there is definitely another story to tell there and I hope it is revealed in the next book.

This is a dark dystopian novel with an exciting new vampire twist, fanastic characters that I fell in love with, and an exciting pacy plotline. No review of this is going to do this book justice. It wasn't what I was expecting- it was better. Trust me, this is brilliant, it will surprise you, and you should read it!

This is currently set to be a 3 part series.

Thanks to Harlequin and Netgalley for my review copy