Photo credits: Derek Thomson
Edited by Vaishali
Title: The Immortal Rules
Author: Julie Kagawa Series: (Blood of Eden #1) Genre/Themes: Fantasy, Young Adult, Paranormal, Post-Apocalpyse, Dystopian, Vampires, Science Fiction Publisher: Harlequin Teen Year of Publication: 2012 Version: Ebook - Amazon Kindle ISBN-10: 184845094X ISBN-13: 978-1848450943 Review
“I forget, sometimes, the complexities of the human race. We’ve reduced so many of you to animals – savage, cowardly, so willing to turn on each other to survive. And yet, in the darkest places, I can still find those who are still, more or less, human.”
The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa is an austere dystopian sci-fi story appraising the world in a post-apocalyptic realm of rapacious vampires, and human survivalists.
‘The vampires had outlawed books in the Fringe and had systematically gutted every school and library building once they’d taken over, and I knew why. Because within the pages of every book, there was information of another world- a world before this one, where humans didn’t live in fear of vampires and walls and monsters in the night. A world where we were free.’
The world is split into hierarchies, vampires being the foremost ruling race, predators of blood and night preying on humans, enslaving them since the plague some sixty years ago when disease spread throughout, altering the world irreversibly and wiping out billions.Allison Sekemoto is one of many teenagers, orphaned and living as an‘Unregistered’ on the edges of the ‘Fringe’ district – the outermost section of the vampire city where poverty is fact, privation is unavoidable, and the nonessential are left to make a living for themselves however they can; where the humans do whatever it takes to live through another day and hide from the grisly adventures of nightly tormentors, even if that means stealing, venturing into unbidden territory, braving the worst and being loyal unto themselves.
“But there will come a time when man is no longer concerned only with survival, when he will once more be curious as to who came before him. What life was like a thousand years ago, and he will seek out answers to these questions. Maybe it won’t happen for a hundred years or so, but humans’ curiosity has always driven them to find answers. Even our race cannot keep them in the dark forever.”
After the death of her mother, Allie swore to never become a‘registered’ human because she would rather live the unprivileged life as an ‘unregistered’ than sell herself and her blood to the bloodsuckers for just a bit more food and safety. The Unregistered are riven into bands, protecting their own and defending their own. The Fringe is a place stripped of culture and education where the inadequate and ineffective are left to slice out a living in whatever paltry capacity is available to them, among predators of many kinds.
“And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both…is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.”
Allie and her friends venture outside the perimeter of the city, into the‘ruins’ – where the ravenous rabids are known to stalk, looking to sink their teeth into unassuming exposed humans. After saving a friend from being slaughtered by a pack of rabids Allie is only minutes away from death. She is given two choices of death by a vampire – Kanin – he can either let her leave this world with a human conscious, or she can substitute the human blood in her veins for his own, turning her into the undead – a vampire. Her makeup has always led her to choose life over anything else, so she makes her choice. Allie condemns herself to the life of the undead and awakes a vampire with tears of blood, and a keen craving for the blood of her own kind…or what used to be her kind.
“We hid in their midst and walk among them, but we are forever separate. Damned. Alone. You don’t understand now, but you will. There will come a time when the road before you splits, and you must decide your path. Will you choose to become a demon with a human face, or will you fight your demon until the end of time, knowing you will forever struggle alone?”
Allie’s urges are vulturine. Humans are now sustenance. Blood, a required nourishment. Her soul? Soulless…or does it have to be? And this is the line that Allie questions always and treads on mercilessly – how can she hold on to her humanity when she has to cross lines to live as a vampire? She wants to reserve her humanity in the midst of what she is becoming, but she will always be part of the despicable, monstrous race that bathed the world in bloody phobias in a baneful hell. It’s interesting how Allie approaches the role of vampire, once thinking them to be ‘soulless’ beasts, now trying her hardest to veer away from giving in to her prior insights of vampires.
‘I was truly inhuman. Humans were prey. I craved their blood like the worst addict on the street. They were sheep, cattle, and I was the wolf, stalking them through the night. I had become a monster.’
‘I was part of their world now, part of the darkness.’
Allison is constantly enveloped in this conflict of accepting her new place in the food chain because her instincts want to overpower her sense of humanity, rivalling the despair that her new heritage will never be accepted, therefore having no real place in the world. Unlike her peers Allie was never content with just fading into the patterns of her circumstance, or writhing under the name of survival. This girl with a fighter’s instinct wanted to make the small changes that would have potentially given her people a chance for furtherance, a better lifefor the fringers…but with nothing left, Allison is alone.
“Knowledge is important. Words define us. We must protect our knowledge and pass it on whenever we can. If we are ever to become a society again, we must teach others how to remain human.”
Her indifferent, pragmatist mentor, Kanin, teaches Allie the ways of vampire survival. But he is only one of many that Allie consorts with because her life takes her out of New Covington, into a world she has never seen. Travelling unfamiliar terrain in the form of both the outer world which she has never dared into, and the unacquainted qualities she now possesses, Allie rides a path of bleak rejection, fearful betrayal, and a hope that she can tame the monster within. Learning her true place in society, she meets varying shades of human on her lonesome travels – being betrayed and hurt not because of her actions but because of what she now is. Coming from a broken city, Allie onlywants to be human, but needs to be a vampire. Despite a past of pain Allie always looks forward, accepting her circumstance, but never accepting something of common belief.
