Review: The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa

Goodreads Summary: Allison Sekemoto has vowed to rescue her creator, Kanin, who is being held hostage and tortured by the psychotic vampire Sarren. The call of blood leads her back to the beginning—New Covington and the Fringe, and a vampire prince who wants her dead yet may become her wary ally.

Even as Allie faces shocking revelations and heartbreak like she’s never known, a new strain of the Red Lung virus that decimated humanity is rising to threaten human and vampire alike.

 Goodreads / The Book Depository

Genre: Dystopian, fantasy
Pages: 446
Publisher: Harlequin Teen

First Line: "I smelled blood as soon as I walked into the room."

Favorite Quote: "The lesser of two evils was still evil."

Review: 

I've read all of Julie Kagawa's books, so I already suspected this book would be filled with the same sense of magic and awesomeness as her previous works. When you pick up something by one of your favorite authors, you expect the best. So far, Kagawa has never disappointed me, and I continue to praise her beautiful storytelling and creativity. Thankfully, I bought a paperback copy of The Immortal Rules after the publishers decided to to a cover redesign, so my copies actually match (if only I could say the same about a lot of my other series collections). Though they've grown on me a little, I still think the cover art is a little blah, especially when you compare it to the gorgeous art on the Iron Fey book covers. I guess the moon and the tree branches are a little intriguing if you really look at them, but there's no way they would grab my attention if I was just casually browsing in a store.

In my review of The Immortal Rules, I noticed how much darker the tone is in the Blood of Eden books compared to her other series. I thought that a couple times while I was reading The Eternity Cure as well. It's a bit different, but perfect for this story in particular. The atmosphere really adds a lot of intensity to the story, and I could really feel the depth of the despair most of the characters felt at least once or twice. I still absolutely love the world-building - Julie Kagawa is a master of creating interesting, detailed worlds. 

The Nevernever was enchanting, and this vampire/dystopian one is really amazing too. I would never want to go there, of course, but I could see it all in my head so clearly. I was almost always completely absorbed in what was going on. That's part of the reason I prefer The Eternity Cure over The Immortal Rules; this sequel is actually a decently thick book, but the pages just fly by.  it felt more fast-paced.

Now, moving onto the love triangle . . . oh, wait. What I meant to say was the non-existent love triangle. Color me shocked, but this is a book where I actually wished there was one. I still consider myself a member of the Team Kanin group, and in the first book I was really hoping something would happen romantically between him and Allison, but now I honestly don't think it will happen. I don't know why this series even has teams, because Kanin is very much portrayed as a father figure, much as I wish he wasn't. There wasn't even a single hint of attraction or anything other than a completely platonic relationship there. I'm probably going to have to accept that my imaginary Kanin/Allison ship isn't going to happen.

I don't mind Zeke as a character, but honestly, he is a bit boring. I appreciate the kindness he shows in the face of such a vicious and backstabbing world, but he doesn't exactly have a memorable personality. It also doesn't help that he's pretty vulnerable most of the time, what with being human and everything. Plus, he'd die much more quickly than Allison, since he's mortal and incredibly dead-set against becoming a vampire. Compared to Ash, the main love interest in the Iron Fey books, Zeke makes me want to go to sleep, which is unfortunate really.

Surprisingly, my favorite character in this whole book was Jackal. He has a much larger here than he did in The Immortal Rules. I've seen him compared to Puck in many different reviews (yes, I'm comparing everything to the Iron Fey again, sorry), and I have to say, the two are actually pretty similar. Both of them are easily the comedic relief of their respective stories; the only real difference is that Jackal is a much....eviller person. I still don't completely trust him, but perhaps he isn't quite as bad (maybe) as we were led to believe before. I hope he's around a lot more in the future, even if he is a bad influence on Allison most of the time, what with encouraging her to kill people a lot.

The villain of the story, Sarren, was a complete psycho who frequently made me shiver. Why does he keep talking about songs and melodies all the time? Kagawa ends this on a pretty major cliffhanger, so I'm very excited to get my hands on the last book in the series, The Forever Song (does that title tie into Sarren's craziness?) next year. Some things will probably not go the way I want them to - namely, the romance - but I have no doubt that it will be epic. 

5 stars 

Books in this series: 

1. The Immortal Rules
2. The Eternity Cure
3. The Forever Song

Other opinions: 

Book'd Out 
A Reader of Fictions
Respiring Thoughts