Review Detail

Kagawa’s The Immortal Rules was probably the first vampire novel I actually enjoyed. I liked it enough to try out her Iron Fey series, which I didn’t like at all. And because of my bad experience with Ash and Puck and Meghan, my enthusiasm for The Eternity Cure waned a bit. Because if I know one thing about Julie Kagawa, I knew that she is prone to making plot decisions I wholeheartedly disagree with. I didn’t want to put myself through that torture. In any case, I was somewhat dreading this book.

However, the Blood of Eden series has, in my opinion, one important thing that the Iron Fey books did not: the quality of absorbing, mindless entertainment (well, the Iron Fey had that quality, too, I guess). I found that once I got started on The Eternity Cure, it was impossible to put down. And even though Kagawa had me rolling my eyes and shaking my head, I still enjoyed this book—perhaps in spite of my better judgment.

Because the thing is, I cannot, in all honesty, say that this book is a great one. Kagawa’s prose is decent but sloppy in places, her plot is one jumbled mess of trope and cliché soup, and her characters lack development as a general group.

Why, then, did I give The Eternity Cure such a high rating? Simple. It was fun. Often, “fun” is an adjective used to describe books when no other word comes to mind. It’s a stand in for “not terribly great, but worth reading if nothing else is available”. And maybe that’s what I mean with this book, though perhaps I liked this more than that. But this book was fun—enjoyable, entertaining, and dramatic. Easy to read, easy to forget. I liked this, but I didn’t love it.

As I mentioned, the storyline here is rather messy. There really is no central conflict, as thoughout this book, Kagawa would introduce one problem, have her characters run off to solve it, then once that task was complete, present another problem to solve. Personally, I tend to prefer a plot with more internal structure—a single, driving goal or mission or struggle. Subplots are fine, and some side trips are acceptable. But this book felt more than a recollection of an adventure than a plot-driven action novel, which it should have been, in my opinion.

And, when plot fails, readers generally turn to characterization for a book’s main strength. Yet while I had fun with the cast of characters in The Eternity Cure, I can’t say they were anything special.

First, everyone in this book is a walking paperdoll cutout of a common and well-known archetype. Kanin, the tortured soul who seeks moral absolution. Zeke, the self-sacrificing angel who is loyal and perfect. Allie, the strong, determined heroine who’s also charmingly naïve. Jackal, the double-crossing sometimes ally. Sarren, the vampire turned insane because of the injustices done to him in the past.

Really, there was absolutely no spark of originality in these people. Same boring stock characters, just with a vampire twist. And, especially in Zeke’s case, they were very flat and two-dimensional, showing no growth or depth at any point in the book.

It may seem, then, that between a disastrously disorganized plot and stereotypical characterization, that I have no reason to like The Eternity Cure at all. Probably, I don’t. But I enjoyed myself anyways. Julie Kagawa will probably never be a favorite author of mine, simply because I don’t see much talent in her beyond the ability to weave an addicting-yet-flawed story. But as far as entertainment on a rainy day goes, I could have done much worse than this book.