Lover Revealed

Lover Revealed
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: March, 2007

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Position in Series: Book 4 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Butch, Marissa
Sequel Bait: Vishous, Rehvenge, John
New Characters: Blaylock, Qhuinn, Xhex
Brief Appearance: Beth, Wrath, Havers
Back Burnered: Phury, Rhage, Mary

J.R. Ward continues to delve into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, vampire warriors charged with saving their species from extinction. Book 4 - Lover Revealed - picks up a short while after the ending of the previous title, Lover Awakened.

In Dark Lover, Butch O’Neal gained a place of particular importance as the first human ever granted admission into the Black Dagger Brotherhood inner circle. An ex-homicide detective who abandoned his human life completely, Butch is privy to their secrets, shares the same enemies, and counts the brothers even as his own family. However, their reluctance to let him fight side by side with them frustrates him endlessly. Too, his unrequited love for female vampire Marissa is a constant source of pain, leaving him to take solace in bottomless glasses of scotch. The eternal outsider looking in, he’s self-destructing at an alarming rate.

Marissa has spent her entire life feeling rejected. Her first husband, the Vampire King Wrath, cast her aside for his mate, Beth, without having ever truly made her his wife in the physical sense. The vampire aristocracy of which Marissa is a member wants nothing to do with her. And Butch, the human male who seemed so interested in her only months before, turned down her request to come calling on her. Marissa sees her life as meaningless, she fits in nowhere and has no hope for things to change in the future.

One night, Butch finally gets his wish. He finds himself face to face with a band of lessers in process of attacking a vampire civilian. Before reinforcements can arrive, Butch is taken by the lessers and tortured to within an inch of his life. As additional insult, the lesser leader the Omega infects Butch with an unspeakable evil. While Marissa manages to give him reason to live and pulls him through his near-death experience, Butch is left uncertain as to what he has now become: an enemy of his friends in the BDB or an instrument they can use in their fight against the lessers.

As Butch struggles with the changes in his life and navigating his growing romance with Marissa, Vishous is fighting his own demons. Devastated over what has been done to Butch, Vishous tries to understand why the visions that had always haunted him have gone dry. Too, as Butch grows closer to Marissa, Vishous feels that he is losing his best friend. He can’t understand why everyone around him has managed to find a connection that seems to elude him entirely.

The fourth entry in the BDB continues to pull you into the world of these vampire warriors. However, LR focuses less on the BDB as a unit and more on the relationships between a couple of key characters. While they all appear in some brief form or another, the group dynamic from the previous books is missing in LR. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of other characters having found mates and having less time to spend with the guys, but I find it kind of sad. Rhage takes a pretty hefty backseat, as did Mary and Zsadist. Phury was barely mentioned at all. I found that a surprise given how low Phury had sunk by the end of Lover Awakened.
John continues to deal with the murder of Wellsie and the disappearance of Tohrment, trying to channel his grief and rage into his growing skills as a warrior. He watches as his friend (newcomer Blaylock) survives his transition and wonders desperately when he will finally become a true warrior. Lash continues to torment John, and despite warnings from instructor Zsadist to avoid retaliation, John finds it harder and harder to hold back his growing fury. As a concession to the loss of the BDB male-only society as the warriors find mates, John’s new friendships with Blaylock and Qhuinn seem a set-up for a new order of warriors to fill the gap.

In Dark Lover, Marissa is presented as not much more than a cardboard waif, a beautiful yet helpless victim of Wrath’s indifference. Through the next two titles – Lover Eternal and Lover Awakened – she didn’t grow much beyond that image of a virginal princess not sturdy enough to survive a strong gust of wind. I was anxious going into LR that Marissa would remain that way, and I wasn’t sure I could like her. In fact, I blame this wariness about Marissa as a heroine for my lack of excitement about Lover Revealed. I was going to need a lot of convincing to believe that a man as great as Butch would ever love someone as weak-kneed as Marissa.

To her credit, Marissa did grow a backbone. When confronted with choosing between the man that she loved and her brother’s insistence that she was far too good for the mere human Butch, Marissa stood her ground. Her rebelliousness cost her the only home and security she had ever known, but she did not lay down and give up. Rather, she identified her strengths and used them to help other vampires that she recognized were in far worse shape than she herself. Although, I never got the impression that Butch’s obsession with Marissa was based on anything more substantial than her exceptional beauty, purity and ability to deliver a killer kiss. At least she stepped up to equal previous heroines Beth, Mary and Bella as far as compelling females go. I’ve determined that Ward’s strength will always be in her heroes – which are, indeed, to die for – and her weakness in heroines.

