The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden #1)
by Julie Kagawa

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.

*** Beware I’d consider my CONS section to have spoilers!! ***

I have no doubt many readers will love The Immortal Rules.  It has a strong willed and stubborn heroine, as well as that touch of romance.  Throw in enough bloodletting action to keep the pace moving along well and you’ve got a good read.

However, personally, I did not love The Immortal Rules, though I did enjoy it. (If I’d loved it I would have finished it in under 2 days – rather than the 13 it took me.  That is a long time for me to finish a book. )  I believe this might have been mostly because I have a tendency to mull over details, and The Immortal Rules had too many things for me that conflicted.

There were some excellent ideas but I felt like all of it didn’t quite gel together perfectly for me.  I had to really break it all down in a list of Pros and Cons.

Pros:

- Allie is a strong lead character, I felt she had a strong voice and inner dialogue that kept me interested in how things would turn out for her.  Her attitude that makes her want to butt her head up against any authority is totally understandable and realistically done.

- Second main supporting character, Zeke,  was totally a “golden boy” but if you can get past that you will probably really like him.  I started to think of him as that shiny happy person you would love to hate but just can’t.  He was idealistic and wanted to watch out for everyone, even complete strangers – though towards the end you see him mature a lot.

- Ruth! I hated her! Which was fabulous because I know I was supposed to hate her.  Now Stick on the other hand, I hated him and that just annoyed me, because HE annoyed me.  I don’t like being overly annoyed to the point where I just want to punch a character in the face.  BUT! – The fact that Kagawa was able to get me to feel so strongly about characters is definitely a GOOD thing.

- The inner struggle that Allie goes through when trying to determine what kind of “monster” she would be definitely kept me interested.  She obviously doesn’t want to give into her vampire nature and you see her struggle against it throughout the story.  The way she matures over the course of the book was well done

Cons:

- Annoying character Stitch in the first part of the book.  He would have been more tolerable if he was at least given ANY redeeming quality at all that would have made it worth Allie’s time at all constantly taking care of him.  I have to admit I seriously hated this character and Allie’s stupid actions in regards to him.  Especially what with her supposed “hardened” outlook on life.

- There were points in the book that were so contradictory.  She pretty much carried Stitch’s weight the whole time they knew each other, and yet later in the book her inner monologue she tried to act as if looking out for other’s and sacrificing for them weren’t already a part of her nature.  It was annoying because – it seemed like false modesty to me.

- The timeline of the plague and the rabids, and the decline of all civilization seemed completely wrong to me.  It’s noted in the first chunks of the book about “6 generations” of vampires” and how all books had been burned and places of learning so that humans could be kept in the dark about their history.  Also, what with the destroying of museums.  So essentially hardly anyone could read.  But then later in the book you learn that it’s more like 3 human generations since the outbreak of the rabidism.  There is no way that all of the buildings in this post-apocalyptic America could have degraded to the state they were in, in just a mere 100 years or less.  Even if the buildings were abandoned and not looked after they would not have degraded that far.

- Onto another point, beer, food stuffs, all sundry items that the traveling group of humans were scavenging for at every town they passed thru.  If that much time had passed since the fall of industry and mass production these products would no longer be good.  The canned goods, perhaps yes, but beer and pretzels/chips – most certainly would not.

- The romance aspect, I see why Allie starts to develop feelings but I didn’t quite see much of why Zeke would develop feelings for her.  I don’t think enough of her character was put out there for Zeke to have fallen for her as he did, at least not until the latter part of the book.

Even considering my gripes I definitely still plan to read the next book when it comes out because it was a good book and I am very curious as to how things are going to play out.

                                                          Tabitha the Pabkins

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*Review Copy provided by Publisher, Harlequin Teen, for an honest review.  All opinions expressed are my own.