“Let me give you your first and most important lesson, Allison Sekemoto – you are a monster…”
Allie Is not your typical hero, her character squandering that line sometimes past the margin of protagonist, and as a reader I wondered whether she would lose herself to her demon. I wouldn’t call her a protagonist per se, but neither really an anti-hero, somewhere in that liminal pocket between perhaps. I found her less relatable, her character controversial, and unfortunately one I didn’t feel a great deal of empathy for because of the way she is written– more of a distant courtesy and respect. Characters are such – if not the most – important aspect of a story for me and I need to be involved with them to connect with the overall story, and with Allie I didn’t feel that way. Characters in a story are lights that make the night shine, and my night had few stars.
“Evening, little bird. Out for a midnight flight, on wings of blood and pain? Like razor blades across the moon, they cut the night and make the night bleed red.”
Allie has the mind of a survivalist. She doesn’t fall into the specific manner of morality, rather having her own notion of principle. Always questioning the choices she will make – as did I - her attitude is dark but also one of a realist. Everything about Allie is believable, she is smart, adaptive, and sympathetic within reason. Her actions areheroic, even though she doesn’t always appear to be, and the strength of her character is formed on her sense of loyalty even for those who show none to her.
‘The vampires have taken everything from us, I thought, angrily kicking a pebble into a wall. Well, I’m going to make sure we take something back.’
Julie Kagawa’s dystopic fantasy is well crafted and deeply atmospheric, but it felt one-dimensional and more abstract than not to me, tonally speaking, and the story felt stagnant. It seemed to be more absorbing than it actually turned out to be for me. I found myself not enjoying it as much as I'd hoped to unfortunately. I do fully credit the creativity, the refreshing take on vampiric lore and the atmospheric world setting, because it was well crafted. As an indulgent reader I want characters to indulge me, give me something considerable to work with, and I didn’t feel that with Allison or the story, only with one or two other characters – and the only other female teenage character was a jealous competitor. My interest diffused the further I fell into this twisted post-apocalyptic tale.
‘In this world, the only law was to obey to Masters, and the Masters didn’t care if their cattle occasionally turned on each other.’
The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa reminded me of the film I am Legend, following Allie and a diverse set of characters on her dangerous journey outside the confines, processing betrayal, loss, indoctrination, moral drama and doomed romance. A bloody, perverse and an ostensibly unfruitful world The Immortal Rules deals with continual loss, grief always, feuding clans, perpetuating desolate hope, a promising potential utopia, standards of loyalty during survival and the frailties of human choices when faced with the abysmal. This book is distinctively dystopian, with the characteristic elements of a dystopian world would have. Human versus vampire, an us versus them tale which doesn’t paint a whole race in one light. This story is not light-hearted, it’s honest, scrutinising a strong-minded lead that always has a choice to follow blindly, but always follows her own rules, challenging the norms of the society she lives in.
‘I suddenly wished we could’ve had more time, that the world didn’t consume every bit of light and goodness it found, that people like Zeke and I could somehow find our Eden.’
I gave this book 3/3.5 stars -
Trigger Warning: Torture, attempted rape, swearing, moderately gory scenes
My Rating System:
★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read
Favourite quotes from the book:
“Listen to me, Allison, and keep your mind open. Mortals view death in terms of black and white – you are either alive, or you are not. But between them – between life and death and eternity – there is a small grey area, one that the humans have no knowledge of. That is where we reside, vampires and rabids and a few of the older, inexplicable creatures that still exist in this world. The humans cannot understand us, because we live by a different set of rules.” “Allison, how you live your life is up to you. I can only give you the skills you need to survive. But eventually, you will have to make your own decisions, come to your own terms about what you are. You are a vampire, but what kind of monster you become is out of my hands.” “I would not suffer anyone to endure the path I walk. My road must always be travelled alone.” - Kanin “Before the plague, museums were places of history. Places of collected knowledge, places where they stored all the items, memories and artefacts of other cultures.” “Why?” “To remember the past, to not let it fade away. The customs, histories, religions and governments of a thousand cultures are stored here. There are other places like this one all around the world, hidden and forgotten by man. Places that still hold their secrets, waiting to be discovered again.” “Immortality is a lonely road, and it will only be made worse if you don’t release your attachments to your old life. To that boy, you are the enemy now, the unseen monster that haunts his nightmares. You are the creature he fears the most. And nothing in your previous life, not friendship or loyalty or love, will ever change that.” “…But I’ve lived far too long to leave anything to chance, particularly when it comes to human betrayal. If there is nothing to lose, and even very little to gain, you can almost count on it…” “This world is full of evil. God has abandoned it, but that does not mean we should submit to the devils who rule it now. I know not what waits beyond this hell. Perhaps this is a test. Perhaps someday, we will cast the devils out for good.” “This is hell. This is our punishment, our Tribulation. God has abandoned this world. The faithful have already gone on to their reward, and he has left the rest of us here, at the mercy of the demons and the devils. The sins of our fathers have passed on to their children, and their children’s children, and it will continue to be so until this world is completely destroyed. So it doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not, because He is not here.” Leave a comment and lets talk about '
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