Review: The Immortal Rules

Publication: Harlequin Teen

Genre: Post- Apocalyptic, Paranormal

Format: Paperback, 458 pages

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Living in a world where humans are seen as little more than a source of blood, with all registered citizens required to give blood, Allie hovers on the outskirts. An Unregistered, she's determined not to become vampire property, even if it means being hungry all the time and having to fight for her existence. But when a scavenging trip goes very wrong, she's offered an impossible choice: die as a human, or continue to live as the one thing she hates the most.

Well, I certainly waited long enough to read this one! I read an enjoyed Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey quartet a long time ago, but didn't really feel compelled to read The Immortal Rules when it was released. I won a copy at the Book Blog Ontario meet-up last year, and finally picked it up. I'm overall glad that I did! (Weirdly, I always seem to read slightly gory books when I donate blood...)

Allie lives in a very grim reality, and it has made her develop quite an outer shell. She's tough, and stubborn, and not afraid to stand up for herself- and, though she denies it, even to herself, others too. She's willing to do anything it takes to survive, eeking out an existence on the fringes in order to avoid being branded property by the monsters whose need for blood took her mother from her. Her hatred of the vampires clashes with her will to survive when she's attacked by rabids (zombies, more or less)- and a passing vampire offers her the choice of death or becoming a vampire. She chooses to live, even if it means becoming what she despises. Forced to flee the city, she has to pass as a human.

Allie is interesting because of her humanity- how she seems to do everything so desperately, clinging onto essential aspects of herself, even when her new monster instincts try to tell her otherwise. It was interesting to watch her try to navigate her new existence, and watch her struggle with the fallout of the choice she made. I admired her for her struggle to be true to herself despite not being totally sure who that self was, now that she's become what she's hated more than anything.

The romance was... weird to me. It kind of felt like she was mostly being drawn to Zeke because of his humanity? He embodies a lot of the traits that she thinks of as very human, and, with her current struggle, I suppose that drew her. I just didn't entirely see that there was anything other than that there? I'm not entirely sure how I felt about it, it's something that I hope will become more... solid, almost? In the rest of the trilogy (if it's meant to be a long-term thing).

I enjoyed the amount of action in this novel, though sometimes the scenes were a little hard of me to visualise. The descriptions were just a little... vague, I suppose. The world itself was something I'm looking forward to continuing to explore in the rest of the trilogy. It really is slowly crumbling, and I'm interested to see what direction Julie Kagawa takes this world and story!

Kelly

I'm a reader and reviewer from Ontario, Canada, which mean that sometimes library trips take place place through a foot or so of snow. I'm going into my third year of university, studying Environmental Sciences, which I juggle with my almost constant reading. I've been blogging at at my own blog since 2012, and I'll be helping Yani out here on Paper Boulevard as a co-blogger.