Tagged: rabids
The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa
(Cover picture courtesy of (un)Conventional Bookviews.)
VENGEANCE WILL BE HERS
Allison Sekemoto once struggled with the question: human or monster?
With the death of her love, Zeke, she has her answer.
MONSTER
Allie will embrace her cold vampire side to hunt down and end Sarren, the psychopathic vampire who murdered Zeke. But the trail is bloody and long, and Sarren has left many surprises for Allie and her companions—her creator, Kanin, and her blood brother, Jackal. The trail is leading straight to the one place they must protect at any cost—the last vampire-free zone on Earth, Eden. And Sarren has one final, brutal shock in store for Allie.
In a ruined world where no life is sacred and former allies can turn on you in one heartbeat, Allie will face her darkest days. And if she succeeds, triumph is short-lived in the face of surviving forever alone.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
I seriously had my doubts about Julie Kagawa being able to end her Blood of Eden trilogy well. It’s a very complicated world with more problems than you can count so how could she possibly come to a satisfying conclusion? Even when reading it I had my doubts but I didn’t need to. Julie Kagawa pulled it off once again.
I’m seriously impressed. With that horrible cliffhanger at the end of The Eternity Cure I was very anxious about getting my hands on the final book. Allison is still brooding from Zeke’s death and she’s turning into the monster that her brother Jackal is, the kind of vampire Kanin tried to prevent her from becoming. I can’t go into much detail without some major spoilers but let’s just say Allie’s true colours show through when she finally decides what kind of vampire she wants to be.
The plot is insane. There are so many twists and turns that I could barely keep up. Some were completely unexpected whereas others were fairly predictable but overall it was an exciting, surprising plot. The ending wasn’t abrupt in the way that some authors end trilogies, but instead there was a nice detailed epilogue that gives you an idea of what will happen to this horrifying world of humans, vampires and rabids. There is, of course, a little ambiguity left but I was satisfied by the fact that most loose ends were tied off.
As usual, the characters were amazing. Allie changed so much over the course of the story and we learned quite a bit about Kanin and Jackal. All the characters that the plot centered around were well-developed and I really connected with them on a deeper level compared to the previous books. I was honestly very surprised about how connected I felt to the characters because I haven’t been emotionally involved in a book for at least a month now. It was a nice change.
Basically, if you’ve read the previous two books you’re going to love The Forever Song. I know I did. So go ahead and pre-order it! It releases on April 15 of this year.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Reign of Blood by Alexia Purdy
(Cover picture courtesy of Alexia Purdy’s Blog.)
“Never tease anything that wants to eat you. My name is April Tate and my blood is the new gold. Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I’m just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise…”
In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she’s willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her.
[Full disclosure: I was sent a free ebook by Alexia Purdy in exchange for an honest review.]
With the vampire over-saturation of only a couple of years ago, it’s difficult to write about vampires. What’s even harder in general is reading about vampires as I love vampires that are portrayed as stone cold killing machines. Most YA vampires at not like that at all.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by Alexia Purdy’s vampires. There are rabids, which are stone cold killing machines with few emotions or thoughts and then there are vampires as we’ve come to know them: sophisticated, intelligent and strong, but still undeniably human. Both types of vampires drink blood, but with humans in short supply how they adapt is fascinating. The thinking vampires also have a few more traits I found interesting but won’t really get into because they’re spoilers.
What I liked the most about Reign of Blood was April herself. In the beginning, she sees the world in black and white: humans good, vampires evil. Simple, right? Obviously by the end this viewpoint has changed drastically but I love how she changes over a longer period of time. April doesn’t wake up one day and think “Hey, vampires are okay”. No, she gradually comes to befriend some of them and learns that maybe she isn’t entirely innocent herself in this world.
Characters like Blake and Rye were interesting and just when I was getting ready to cringe (two males, one female = love triangle), Alexia Purdy spared me. She even sort of inverted the love triangle trope by the end, but I’m not going to get into that. Either way, Reign of Blood was action-packed but still slow enough that character development and world-building were present. My only complaint about the book is that the dialogue can be quite stiff at times. I don’t know any seventeen-year-old, let alone one that lives with only her mother and baby brother with no human contact, that speaks like that. But the dialogue problem was minor compared to the world-building, character development and pacing.
I give this book 4/5 stars.