The Immortal Rules

This book is dark, gritty and exciting – but not for the faint hearted. Unlike most young adult vampire novels I’ve read in the last few years, The Immortal Rules is an incredibly dark and dangerous story. The vampires in this world are not the kind you’d want to kiss but rather the kind that haunt your nightmares and terrify you at their mere mention.

In the future, Allison (Allie) Sekemoto, a feisty and kick-ass seventeen year old girl who lives with her gang of misfits, is living in a world where a disease called Red Lung has wiped out the majority of the human race.

In come the Vampires – they now rule the world and have enslaved the remaining humans as their pets. Humans have the choice to Register or remain Unregistered. Registered humans are provided for with meal tickets and all the Vampires ask/demand in return is a blood donation every so often. Miss a blood donation appointment and the Vampires will come to collect… and they won’t be nice about it. Unregistered humans have none of the privileges of the registered and are forced to scavenge and steal to survive but get caught thieving and it’s the gallows for you – and they’re serious. The first scene of this novel has Allie witnessing three teenagers hanged as punishment for their stealing ways.

And then there’s the Rabids – much like zombies and rabid dogs – these former humans roam the land biting and feasting on humans. For an unregistered human there’s much to fear in this new world.

Allie refuses to become Registered. She hates the hunger that plagues her, never knowing when her next meal will come from but she’d rather scavenge than be owned by a Vampire. So when Allie finds a stash of food outside the Wall, she tries to hoard as much as she can only to be attacked by a gang of Rabids. On the verge of death, a strange man gives Allie a choice: to die forever or to die as a human and rise as one of the creatures she’s always despised. A Vampire.

This story surprised me. I have to admit it has a lot of plot twists and turns that I was not expecting. And I loved Allie. She’s fierce and feisty. She’s lead an incredibly risky life and managed to survive. She doesn’t take any shit from anyone and knows what she wants from life. She wants to free the humans from the enslavement of the Vampires.

And she has her priorities right… “Owning books is highly illegal” … and yet she still manages to have a secret library hidden from everyone as owning books is punishable by death – not just to her but the Vampire’s “Pets” would burn her home and everyone in it to the ground.

The romance plot was well received with me. This is not a story of instant love nor is it one where the author forces a love triangle just to make things more suspenseful. A good thing too because there enough suspense in the other parts of the story, I think I’d go into overload if there was any more. I loved the relationship of Allie and Zeke. It was beautiful constructed and realistic in a way that made their relationship all the more meaningful to me.

I thought the beginning was brilliant but then things slowed down a bit until half way though the story. It was a bit hard to fully get into the story as things were dragging. But all the information was necessary in order to get a truly fantastic ending.

Brilliant book. Recommend it to fans of the Hunger Games – this novel has a kick-ass heroine who tries her hardest to survive anyway she can in a dystopian world – and anyone who loves the darker side of vampires.

This was an interesting mix of vampires and zombie-like creatures. I found the heroine a little hard and a little hard to like, and my favourite character, Kanin, wasn’t in it enough. I dunno, it was good but I just couldn’t quite sink my teeth into this one