Wednesday Book Haul - 04.17.13

Amazon Book Haul

Joyland by Stephen King (pre-order)
Dr. Sleep by Stephen King (pre-order)
Omega Days (Volume 1) by John L Campbell
Prized by Caragh M O'Brian
Angelfall by Susan Ee
The Farm by Emily McKay
This is Not A Test by Courtney Summers
The Longest Road by AS Thompson
The First Days (As the World Dies) by Rhiannon Frater
Seige (As the World Dies) by Rhiannon Frater
Fighting to Survive (As the World Dies) by Rhiannon Frater

The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden book 1) by Julie Kagawa

I got this book on a whim for my birthday. I jokingly told my husband he should buy it for me and he took me seriously so I took it :)

This is about vampires. A post apocalyptic world of vampires.
Allison is just a normal girl in a not so normal world. Fighting and scavenging to stay alive. She lives on the Fringe. It surrounds a vampire city. In this new world you can choose to become registered, which means you must give a monthly allowance of blood to the vampires.. or stay unregistered, which means you have no food, no shelter.. and if you go missing no one cares.
Allison finds a mother load of food while out scavenging for her and her friends. On a trip back out with everyone something goes wrong and she is left with a choice.. to die or to become a vampire. She chooses to live.
We get to see the training that she must go through to be able to survive as a vampire.. just to be cast out on her own by unforeseen circumstances (at least by her).
She comes across a group of wanderers led by a priest who has lost his faith. Can she keep her humanity and stay with these people.. or will the darkness inside her take over?

I really enjoyed this book. It's so nice to see vampires acting like vampires should for once. I'm patiently waiting the release of book 2. There's an excerpt at the end of this book that gives you an idea of what's going to happen next.. and the few pages they give you makes you want to read it now.

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

"In an America devastated by war and plague, the only way to survive is to keep moving."

I honestly bought this book for the cover. As we all know, I'm a huge fan of YA Dystopian novels. I just really, really like the "this could possibly happen in the future" type of books. They seem so much more real to me than fantasy type stuff.

This was a really, really easy read. Very short (278 pages) and I finished it in about 3 hours (while working). I only rated this book 2 stars on Goodreads simply because the whole book was a build up to a one chapter ending. The book follows what happens after the United States is taken over by another country and a wide spread flu virus kills most of the population. People prefer to roam instead of settling because you just can't trust anyone anymore. The characters were all developed pretty well. We see what it's like for a boy to roam his entire life and then be thrust into "civilized" living after an accident with his father. Will he decide to stay and create a new life, or go back to the only thing he knows and feels comfortable with?

This book is definitely targeted toward a younger audience, but it's worth a couple hours of your time. Had it been a little longer and had it dived more deeply into what happened to everyone else I would have easily given it 3 or 4 stars.