A pattern is emerging from all of the romantic relationships presented in the BDB series: it seems that the attraction a male feels for his future mate is based almost entirely on an intangible, soul-mate like instinct he feels upon first meeting her. It’s not that any particular heroine does something worthy of earning the love of one of the warriors. It’s more that he feels an immediate and inexplicable attraction to a particular female as soon as he lays eyes on her and only later begins to learn of her redeeming qualities. The selection of a mate and the subsequent urge to bond seems based on something akin to pheromones rather than personality or deeds. This reinforces the vampire species as more animalistic than human aspect of Ward’s particular type of vampire. However, as a human female, it leaves me a bit frustrated. Because Ward’s heroes are so over the top desirable, I feel they deserve equally fabulous females that must prove their worth before inspiring the men to give themselves so completely, body, heart and soul.

My main issue with Lover Revealed is how the relationship between, oddly enough, Vishous and Butch is handled. By the end of the book, I felt somewhat betrayed because, frankly, the wrong couple got the happily ever after.

The sorrow and despair Vishous feels as he watches his best friend develop a romantic relationship with Marissa is palpable. My heart broke along with Vishous’s, and I would argue that the unexplored romance between Vishous and Butch was far better rendered than the actual one that existed between Marissa and Butch. I felt as if in Ward’s heart, she truly believed that Vishous and Butch belonged together, but her head argued that readers would never buy a homosexual relationship, either within the constructs of the manly-man world of the BDB or even in the bigger picture romance genre as a whole. It’s as if a mandate had been established that all members of the BDB will find love in the form of a female, regardless of how their natures or desires truly lie. Therefore, Vishous’s love for Butch will be left both unexplored and unrequited, explained away as something deeper than friendship but purely asexual. Ward has even gone so far as to offer a mystical connection between the two – a way that one is necessary to the other to become a complete fighting unit – in order to keep them closer than most of the other members of the brotherhood who are not related yet still avoid labeling such a relationship as romantic.

I find this incredibly sad because it is so infrequent that I come across two male characters who can so completely sell me on a romantic relationship between them. I don’t read romance specifically designated as homosexual, but I have no problems at all when same sex relationships develop organically because of the natures of the characters in the story. For example, I find Suzanne Brockmann’s Jules Cassidy a most intriguing character, his sexual orientation secondary to everything else interesting about him. Vishous and Butch are very masculine, tough, kick-ass warriors. Allowing them a relationship with each other would not change that image for me. Their friendship has been shown in such a way that an attraction between them is not only natural, but completely keeping in character. Forcing Butch into a relationship with Marissa that doesn’t move me simply because a homosexual relationship with Vishous is taboo by romance novel standards is tragic because it goes against what I’ve come to believe so far about these two men and what they mean to each other.

I have no idea what Ward’s intentions for these characters really were, or if I’m reading more into the relationship between Butch and Vishous than she ever meant to convey. I’m not sure if it’s a compliment to her writing or a criticism that my take on the feelings Vishous has for Butch are far more than fraternal, but that’s where I land. I can’t quite be happy for Butch and Marissa because I will always feel that he’s with the wrong person.

That being said, the teaser excerpt for Vishous’s story, Lover Unbound, that appears in the back of LR has me quite excited to see what happens to him, and I fully admit that I might change my mind after reading LU.

Ward continues to offer one of the best series out there. I literally mark my calendar in anticipation for the next book, and I’m glad to read that she has no intention of stopping any time soon.

I will add one bit of advice for Ward, if she cares to hear it. Please - please - enough with the label name dropping. I found it pertinent to world building in the first book, slightly annoying in the second and third, and downright irritating in LR. I get the picture - that some of the characters dress well - and I have no idea what the various name brands mean, so they are meaningless to me. All they do is bring me out of the story when I'm reading. Too, I would imagine that such specifics will date these books fairly quickly, which would be a great shame.

Rating: Held My Attention
Series Status: Still strong, hoping for better heroines and a new plot structure

Lover Awakened

Lover Awakened
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: September, 2006

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Place in Series: Book 3 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Zsadist, Bella
Sequel Bait: Butch O’Neal, Phury, John
New Characters: Rehvenge, Sarelle, Lash
Back Burnered: Marissa, Mary, Beth, Rhage

I confess to having had an almost obsessive need to get my hands on Lover Awakened as soon as it hit store shelves. Zsadist has emerged as the Black Dagger Brotherhood warrior who most intrigues me, his damaged soul and seemingly irredeemable nature making him my favorite kind of hero. I was not disappointed, and I find Lover Awakened the best title in the series to date.

