The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa (Blood of Eden #1)

8/10

My Vampire Creator told me this: "Sometime in your life, Allison Sekemoto, you will kill a human being. The question is not if it will happen, but when. Do you understand?’ I didn't then, not really.

Julie Kagawa’s vampires do not glow in the dark.

Isn’t that enough?

No, fine then here’s more.

Julie Kagawa’s vampires are glamorous, yes, but they do not act like pious know-it-all's just because they have seen it all. They know they are soulless beings, living off the lifeblood of beings who still have souls, and they have the decency to hang their heads in shame.

When we are introduced to Kagawa’s heroine in The Immortal Rules, Allison Sekemoto, she is a street rat, and [*** SPOILER ALERT ***] very much human. Kagawa explores the scarred and wasted earth, ravaged by disease and marauding bands of mutant humans known as Rabids, where to be well off you have to live in the city of New Covington, ‘donating’ blood every other Thursday.

If you do not want your vampiric overlords to feast on your flesh… um, blood, you live as an Unregistered, on the fringes of the city, aptly named The Fringe (duh!) and you scavenge for droppings among the other Unregistered and fought and killed for half a slice of mouldy cheese.

The politics of the story are what drew me in to The Immortal Rules. Allie is turned. (What? I said spoilers before.) And she must learn how to navigate the world as a vampire. The very circumstances of her turning are also quite debate-worthy. She has a choice; die or live as undead. What would you choose?

While the end the book veers rather mysteriously off the steady course it was moving along, Kagawa’s writing is great. Some of her descriptions are textbook but I can’t help but but feel that in places Allie is way too gung-ho and come-at-me-ye-mongrels. Being Asian, I despise Asian's being depicted as stereotype badass Goths who trained in the martial arts under some learned Master/Sensei high in some Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian (take your pick) mountain. But I have also been told that my narrow-minded “I-read-only-fantasy” approach is to blame for this cursed eye that picks out clichés, so there!

There are some interesting threads which peek out throughout The Immortal Rules, which I think will be explored more in the books to come. This definitely this is not your average, vampire-human love story for sure. I say eight out of ten stars.