Synopsis from Goodreads.com
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.
My review
Although this is classed as a young adult book, I didn't think it was really. OK so the main character was a teenager, but I felt it veered more towards adult urban fantasy than just YA. I'm not a great fan of YA books in general, but I am a fan of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series, so I was hoping this would be as enjoyable, but I was wrong. It was better than the Iron ?Fey series, much better.
Set in a future world where vampires run the world and humans are either bloodslaves, registered to a vampire master, or Unregistered scavengers living on the brink of the vampire cities, doing whatever they can to survive, begging, stealing, even killing for food.
Allie is one such Unregistered, who hates the vampires with a passion - her mother had been a registered and died through a combination of an illness and donating her monthly supply of blood to the vampire king of their city. Ever since then Allie has lived in the abandoned buildings of the city and has a little gang of her own. One of her jobs is to hunt out food and when she can find none in her usual scavenging places, she decides to go past the city walls to the Ruins, where the Rabids live - vampires turned into rabid, flesh eating, crazy zombies.
Allie's luck was in to start with - she found a hidden basement full of tinned food and bottled water. She managed to get back to the refuge she's living in after a close encounter with a vampire, who for some reason doesn't bite or kill her. She convinces her gang to go back for the food, but that's where her luck almost runs out. A very close encounter with some Rabids, leaves her with 2 very simple choices - either die or turn into a vampire, the thing she despises the most. She chooses the latter of the two evils and becomes that which she never wanted to be.
Her life takes a turn of strange events and she meets up with a roaming group of humans, none of whom suspects what she is. This group are on the way to find some human only place called Eden, which may or may not exist and Allie travels with them as far as she can, but the Hunger in her keeps rising. She knows she must drink human blood soon before she turns into a raving monster, so she does, only to get caught and cast out.
Things go from bad to worse for this group and Allie helps them as much as she can, even if they really don't deserve her help. Along the way she soon discovers that she may be a vampire, but she sure doesn't have to be a monster.
I really enjoyed this book and can't wait for the next one in this series. I doubt it would happen but I would like to see if Allie and Zeke ever meet up again. I know Allie has to go and help Kanin, her sire, but will she do that alone or with the help of another vampire?
I would like to thank the publishers and author for allowing me to receive it for free through NetGalley.
No comments:
Post a Comment