LA picks up about six weeks after the ending of Lover Eternal. Aristocratic vampire Bella has been kidnapped by a lesser who sees her as the exact image of his dead wife. The sadistic David keeps her trapped in a 3-foot diameter pipe buried deep in the ground, allowing her to come up only so he can watch her shower and mentally and emotionally torture her. She’s slowly going mad, nearly certain that all efforts to find her have been abandoned and she’s destined to spend all eternity in this hell.

Zsadist, the most tortured member of the BDB, is driving himself crazy trying to learn the fate of Bella and rescue her if there is any chance at all that she still lives. He had spurned her interest in him when they first met, convinced that no normal female would ever find him attractive or want him in any loving way. He views himself as ruined, destroyed by the first hundred years of his life he spent as a blood slave, subject to the sadistic needs of a mistress who used him both for nourishment and sexual amusement. But something about Bella touched him deeper than he can explain, and the idea that she's come to harm at the hands of the lessers is driving him even more insane than normal.

Through a series of lucky coincidences, the BDB learn that Bella is alive and where she is being held. Zsadist and the other brothers rush to her rescue, but not before she suffers horrible physical abuse at the hands of her captor. Unwilling to let anyone else care for her although unable to understand why, Zsadist insists that Bella stay with him until she is better.

Bella is grateful that Zsadist has rescued her, but as she gets to know the depth of suffering Zsadist had endured as a blood slave and how deeply his psyche has been damaged, she fears that even her love won’t be enough to heal him. Zsadist cannot accept that such a beautiful female of worth should have anything to do with him, and he does everything in his power to push her away. However, Bella soon develops needs that only Zsadist can meet, and he’s forced to face his own fears in order to help her.

Meanwhile, Zsadist’s twin brother Phury is struggling with his own attraction to Bella. After rescuing Zsadist from his bondage as a blood slave, Phury had taken a vow of celibacy. (An aside here to say I’m still not quite sure why, exactly, Phury is determined to remain celibate. I get that he feels guilty that it was Zsadist rather than himself that was kidnapped as an infant, but I will need some more to really accept such an extreme sacrifice.) As Phury spends more time with Bella, he begins to doubt his ability to keep his vow of celibacy, and when it becomes clear that Bella has chosen Zsadist above all others, Phury’s love for her becomes a torture he can barely stand.

John, whom we met in LE, has settled in with Wellsie and Tohrment. For the first time in his life, he has finally found happiness, a sense of belonging, and the love of a family. He throws himself into his training even though most of the other trainees are bent on making his life a living hell. He meets the sweet Sarelle, and everything finally begins to go his way. When tragedy strikes, he's one of the ones hit hardest of all.

Flat out the best part of this book is Zsadist’s journey. And Ward deserves much kudos because she never takes the easy way out. Most books starring tortured heroes allow for the hero to spurn the heroine to a point, then with not much more than a kiss or a hot night of sex or even an I love you, his damaged heart is healed. Not so with Zsadist. From page one through the last page in the book, you can sense Zsadist’s inner turmoil. Even after he comes to accept that he loves Bella and she him, he is not made whole. He continues to do everything in his power to deny and destroy their budding relationship.
Ward invokes the use of flashbacks to show us Zsadist’s horrific past rather than simply tell us about it, and I think the technique is key. Getting inside of his head as he becomes the blood slave of a mistress so twisted and sadistic – and knowing as we do that he has to suffer a century of her mental, physical and emotional abuse – does a great deal to aid our understanding about why Zsadist has the hang-ups he does. Why he cannot bear to be touched. Why he refuses to drink from another vampire and gets all of his sustenance from humans. Why he truly believes he is not nearly good enough for the pure and good-hearted Bella. He shows true signs of his psychological damage: Zsadist’s reaction the first time Bella asks to feed from him was a heartbreaking scene. This isn’t just a cardboard tortured hero who is “damaged” simply because the writer says so. We as readers learn why and we understand.

Bella is my favorite Ward heroine so far. While she fits the BDB female mold in that she doesn’t do a whole lot more than recover and be protected, this girl knows what she wants – Zsadist – and she doesn’t take no for an answer. Time and again Zsadist tries to redirect Bella’s affections toward Phury, whom he feels is far more worthy of her, yet Bella holds her ground. For whatever reason, Zsadist is the one she wants and she won’t accept any substitutes. I also enjoyed watching Bella stand up to Zsadist. From the first two books, we get the definite impression that Zsadist is someone no-one, not even the other brothers, wants to piss off. Yet Bella isn’t afraid of doing so.

