"The Immortal Rules" by Julie Kagawa

Oh. My. Goodness! I am not a freaking vamp book lover, I swear I'm not, but Julie Kagawa got me breathing this story!!! So much that I couldn't get enough of it!!! Seriously, I'm so amazed that she could pull it off, I am almost speechless. Almost. Because I've got a review to write. And here it comes...

The writing style was superior, making the story flow smoothly from one chapter to the next. The characters, and I mean ALL of them, were developed completely like separate identities, as it should be. Each one had a different, distinguished personality, and even though they existed in a fictional world, they all felt realistic. I could feel their emotions - the pain, the hunger... the love. Their thoughts were my thoughts. It was simply brilliant.

Sure, it wasn't original. I mean, the vamp theme is almost completely covered by thousands of books out there, but when a story is good - it's good. Some people say the development was slow, but I think that if it moved on any faster, I would not have gotten so much into the story. The slow development just totally worked for this one.

So here we have a dystopian world marked by a plague that killed most people and left vamps to rule the little population that remained. Some people became "cattle" of their own will, others were forced to do the blood letting. And still others rebelled. Allison Sekemoto, an orphaned teenage girl, belonged to that last group. Until her world turned upside down and from hunted she became the hunter.

But unlike all other vamps out there, Allison decided that she'd hold onto the little humanity left in her, instead of turning into the monster everyone thought she was. Can you imagine how strong willed you need to be in order to keep a hold of your natural instincts, when all they want you to do is kill?

There were times when I thought Julie would sacrifice the story for the sake of saving her characters, but no. Unlike some authors out there, Julie actually had a backbone. The natural instincts she punctuated weren't the slightest bit ignored or diminished. No. When the vampire was hungry, it didn't care who it fed from. Be it a brother, a lover, a friend. Now that is what I call being true to the story.

And with all that I just want to say "Thank you, Julie, for starting such an amazing vamp series, that even got me (a hater of that genre) pulled in completely."

My rating is

Note: I received this book from Netgalley for review.