Title: The Immortal RulesAuthor: Julie KagawaPublisher: Harlequin TeenPublish Date: 24 April 2012Pages: 485ISBN: 978-0-373-21051-0Source: netgalleyGenre: Young Adult, romance, vampireSeries: Blood of EdenOther books in series: unknownIn 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."