As I remarked in my review of LE, I would say that Ward spends a little bit too much time in the head of the lessers, although the obsession the lesser David has with Bella is important to the plot and has ramifications that effect all of the brother, so is worthy, therefore, of exploration.

In LA, we meet Rehvenge, Bella’s autocratic and domineering brother. Through him we are introduced the concept of sehclusion (yes, there’s that off spelling that I find somewhat bothersome), in which an unmated female can be forced by the will of an older, male relative, to basically become not much more than chattel, unable to leave her home or do pretty much anything without specific permission. In theory such an action is meant to protect females, however anyone born within the past two hundred years would agree that it reeks of anti-feminism. I understand that this sehclusion, which Rehvenge plans to inflict upon Bella for her own protection, is necessary for certain time-sensitive plot developments. However, I was kind of disappointed in it. In the first two BDB titles, I never got the impression that this particular vampire society was so backward. Females were honored and protected, but never treated as property. I admit to my weakness for alpha-males, but I do draw the line at this sort of caveman-think. I hope it's not indicative of things to come.

Lover Awakened ups the ante significantly for Ward, as I can't imagine how she plans to top it. Next on deck is Butch's story, and his set-up hasn't proven nearly intriguing as Zsadist's was, so I'm not as excited about it. Too, I'm hoping that Ward doesn't shelf Zsadist now that his story has been told. He's become my favorite BDB brother, and I'd hate to have seen the last of him.

Rating: All Nighter
Status of Series: The best so far. Afraid the only way it can go is downhill

Lover Eternal

Lover Eternal
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: March, 2006

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Position in Series: Book 2 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Rhage, Mary Luce
Sequel Bait: Bella, John, Butch, Zsadist
New Characters: Bella, John
Back-Burnered: Phury, Vishous, Beth, Marissa

Lover Eternal picks up almost immediately after the conclusion of the first book in the series, Dark Lover. Wrath has assumed his role as the Vampire King with his mate, Beth, as his queen. The Black Dagger Brotherhood has moved into new headquarters, and the war against the Lessening Society continues as more and more civilian vampires are targeted for extinction. Butch O’Neal has joined the team as the first human ever allowed entrée into the exclusive vampire society, although he’s limited by his human-ness in how far the brotherhood will allow him to go in fighting the lessers.

Rhage steps up as the hero of Lover Eternal. Nicknamed Hollywood, Rhage possesses breath-taking good looks which turn the heads of females both human and vampire. This gift is a necessity for Rhage, whose sexual appetites are legendary and nearly unquenchable. He spends his nights alternately killing lessers and nailing anything in a skirt. Always quick with a joke and a smile, the life of every party, Rhage seems to have not a care in the world.

However, Rhage’s life of sinful excess is simply a sham to cover up the darkness that lurks inside. Long ago he was cursed after he offended the goddess of the vampires. She placed a beast inside him, a dragon-like monster who appears whenever Rhage loses control of his emotions. No one is safe when the beast comes out, and Rhage lives in constant fear that he will inadvertently kill one of his brothers or innocent bystanders. Only in releasing his pent up energies by fighting and endless sex can he maintain his thread-thin control. His constant need for physical release has left him emotionally bereft, and he longs to find something meaningful, someone to care for and who cares for him.

On the other side of town, Mary Luce (pronounced LOOSE) is fighting her own inner darkness. The leukemia she had thought she had beaten a few years earlier has come out of remission, dimming all her prospects for a happy future. Mary has tried to fill her empty life with altruistic efforts, and it is through her volunteering at a suicide hotline that she meets John, a mute, orphaned boy who seeks her out as a source of comfort. When Mary’s neighbor, Bella, sees in John a pre-transition vampire who has no idea what he is going to become (Bella herself is a female vampire), Mary agrees to act as translator for the speechless boy when Bella brings him to the BDB. It is at the BDB compound where Rhage literally bumps into Mary as he is recovering from his latest encounter with the beast.

Rhage finds something in Mary’s voice that soothes him and the beast within, and he determines to spend as much time with her as possible despite the rules forbidding vampires to interact with humans. Mary is stunned that the gorgeous Rhage wants anything to do with her given that she considers herself average at best. Too, she refuses to expose an outsider to the hell that her life is soon to become as she fights her cancer.

When Rhage’s insistence on being with Mary puts her in the lessers' sights, his romantic interest quickly turns to a protective one. He moves her into the BDB headquaters, determined to protect her at all cost even though bringing a human into the BDB world costs him dearly. As the attraction between the two of them grows, Rhage’s fear grows as well, not only that Mary will be found by the lessers but that his beast could be released if he loses control of his passions, hurting or even killing her. He struggles to maintain his physical distance even as Mary continues to push him away emotionally, unwilling to take the comfort he offers in her time of need.

