The Immortal Rules

Title: The Immortal Rules

Author: Julie Kagawa

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Publish Date:  24 April 2012

Pages: 485

ISBN:  978-0-373-21051-0

Source:  netgalley

Genre:  Young Adult, romance, vampire

Series:  Blood of Eden

Other books in series:  unknown

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.

What would you do if you were given a choice between death and becoming something that you hate? Allison Sekemoto lives in The Fringe of New Covington in Sector 4. New Covington is one of the vampire cities that has formed sixty years after a deadly virus, the Red Lung, has killed off most of the population. Allison aka Allie is an unregistered. This means that she doesn't have to go and donate blood to the vampires. This also means that she isn't taken care of and doesn't get food on a regular basis. She lives with Stick, Lucas and Rat. They are in her gang. They help each other survive.

After watching the hanging of unregistereds in the city, Allie decides that she needs to go elsewhere to scavenge for food. She goes to the ruins. This is outside the city walls of New Covington. She has been there before and found some good food. When she goes there, she knows that she has to return before nightfall because that is when the rabids come out. They were created when they did experiments on vampire blood and the red lung virus. What she finds in the ruins is a basement full of food. She is excited because this will last her and her gang a few months. She returns to her home by way of the tunnels that she took out of the city and come across some mole men and a vampire. Luckily, she arrives home the next morning.

After telling her gang about the basement of food, they decide to go after it because the thought of having food is too good to pass up. The leader, Lucas, tells everyone to get ready and they cross the wall of New Covington into the ruins. Things don't go as planned and Allie finds herself fighting against rabids in the middle of a storm. That is when she meets Kanin and he gives her a choice - live or die. Allie chooses to live, so Kanin transforms her into one of the things that she loathes - a vampire.

Kanin teaches her how to be a vampire. Throughout this whole ordeal, Allie learns that there are some things that Kanin is hiding from her and that culmonates in her almost dying and Kanin being captured. Now Allie is on her own and has left New Covington. When she is wandering around, she meets Ezekial Crosse aka Zeke and his group who are trying to get to Eden, where there are no rabids or vampires. They have been trying to find this place for years under the leadership of Jebbadiah Crosse. Allie blends in the group easily and everyone thinks that she is human. What will happen when they find out that what Allie is? What secrets is Jeb hiding from the group and why are the raiders after him? What happened to Kanin?

I have always heard what a great author that Julie Kagawa was and have never before read anything that she has written. Not for any reason other than having SO many books to read and forgetting about hers. When this book appeared on Netgalley, I put my mind to reading it and finding out what type of author Kagawa really is. I wasn't disappointed. Kagawa's writing is so easy to follow and she never misses an opportunity to let you in on what the character is feeling. Immortal Rules has a lot of information to absorb, but it doesn't make your head hurt with it all. She writes it so you can not only understand it, but remember it as well. I am very excited to read the forthcoming books in this series and am anxious to read other works by this great author.

On the cover, you see a woman, whom I presume to be Allie. She has red eyes and is crying blood. This goes along with the description of what they say Allie looks like. In one altercation with a gang member, she is described as a "sweet little Asian doll." The crying blood also goes along with the story as Allie has said before that when she cries, it is in blood. I like the serious look that she has on her face and the contrast between the black and red.

 

•Allie. She is the main character and the one who takes care of other people. She would do anything for her gang members and when she is turned into a vampire, loses that sense of family that she had as a member of the Fringe. She is stubborn and doesn't accept things for what people tell her they are, but have to figure things out on her own.

•Zeke. He is nice boy. He finds the good in everyone. Even though other people in his group were telling him that Allie was bad, he always thought the best of her. Allie is concerned that he is too naive. His spirit and faith are inspiring.

•Caleb, Ruth, Jake, Teresa, Silas, Dorothy, Darren. They are the other members of Zeke's group. Some of them have accepted Allie and other didn't. They still helped her and let her join them for a while.

•Kanin. He is Allie's "father" so to speak. He turned Allie into a vampire and taught her the ways of vampirism.

 

•Jeb. Hypocrisy at its finest. Some of the things that happened concerning Jeb made me have the same reaction that Allie had.

•Jackal. From the get-go, he doesn't seem like a friendly person. He is the self-proclaimed "vampire raider king."