The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

Genre: Dystopian Paranormal YA
Publication Date: April 24, 2012
Pages: 485
Source: Received an e-ARC (advanced reader copy) from NetGalley

Goodreads Summary:

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.


My Opinion

In general, I’ve been staying away from starting to read new vampire books recently. Probably because after Twilight I went on a vampire book reading rampage, and got a little vampired-out. About a year ago I discovered the lovely world of faery books, which led me to read Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey series. That series soon became one of my favorites (and I also have a mega-crush on Ash!) So when I saw Julie Kagawa was writing a vampire book, I figured I would give it a try.

And I’m SO GLAD I DID! The Immortal Rules is a totally fresh take on vampires, and I absolutely loved it. The book takes place in the future where vampires have taken over, so it’s more like a dystopian vampire story. The main character Allison starts off human, living in the Fringe, which is an area outside of a vampire city. The reader gets to see a decent amount of her life as a human, and what she has to do to survive as an unregistered human. She hates vampires, but when she’s almost killed by rabids (vampire-zombies), a vampire comes to help her and gives her a choice: die or turn into a vampire.

She chooses to turn into a vampire, and from there the whole story really took off. She learns about how vampires live from the vampire who turned her (Thus the name The Immortal Rules … ), but then after some trouble strikes, she’s forced to go out on her own. She soon discovers a group of humans on a quest to find the only human-run city still out there, called Eden, and joins in with their group. They don’t know she’s a vampire though, so she has to pretend she’s a human. And of course Julie Kagawa always has a great romance in her books, so a romance developed between Allison and one of the humans. I loved them together; their relationship progressed nicely and was well-done.

This book had a great pace — not too fast and not too slow. I always wanted to know what happened next, but the story never felt rushed, which was good. I love the vampire mythology that Julie Kagawa created; it was very original and with so many vampire books out there, it was nice to read something different. I also loved seeing Allison’s character development from a human to accepting her life as a vampire. I definitely look forward to reading the rest of this series!