While I did not find this title as strong as Dark Lover, I thoroughly enjoyed this second foray into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The characters remain as intriguing as ever. Beth and Wrath – heroine and hero of the first book – make enough of an appearance as continuity would expect without becoming cloying examples of the last happily ever after. We learn more about the other members of the BDB as well as meeting new characters Bella and John who look to be key players in upcoming books.
The pacing continues to be excellent and the dialogue realistic and fresh. The strengths I found in Dark Lover continue in Lover Eternal. The interaction between the warriors continues to offer an almost voyeuristic sensation, their dialogue so realistic. The world of the vampires gains more depth as we get more history on how they came to be and we watch Wrath make changes to bring the species back to a healthy status.

However, the main weakness I had with DL increases exponentially in LE. While the male characters leap off the page, I found that Ward’s heroine fell a bit short. Once Mary meets Rhage, she becomes something of a prop, serving more as an element to bring out certain aspects of Rhage rather than as a viable person in her own right. Like Beth before her, Mary spends a lot of time hanging out in Rhage’s bedroom, being protected and not a whole lot else. I would argue that the plot structure of both books is very similar except that Mary remains human while Beth became a vampire.

I also found Mary’s cancer to be less of a conflict than the potential it provides. Other than her reluctance to let Rhage share her suffering, which is odd considering Rhage has caused her to leave everything in her former life behind and is clearly a much stronger being than any human, Mary’s cancer is largely ignored as an issue. Physically, it affected her very little; she was quite capable of many rounds of gymnastic sex with Rhage. Not until the end did her cancer play a critical role in the story, and how it was handled bordered precariously close to a deus ex machina solution for my taste.

Ward is a master at juggling multiple character points of view, and there is never any confusion about whose perspective you are in at any given moment. However, I felt that in LE, too much time was spent in the point of view of the lessers. I tended to skim those parts, and I found if you don’t read carefully, the machinations of who is in charge and who is back-stabbing whom becomes confusing. I’m not really sure that we need to know such intricacies of the evil beings and their political maneuverings because they are pretty two-dimensional, serving mostly as a force for the BDB to fight against. That being said, one particular lesser emerges by the end of the book in such a way that it is clear he is key in the next book.

Unlike the first book, Ward is openly guilty of sequel baiting in Lover Eternal. But she is immediately forgiven because she has written characters so intriguing and offered us a set up for the next story so utterly irresistible, one can’t begin to resent the need to buy another of her books. As a running subplot in LE, aristocratic vampiress Bella finds herself entranced by the damaged and terrifying Zsadist, drawn to him even as he disdains her very touch. When Bella is kidnapped by lessers, Zsadist determines to find her, leaving us with a cliffhanger and an overwhelming anticipation for the next book.

Nothing in the first book is critical to understanding where the story picks up in the second, so LE could be read before DL without difficulty. However, I wouldn’t recommend it because the interaction between the brothers is such a delicious part of the story, and it builds upon itself from book to book. The glossary appears again at the front of the book, with a few new entries, so any new readers can easily catch up with the vampire mythology.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
Status of the Series: A very strong follow up to an excellent beginning. Set up for the third book in the series is well accomplished, and Lover Awakened looks to be possibly the best book yet.

Dark Lover

Dark Lover
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Released: September, 2005

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Position in Series: Book 1 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Wrath, Beth Randall
Sequel Bait: Rhage, Phury, Vishous, Zsadist, Torhment, Butch, Marissa
Bad Guys: The Lessers
Minor Characters: Havers, Wellsie

Wrath is a member and the de facto leader of a warrior class of vampires known as the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The BDB is charged with protecting the vampire race against soul-less ex-humans known as the Lessening Society, a group hell-bent on eradicating the entire species from the planet. The last pure-blood vampire left, Wrath is blindingly loyal to his fellow BDB brothers but remains separate much of the time, preferring to keep to himself and denying his destiny to become the Vampire King.

All of this changes, however, when Darius, a fellow BDB warrior, asks Wrath for a special favor. Darius has fathered a half-breed girl who is nearing her time of transition – the time when a vampire reaches full maturity and undergoes extreme physical changes in a very short amount of time. Darius fears that without a pure-blooded male vampire to help his daughter, Beth, through her transition, the girl will die. Wrath is horrified at the though of performing such an act and declines Darius’s request. However, when Darius is killed soon afterwards, Wrath feels he has no choice but to seek out Beth and give her whatever help he can. Problem is, Beth has never met her father, has no idea that vampires even exist, and certainly would never believe herself to be one.

