A Book Nerd's Inner Voices

The Immortal Rules

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa is like a vampire novel meets Hunger Games meets Revolution. Throw in a little bit of almost-zombie action and you've got yourself one hell of a wild ride.





At first, I was nearly positive it would be just as cliche as every other vampire book I've read since Twilight---save the House of Night novels, which take on an entirely different view---but I was oh, so wrong.





Kagawa take you through a vast range of emotions from a self-centered need for survival and a fanatical drive to ease a long-lived guilt to a false sense of trust and an avid sense of betrayal. She takes the main character---Allison---from being a starved, foraging street rat on the outskirts of an end-times, walled-in vampire city whose only true driving force was a weak sense of loyalty to her house mates and an inherent need for survival to a blood thirty vampire desperately fighting to save her humanity---and the lives of her new found human friends searching for the all-human promised land.





You see Allie go from selfish to selfless and the transformation comes from turning into the one thing she fears and hates the most.





It's a testament to the human heart, I think, that characters like her love interest, Zeke, can see Allie for who she has become as a person instead of the monster she unfortunately happens to be. Zeke was raised to loathe vampires and kill them on sight, by a fanatical, abusive leader after seeing his family and friends slaughtered. He then has to lead others into hardship down harrowing roads, with a dozen people relying on him to keep them safe. So for him to see Allie, truly see her, is a definite feat.





Granted, it does take him banishing her at gunpoint and Allie saving his life from murderous bikers for him to pause long enough to give her that chance, but hey. Once he does, the two repeatedly risk their lives for one another despite the risks and dangers to themselves. I find that inspiring.





I won't call this a love story. It's not. And I have yet to see how her vampire sire achieves his redemption---if he ever does. But it sure does make an interesting read and to a like mind, it gives one a lot to think about where their own actions in those situations are concerned.





She's not afraid to kill people and I think that's part of what keeps it real even though it's so obviously a work of science fiction. Anyone is fair game, including the main character. That is brave and also somewhat unique in the teen fantasy genre and I commend Julie Kagawa for following her instincts and trusting her characters to move the story forward.





In my stingy rating system, I give this book an 8 out of 10. Well done.