ARC Review--The Immortal Rules 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.

I received this e-ARC from the publisher via Netgalley for review

I remember last year when I met Julie Kagawa at an author signing she said she was working on a vampire book, even though in the beginning she never thought she would write one. So the wait has been very long indeed, and I am so glad that she wrote The Immortal Rules! We get to see vampires as the bad guys again! I still love me my humane vamps, but sometimes it's good to see them in their first form!

The novel was divided into 4 parts which I found to be very well done! We get to see Allison's transformation from part to part. First as the human girl living in a world that bows to vamps. Except for her and a few other teens. She and her misfit friends are known as Unregistereds because they are not registered to give blood to the vamps that rule their city. If you are Registered then you are taken care of, given food and shelter. But that's not necessarily a good thing.

Part two lets us see Allison's transformation into the vampire, after a brutal attack that left her near dead and a vampire chose to save her, if she so wished. Here we see her struggles with the blood lust and trying to leave her human life behind which is harder than it sounds. 

The characters were by far the most interesting set of misfits I've seen! Allison is a strong heroine and I enjoyed seeing her in action. She chose to be a vamp because she wasn't done with her life yet. She wasn't ready to die. So she took the alternative route when she was near death. But she discovers that it is a hard road. The Hunger is always there, always nagging at her to feed, to kill. And she must learn to control it if she is ever to be near humans and not turn into a rabid. Rabids are the most evil of vampires because they have no conscience, no mind whatsoever. They are just raving monsters. And Allison will do whatever it takes to keep herself from turning into one.

Part 3 we see Allison strike out on her own when enemies come for her and her master. She ventures out of her city and home and into a world she believes to be more dangerous than her own. For rabids live beyond the wall that protects the city. What she finds, along with the occasional rabid, are humans.There are more humans and a few more cities still around despite the world collapsing around her and she reluctantly joins a group of some who are searching for Eden, an island without vampires.

The book really just got better and better as it went along! Here we see Allison pretending to be human in order to stay with this group as they look for Eden. She's curious, but then she begins to care for them. Especially Zeke, who I adored! Although I didn't care for Ruth, the girl bee-atch among them! She did everything possible to make Allison's time miserable. She didn't trust her, and for good reason apparently!

I won't get into Part 4, because that's spoiler territory! But all I can say was that it was very entertaining! The emotions that Julie wrote into these characters really takes your breath away, they are so real. These characters just blew me out of the water! 

The plot was good as well! We see Allison transform, like I said, from human to vampire then to something else. She becomes what we love to see in our vampires. She cares. True there's still the Hunger that gnaws at her and any moment she could snap and become the monster humans know vamps to be. 

The ending was splendid. It has a nice kind of calmness to it. Hopefully, it's the calm just before the second storm comes with a sequel!! Not sure what Julie has in mind for the series but there are enough loose-ends in the book for another! The Immortal Rules rocks! The wait was entirely worth it, now I just have to wait for book 2, if there is one and I so hope there is!

There's also a sneak peek at Julie's new book in the Iron Fey series! The main character is new, but not totally new! I'll leave it at that, I chose not to read it otherwise the wait til its release would be really killer!

Overall rating 5/5 stars

The Immortal Rules releases April 24, 2012