Review: The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

Hardcover, 504 pgs.

Published April 24th, 2012 by Harlequin Teen

Source: Gift

In a future world, Vampires reign. Humans are blood cattle. And one girl will search for the key to save humanity.

Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a vampire city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten.

Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them. The vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself is attacked—and given the ultimate choice. Die… or become one of the monsters.

Faced with her own mortality, Allie becomes what she despises most. To survive, she must learn the rules of being immortal, including the most important: go long enough without human blood, and you will go mad.

Then Allie is forced to flee into the unknown, outside her city walls. There she joins a ragged band of humans who are seeking a legend—a possible cure to the disease that killed off most of humankind and created the rabids, the mindless creatures who threaten humans and vampires alike.

But it isn't easy to pass for human. Especially not around Zeke, who might see past the monster inside her. And Allie soon must decide what—and who—is worth dying for.

I'm not a fan of this cover (though it is growing on me) and I wasn't super eager to read about vampires.  Now I do love a good dystopian, but the whole vampire thing had me forgetting about that aspect of it.  But the fact that it's Julie Kagawa and I know she's a genius, had me eager to read it.  Once I started hearing how good it was I was absolutely dying to pick it up.  And the second I did I was loving it.  Right from the first sentence I was drawn into this dark and terrifying dystopian world where vampires rule.  

The characters were awesome, the story was awesome, it all completely blew me away.  And as you'll probably see millions of reviews on this book I think maybe I'll just gush like a maniac.  I loved the twists and turns and not knowing what could happen, what decisions Allison would make.  I was surprised again and again. 

I saw in other reviews that people thought there was too much info and not enough action.  I disagree.  I thought it was a perfect balance.  I never felt bored at all.  It's a chunk of a book (504 pages) but if I had had the time I would have read it in one sitting.  It was absolutely incredible!  To me this book makes the EPIC status.  I very very highly recommend to lovers of dystopia, vampires and epic story telling.  And I think Julie has me even craving more vampires books...

The Iron Knight Book Tour: Q&A with Julie Kagawa

Today I am super excited to have Julie Kagawa on for a Q&A.  This is just one stop on The Iron Knight book tour.  You can find my review of this fabulous book as well as an excerpt HERE.  I'm a huge fan of this series and if you haven't started it yet, what are you waiting for?!  Get on that right away!  But for now let's welcome Julie to the blog!


You’ve written a few novellas in the series. Which do you find harder to write, the short stories or the full novels and why?
They’re both challenging for different reasons. The full novels, by virtue of their length, take a lot of time to plan out, plot, and write. But strangely, it’s the lack of length in a short story that makes it harder to write; you don’t have a lot of time to get what you need done. I don’t really have a favorite of the two, though the novellas are a little less work overall.


You are an admitted gamer. If approached, would you prefer a movie version or a gaming version of your Iron Fey series?
As much as I love gaming, I would have to say movie. (Because if the movie is a success they’ll make a game anyway, right?)


When writing about the Fey, there are a lot of tricks and loopholes involved, especially where Grimalkin is concerned. How do you manage to keep them all straight?
Thankfully, my husband is very good at catching inconsistencies. He is the first to read the finished book, and will always tell me if something doesn’t work or make sense. (He’s also threatened to rip the semi-colon key off the keyboard, for all the semi-colons he’s had to take out, lol!)


Do you find it harder to write battle scenes or love scenes?
Oh, love scenes, definitely. I have such a hard time with romance, believe it or not. Give me a good sword fight or bloody, violent battle any day.

Thanks so much for stopping by Julie!  Now this is where I once again put in my plea, I want Puck to have his own story!  He deserves it after all he went through! 

Book Tour: The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa Review and Excerpt

Today I'm on the tour for The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa and have my review below as well as an excerpt.  Come back tomorrow for a Q&A with Julie as well!

 The Iron Knight (Iron Fey #4) by Julie Kagawa

paperback, 386 pgs.

published: Oct. 25, 2011 by Harlequin Teen

Reading Level: Young Adult

Source: Media Muscle & Harlequin

My name—my True Name—is Ashallayn'darkmyr Tallyn.I am the last remaining son of Mab, Queen of the Unseelie Court. And I am dead to her.
My fall began, as many stories do, with a girl…

My thoughts on the series in general, no spoilers:

There's not much to say here other then if you haven't started this series yet, you must!  Full of action, romance and adventure it'll have you on your toes the entire time.  Completely unique and unlike anything else out there, the Iron Fey series is unbelievable.  Read it!

My review of this book, will have spoilers from the previous books:

I love Ash, love him.  And a story all from his POV?  AMAZING.   We see the worst and the best of Ash in this one.  Not that he's bad in it, but we do get some back-story.  Just a little though.  And it's definitely important to the progression we see Ash go through, as we watch him grow and become someone better.  Although we've already watched that through the series it's easy to forget his bad side as we become enamored (or at least that's how it was in my case) but this book gives us a reminder.

The beginning was a little bit slow but I loved the banter between Ash and Puck.  And Grimalkin, can't forget him!  As the story progresses two more characters come into the picture that are there for Ash, to help him on his quest.  They ended up being very important and my heart went out to more then just Ash as they all had to go through a lot (well, maybe not Grimalkin so much ;)  About halfway through the book got to where it was pretty impossible to put down.  Constant action and intense situations kept me from putting it down until the very last page.

Julie threw in some twists.  She managed to kind of trick me and I was feeling a bit furious about the direction of the book when it suddenly jumped back on track (see, she totally tricked me!) and I was right back in love with everything.  And with Ash.  And Puck (you know just a little ;)  As a matter of fact I loved Puck so much that I now demand a Puck story.  DEMAND.  He needs his own.  He deserves his own after everything he went through. (You hear me Julie?)

Other then it feeling just a touch slow in the beginning I think this book was perfect.  It was one long, very scary adventure and in the end I was very very happy with how things ended up.  I'm definitely one who needs a HEA so I could hug Julie for adding this book to what was originally a trilogy.  

Find the author:

Website

Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions expressed are my own and I was not paid or influenced in any way.




And I have an excerpt for you guys!

Even if it takes a hundred years, I will be
with her in the end. Another piece of the puzzle lurks somewhere
in this dreary swampland. The only difficulty lies in
finding it.
Thankfully, despite Puck’s constant griping and complaining,
the jabberwocks decided not to see what the racket was
about and come stalking through the marsh to find us.

Now head to Fiction State of Mind for the next part of the excerpt!