Wrath does find Beth, and despite his reluctance to get involved, finds himself attracted to her in ways he’s never before experienced. For her part, Beth feels an immediate attraction for the dark and scary Wrath, although swallowing the fact that she’s about to become a vampire herself proves a little more challenging. The two of them navigate the rough terrain of Beth’s acceptance of who she is and her change into a fully mature vampire, constant attacks by the lessers, and Wrath’s coming to terms with his dark past and his need to embrace his role if the vampire race has any hope of survival.

In addition to meeting Wrath and Beth, we are also introduced to the other members of the BDB. There’s Rhage, the vampire with the face of an angel and the sexual appetites of the Sixth Fleet after eighteen months at sea. Tohrment fills the role of the settled vampire, his wife, Wellsie, pregnant with their first young. Vishous is mysterious, with tattoos covering his face and a glove-covered hand that seems to contain unspeakable power. Phury is the metrosexual of the bunch, a sharp dresser with a head of amazing hair, a false leg, and a vow of celibacy. His twin brother, Zsadist, is perhaps the most intriguing of the whole bunch. A former blood slave who spent the first 100 years of his life serving a mistress in needs too dark to discuss, Zsadist is a shell filled with nothing but rage and hatred.
Too, there is homicide detective Butch O’Neal, who enters the story as a potential love interest for Beth. However, as Beth becomes part of the BDB world, Butch’s role becomes much more complicated when he tries to protect her from forces he can’t begin to understand.

The story takes place in fictional Caldwell, NY, amidst the clubs and back alleys and sprawling countryside just beyond the city’s borders. This setting allows for a menacing darkness, one never certain what might lurk down a dark alley or around the next corner either in the form of a lesser, a vampire or even an unsavory human.

The first thing that strikes the reader about Ward’s world is that these vampires are not your traditional European-born, pasty-skinned seducers who creep about in the night. You won’t find a single puffy-shirt in any of the closets of the BDB, although you would find a lot of Armani, Gucci and Ferragamo in Phury’s wardrobe. Ward’s vampire males are modern day warriors more in common with street gangs than Count Dracula. They drive monster SUVs, listen to rap music at ear-splitting decibles, play pool, follow the Boston Red Sox on plasma screen TVs, drink beer and spend the time they aren’t hunting lessers giving each other a hard time. They’re computer savvy, sport tattoos in a variety of places, and leather is their uniform of choice. In short, these brothers are cooler than cool.

Gone, also, is the traditional vampire desire for human blood. Ward’s vampire race gain their sustenance and power via the blood of a vampire of the opposite sex. While human blood offers a tiny boost, it is viewed as inferior to vampire blood, leaving the human inhabitants of Caldwell free from fear. Ward turns the vampires’ need for blood of the opposite sex into a direct correlation to sex: sharing blood is considered an extremely intimate act and quite often leads to other physical expressions of desire. A vampire male would as soon let his mate share her blood or take the blood of another male as he would sit by and watch her have sex with him. Bloodlust is on par with pure lust, and rather than being disgusting as one might expect, scenes depicting blood drinking are highly erotic.

Ward has chosen to follow traditional vampire lore by making sunlight lethal to her particular species. They also possess extraordinary strength, the ability to dematerialize (as long as they are not in a steel-lined room), and nearly immortal constitutions affording them very long lives. The structure of vampire society is multi-layered, with the BDB warrior class, the civilian population, and even an aristocracy, making it easy to believe that an entire other world exists once the sun goes down.

The story’s heroine, Beth Randall, begins as a smart, self-reliant woman who seems to have a lot of good common sense without being unbelievably kick-ass. When she’s attacked by some street thugs, she fights back, but it’s a struggle. When she learns about her half-vampire heritage, her reaction rings true, a mixture of disbelief, fear, and dawning understanding about why so many parts of herself had never seemed normal. She’s attracted to Wrath from the beginning even as she fears him. However, she never resorts to playing the game of coy maiden, taking what she wants from him without apology or self-flagellation.

However, Beth does spend a good amount of time in Wrath’s bed, waiting for him to return from his job as fighter-extraordinaire. Too, one can’t help but wonder how easy it was for Beth to give up everything in her human life to join the vampire world. We are asked to believe that no-one would notice her sudden disappearance off the face of the planet. Nor does she show much regret in the life she must leave behind, especially as the picture we are given of the future she faces is not full of much other than sex with Wrath and hanging around the Black Dagger Brotherhood headquarters.

