Allie is haunted in her sleep by her sire’s suffering. After Kanin was captured by the sadistic Sarren, Allie left Eden behind to seek him out and rescue whatever is left of him. She wasn’t welcome there; Eden is a city free of vampires, a city working towards a cure. When she finds herself following her instincts to Washington DC, she finds herself faced with an old foe and begrudgingly coming to an agreement to work together to find Kanin as well as the cure for rabidism. If it even exists.

I absolutely love this series. Whilst the world from the first book was still imprinted on my mind, I had forgotten who was who, so the recaps in the first few chapters were helpful. I am often annoyed with info-dumps but these were spread out and, well, I needed them. I was soon sucked back into Allie’s story. In The Immortal Rules, the history of rabidism was explained, monsters born out of an attempt to cure the Red Lung virus with vampire blood. Now, they are faced with a resurgence of the disease; a depleted population at risk once more.

Whilst Allie felt very isolated and lonely in the first book, this story becomes much more about family. Kanin takes on the role as a father figure and Jackal is the brother Allie wishes she never had. Yet the family unit evolves and she struggles to come to terms with the idea of losing any of them. She has left her street rat attitude behind somewhere along the way, and is allowing herself to care for others. The typical young adult relationship stuff is pushed to the side however it’s interesting to see the reverse of the normal vampire/human relationship. Usually it’s the human girl getting herself involved with a vampire, but here, it’s a human boy. There was maybe one slight bit of mushiness, but overall it’s a fantastically dark world and story.

My favourite character was, rather surprisingly, Jackal. He’s tough and sarcastic and appears to be looking out just for himself but there’s an underlying sibling rivalry to it all. It’s hard to reconcile this Jackal with his actions in the previous book. Several of the characters had moments where they went from “I must kill you” to grudging acceptance in a short space of time, although the reader is never allowed to forget any of the characters’ wrongdoings. I didn’t want him to turn out evil, even if Allie didn’t trust him.

I cannot wait for the next book! I keep telling myself I won’t read trilogies until they’re complete but this was just too tempting.