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The Eternity Cure, by Julie Kagawa, continues Allie Sekemoto’s journey as she searches for her mentor in a race against time.

What I liked:

• To reiterate what I stated about The Immortal Rules, I really appreciate the way Kagawa grounds Allie’s character in realness. This is not to say Allie is always pragmatic, but I feel her thoughts and actions in different situations are consistent with how a forced-to-grow-up-too-quickly teen would react, how I would maybe have reacted in her shoes, and I continue to find her remarkably relatable as a person. I’m not sure I would go so far as to say Allie feels very Japanese or nikkei as a character, since her ethnicity has thus far never been specified on the page, but I wonder if creating this character felt natural to Kagawa in the sense that she may have been writing from a shared space of identity. It’s been interesting for me to realize how imposing my own assumptions on Allie as a nikkei reader has likely significantly influenced my response to this series, in a positive way. I wonder if I would have enjoyed this series as much if not for the possibility of Allie being nikkei.
• Zeke’s loss is a major blow to Allie and an obvious cliffhanger for the final book in the series. As I mentioned previously, I am not a huge fan of Zeke as a character, but respect how he provides a foil to Allie’s battle with her ‘monster’ self. I wonder if Kagawa planned Zeke’s fate from the beginning of the series, or if it occurred to her later as a way to keep the plot fresh. I’m very interested to see how Allie’s journey progresses without Zeke at her side. Their romance scenes felt a little cliché to me, so I won’t really miss those, but this could also be because I’m past the target age for this book. It’s quite possible my tween or teen self would have loved Allie and Zeke’s romance.
• Kanin lives! I like Kanin, though in light of what he is guilty of, I feel Kagawa shapes his character in a way that plays to the reader’s sympathies, when he could easily be portrayed like another Sarren. He does seem incredibly compassionate and patient, given the length of his life and the breadth of his experiences, but since I don’t know any vampires in real life, I’m not sure if this is ‘realistic’ or not. Jackal’s personality is much more in line with what I would expect of predator immortals in a dog-eat-dog world. For the record, I do like Jackal as well and I think Kagawa intends him to be likeable, to a certain extent. He reminds me of the characters in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Sixth World series. His unpredictability is a refreshing addition to Allie, Zeke, and Kanin, all of whom are clearly intended to be ‘good’ characters.

What I learned:

• Although I read across genres, I probably read less dystopian/post-apocalyptic novels than other types of novels. I mention this because I noticed the contrast between the settings in Blood of Eden compared to, say, S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad series (epic fantasy, for those who are unfamiliar), and how Kagawa gets away with comparatively fewer descriptions because her books are tightly focused on plot. In Kagawa’s case, I also imagine extremely detailed descriptions of what seems to be a grimly monotonous post-apocalyptic landscape would quickly bore readers (The Two Towers, anyone?). To be clear, I never felt Kagawa provided less description than necessary – it was simply interesting for me to recognize this distinction between her books and some of the other books I’ve recently read.

Questions I had:

• I noticed this a bit in the first book, but more strongly in this book. Sarren is consistently described as “crazy” and “psycho” in the text, which, while perhaps an accurate assessment of his mental state, is probably language that might not pass editorial inspection if this book was to be published right now. Did the question of correct disability terminology ever arise during the editorial process for this manuscript? Although I doubt many readers sympathize with Sarren, and, indeed, I don’t believe Kagawa intended his character to be a relatable one, I do wonder how readers with mental health problems, who themselves may have been described as “crazy” or “psycho” by people in their lives, reacted to this terminology. Since, as previously mentioned, Allie is never explicitly identified as Japanese or nikkei, it seems a stretch to link this language to perceptions of mental health in nikkei spaces, but I do hope no nikkei readers were harmed by seeing Allie express these thoughts.
• Does copyediting happen all over again when a book is reprinted? I believe my copy is a reprint and I definitely felt it could have benefited from another pair of eyes on the text. There were multiple misspellings and omitted words throughout the book, occurring frequently enough to be noticeable.

Follow-up:

• Naturally, I will be reading the third and final book in the series. I’m still on the fence about whether to read Kagawa’s other books.