It becomes easy to overlook the flaws in Beth because the dynamics between the members of the BDB are so amazing. Alpha-males without apology, these guys are dangerous to the nth degree and utterly fascinating. Their interactions with each other are spot on, supportive and unflinchingly loyal, with the perfect amount of friendly adversity to ring true. You feel like an insider at the hottest frat party in town. The dialogue is authentic, and reading this book it is easy to see that Ward loves these guys and enjoys spending time with them.

As a hero, Wrath easily fits the mold of brooding, tortured soul/reluctant leader. Painful experiences in his past have made him unwilling to embrace his role as the leader of the vampires. His neglect has led to the near destruction of the vampire race, and its only with Beth’s help that he’s able to face his demons. Their romance is white-hot and intense, with very little foreplay and nearly zero guilt. Wrath’s reaction to Beth and his subsequent obsession with her perfectly exemplifies the nature of the vampire race, which they themselves consider as more animalistic than human. Instincts are the driving force behind the possessiveness vampire mates feel for each other, and Wrath’s struggle with his mental unwillingness to bond with Beth even as his body and soul betray him provides the majority of the conflict between the two.

The pacing of the story keeps the action moving at a nice clip. Despite the high number of characters introduced, you never become confused about who is who, nor do you feel that any one character gets short shrift. While Ward provides enough action with the BDB fighting the lessers, the story remains character-driven. By the end of the book, you feel vested in more than just the hero and heroine, however no single character has emerged as blatant sequel bait. Each character introduced plays an important role in the story and is interesting in his or her own right.

While the villains of the story – the lessers of the Lessening Society and their leader, The Omega – were certainly creepy and menacing, I was left a little fuzzy about their motivation for wanting to eradicate the vampire race. There is explanation about the creation of vampires leading to some resentment among the vampire gods that is supposed to explain the animosity, but I found it a bit of a flimsy motivation to explain the lengths to which the lessers go to kill vamps.

This review would not be complete without addressing Ward’s creative spelling and unusual character names. It took me a while to get used to the names of the BDB warriors, and I puzzled over why Ward added so many un-necessary letters for what seemed like nothing more than effect. However, by the end of the book I couldn’t imagine any other names for Rhage, Vishous, Phury, Zsadist, Wrath and Tohrment. I found the glossary at the beginning of the book useful. I liked having that bit of foreknowledge before I began reading and much prefer getting such information in a straightforward manner rather than in some contrived exposition in the middle of the story.

Overall, I found Dark Lover an excellent introduction into the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

Rating: Couldn’t Put It Down
Status of Series: Outstanding introduction, can’t wait for the next installment

The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series

Series: The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse

Series Premise: A band of warrior vampires fights to keep their species safe from those determined to destroy the race.

Main Recurring Characters: Wrath, Phury, Rhage, Zsadist, Vishous, Tohrment, Butch O’Neal

Bad Guys: The Lessening Society – called the lessers

Number of books in series to date: 4
Dark Lover (September, 2005) - review
Lover Eternal (March, 2006) - review
Lover Awakened (September, 2006) - review
Lover Revealed (March, 2007)

Number of books planned: Open

Next release: Lover Unbound, October 2, 2007

Series Appeals to:
Those who like extremely Alpha males
Those who like urban paranormal romance
Those who like vampire stories

Level of Violence: High

Level of Sex: Hot

Series strengths: Heroes are to-die-for, relationship between the members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood is well expressed, world-building is thorough and well-developed, dialogue is natural and realistic.

Series weaknesses: Heroines tend to serve more as props for heroes than viable characters in their own right, basic plot very similar between the first three books, creative spelling of character names and vampire terminology can be off-putting.

Website: www.jrward.com

Series

Series books. Seems people either love them or hate them.

I’m in the former group. If a writer has pulled me into his or her world successfully, I want to stick around for a while. If I’ve fallen in love with the characters, I want to spend more time with them. I look forward to the next installment with an anticipation I used to reserve for Christmas. And I’m devastated when it seems the series is in process of jumping the shark. I become invested.

In order to set this review site apart from the other million or so out there, I'm going to focus my reviews on books that are part of a series. Along the way I may toss a single title review to fill in some gaps and because not everything I read is part of a series. But since many of the books on my keeper shelves are series titles, that's where I will keep my focus.

I consider series books to fit into one of the following descriptions:

* Books that contains stories set in a single universe, where characters appear in more than one book. As the series continues, time moves forward. People change, and the focus of each book usually shifts to a different set of characters. Home of the dreaded sequel bait.

