Review: The Immortal Rules - Julie Kagawa

Title: The Immortal Rules
Author: Julie Kagawa
Pub Date: April 24th, 2012
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Page Count: 485

 Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a walled-in 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 dies and becomes one of the monsters.

Forced to flee her city, Allie must pass for human as she joins a ragged group of pilgrims seeking a legend—a place that might have a cure for the disease that killed off most of civilization and created the rabids, the bloodthirsty creatures who threaten human and vampire alike. And soon Allie will have to decide what and who is worth dying for… again.

Enter Julie Kagawa's dark and twisted world as an unforgettable journey begins.

Vampires meet Resident Evil in this action-packed, supernatural twist on vampires. No, this book doesn't have zombies, but it does have something to that equivalent in some sense. And it has diseases.

I think I'd better start with a small warning. This book has a 6 star rating. Because of that, I may or may not mention about 5 different drugs or so. This might even happen unconsciously. Just know that there will be gush, and a lot more gush.

This story is about a girl who's been turned into a vampire. She has to learn how to act to not get killed ad lands herself into a team of humans trying to find safe lands. She also despises what she’s become but chooses it anyway. This is where the zombies come in. "Rabids" are what is known as products of a disease that will turn mankind and vampire alike into them. They’re basically uncontrollable, crazy and well... rabid. It's like a zombie apocalypse, right? The group of humans (with an addition vampire girl in disguise as a human) are trying to find what is known as Eden, which is a safe land where there are no vampires. (Kind of like Arcadia in Resident Evil.)

Julie Kagawa's writing can be compared to heroin. No, I don't mean the fact that it terrible for you. I mean it more as it's so addictive, reading one page of her writing can get you hooked for years. It's like one book suddenly turns into a collection of her books, you start going to every of her signings and then you wonder what you did before getting hooked. (Admit it, that was a pretty good simile or metaphor... Or something.)

It's full of descriptions and vivid imaginings that make readers think. You'll fall in love because it's the perfect amount - not too much, not too little. Kind of like making brownies! (Hash brownies. Yes these drug refs will continue.

I especially love her dialogue. It was so realistic and effortless-seeming that a lot of authors would be envious. She's created characters and the things they say actually reflect on their personality. Sometimes, you've got characters with one personality and completely different one when they're speaking. Kagawa's dialogue also makes me laugh because we’ve got this kickbutt heroine (haha, heroin?) whom I really connect with.

This is honestly the first book I've read from Julie Kagawa. Faeries aren't really my thing, though I think that her writing style WILL change that. As with faeries, I don't actually like Vampires, but I like this books. (I will admit that I was a bit reluctant to read this.

In a beautifully created world filled with vampires and humans (viewed as cattle), this one girl is trying to fight for her humanity. The world is so believable and detailed. Julie really builds off different parts and even with the little insignificant details, it's so creative and so vivid. (I may actually have dreams from this.)


I did think it was a bit like "the weight of the world rests on 1 person's shoulders" kind of story, and though it sort of was, the supporting characters are also very important. This story wouldn't have flowed if everything were dependent on Allie. We needed people who taught Allie, people who loved Allie and people who motivated her to carry on the story.

I actually liked Allie. Unlike most vampires, she didn't have the "I hate myself, I'm a monster" kind of mindset. She was more like "I may be a monster now, but I'm going to fight for my humanity." I think this was the reason I really loved her character. No matter how much she wanted to feed on people, she didn't because she's better than that. I also admired her strength because even though things got difficult and lives were lost, she pulled through. People like her are who I aspire to be like as a person and I admire all they stand for. That was the main reason I got so hooked into this book. (The fact that she's this badass Asian chick with a katana may or may boost her likableness.

The supporting characters are what make the story grow. If not for that, Allie would still be this impulsive child whose stubbornness would surely get her killed. Every character had significance and wasn’t kicked off to the side after being used. There wasn’t a character in one scene and then leaving the rest of the book. There also weren’t too many supporting characters so we could actually connect with them without being overwhelmed.

Julie Kagawa, the New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Fey and Blood of Eden series was born in Sacramento, California. But nothing exciting really happened to her there. So, at the age of nine she and her family moved to Hawaii, which she soon discovered was inhabited by large carnivorous insects, colonies of house geckos, and frequent hurricanes. She spent much of her time in the ocean, when she wasn’t getting chased out of it by reef sharks, jellyfish, and the odd eel.

When not swimming for her life, Julie immersed herself in books, often to the chagrin of her schoolteachers, who would find she hid novels behind her Math textbooks during class. Her love of reading led her to pen some very dark and gruesome stories, complete with colored illustrations, to shock her hapless teachers. The gory tales faded with time, but the passion for writing remained, long after she graduated and was supposed to get a real job.

To pay the rent, Julie worked in different bookstores over the years, but discovered the managers frowned upon her reading the books she was supposed to be shelving. So she turned to her other passion: training animals. She worked as a professional dogtrainer for several years, dodging Chihuahua bites and overly enthusiastic Labradors, until her first book sold and she stopped training to write full time.

Julie now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where the frequency of shark attacks are at an all time low. She lives with her husband, two obnoxious cats, one Australian Shepherd who is too smart for his own good, and the latest addition, a hyper-active Papillon.