* Books that occur in a single universe but focus only on one or two key characters. Time may or may not move forward significantly, and the main characters may or may not change throughout the course of the series. Think the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich or J.D. Robb’s In Death series.

* Series written with an explicit end in mind after a certain number of books. Trilogies fall into this category, as do the Harry Potter books.

In my reviews, I'm going to offer a series summary. Too, each individual book review will include a Status of the Series, a snapshot of where the series seems to be heading since many series seem to run out of steam way too soon. I'll include all titles in the series, and I'll try to review each one in order that they were published. Reviews of individual books will assume that the previous titles have been read, so there might be spoilers for those earlier titles.

Intro and Manifesto

The title of this blog says it all. There are probably book review sites on the web numbering in the six and seven digits, easily. This is yet another. It may be nothing more than a public way for me to keep track of my thoughts about the books that I read. And that’s okay.

But I have 184 books on my To Be Read bookshelf. I’m making it my mission to work my way through them. Might as well share.

A couple of promises:

I promise I won’t be snarky.

Sure, I can laugh when I read those razor-sharp barbs aimed at the silly and trite things we all come across if we are voracious readers, and I can even throw down a few. But that’s not what I want to do when I’m seriously discussing what I think about a book and why. If I don’t like something, I’ll say why without the sarcasm.

Besides, I don’t blame lousy books on lousy writers. I blame lousy books on poor decisions on the parts of publishers. I know how many manuscripts get rejected every day by the publishing houses, so when a clunker actually makes it through the gauntlet to find its way on bookstore shelves, I have to wonder who fell down on the job. These professionals have no problem turning down stuff they see as dribble, so it couldn’t be a sudden decision to be nice guys.

Plus, it’s no great exercise of genius to know that not all books will appeal to all people. I have tastes, and there are stories out there that will not appeal to them. Doesn’t mean the book is bad. It means the book is bad for me.

I promise that I’ll be as unbiased as my personal tastes will allow.

I’m a normal person. I don’t get ARCs from writers or publishers. I get everything I read the way 99% of all readers do: via purchase with my own, hard cash or through my local public library. I buy books anywhere it’s possible to do so. Brick and mortar bookstores, WalMart, Costco, via Amazon and on-line booksellers. The used book store. The remainder bins at the grocery store. Even, when desperate, at the airport.

So I owe allegiance to no one but myself. I’ll be honest. Sure, what I write here is only my opinion, but I can hold my head high and say that I told it true.

I promise not to give away major plot points or surprise twists or endings.

This one comes with a caveat. I will discuss the story, and it might include spoilers. But Sometimes a review can’t be offered if certain facts aren’t divulged, especially if those facts or the way those facts are presented lend to problems I’ve had with the book. However, I will do everything in my power to keep the big stuff under wraps. Nothing worse than reading a review that gives the best parts away.

I’ve given some thoughts on the ranking systems so many review sights use to assign final, one-stop summaries of their reviews. I have some problems with those most commonly used.

With the grading system – A, B, C, etc. – and even the star ranking system, you have the problem of the gap between levels. What, exactly, moves something from a B+ to an A-, or from four stars to four and a half stars? What happens if your grades don’t fall into a neat little bell curve? Does it mean you are awarding too many As, or not enough?

I could go with the keeper/wallbanger descriptives. They certainly apply, as the books I absolutely adore do become keepers and ones I hate do warrant tossing against the nearest wall. But others use this, and at the very least, I could try to be original.

Instead, I think I will go with my own system. Since I’m a normal person with limited amount of reading time, I judge the success of a book by how obsessed I become with finishing it. Books seem to fall into the following categories for me:

All-nighter: This is a book that kept me up all night reading. One I adored enough to sacrifice sleep. It’s one I know I’ll reread again and again. It’s my version of an A book, a five star ranking, a Desert Isle Keeper.

Couldn’t Put It Down: I slept, but I rearranged my life so that every free waking second could be devoted to reading. I finished the book within a day or two of starting it. Will most likely reread it again. Perhaps one or two flaws, but otherwise nearly perfect.

Held My Attention: Read it when I could. I liked the characters and story overall. May or may not reread it. Think a solid B, four star, highly recommended read.

Take It Or Leave It: I put it down a lot. I wanted to finish it because something in it appealed to me. But I wasn’t inspired to take it with me everywhere. Maybe I even cheated a bit and read other things at the same time. I’d call this a C.

Struggled to Finish: Perhaps weeks would go by between reading sessions. Perhaps it went back on the shelf for months. Perhaps I nearly gave up on it…definitely won’t ever reread it. A D.

Didn’t Finish: Enough said.

So, this is my manifesto.