Dark Lover by J.R. Ward

Note: This review was originally posted on my old now deleted book blog.

Title: Dark Lover

Author: J.R. Ward

Series: Black Dagger Brotherhood

Genre: Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Signet Eclipse

Release Date: September 5, 2005

Format: Mass Market Paperback, 393 pages

Source: Bought

 

Rating: 5/5

Smuttiness: 4/5

Synopsis:In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there's a deadly turf war going war going on between vampires and their slayers. There exists a secret band of brothers like no other-six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Yet none of them relishes killing their enemies more than Wrath, the leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood...

The only purebred vampire left on the planet, Wrath has a score to settle with the slayers who murdered his parents centuries ago. But when one of his most trusted fighters is killed - orphaning a half-breed daughter unaware of her heritage or her fate - Wrath must usher the beautiful female into the world of the undead...

Racked by a restlessness in her body that wasn't there, Beth Randall is helpless against the dangerously sexy man who comes at night with shadows in his eyes. His tales of brotherhood and blood frighten her. But his touch ignites a dawning hunger that threatens to consume them both....

Review:

The Black Dagger Brotherhood is one of my favorite adult vampire series of all time.  Each of the brothers have bad ass names like Rhage and Tohrment to name two.  Each brother has his own story and I can hardly wait to re-read them all!  Including John Matthew's story which I still haven't read yet. *hangs head*

But Dark Lover is the kickoff story for this series.  The main characters are Wrath and Beth Randall...Wrath who is the King of the vampires and Beth who is the half human daughter of Darius (a warrior in the brotherhood who is killed at the beginning of the story).  At the beginning of the story Darius approaches Wrath about helping Beth through her transition (from human to vampire), if it were to happen.  At first Wrath shuts him down cold.  But then Darius is killed and Wrath feels that he owes Darius to help Beth through her transition.

I really LOVED this book a LOT.  Not only are we talking about a group of EXTREMELY attractive warrior vampires who's whole purpose in life (is it really life if your a member of the undead?) is to protect civilian vampires from lessors, who are soulless humans who get their jollies getting rid of vampires.  But also a group of individuals who really act like brothers.  And the fact that they are written to basically be SEX GODS.  Definitely NOT your Twilight vamps that's for sure!

I really was impressed with the way that this book was written.  The characters were very engaging, even Hard-ass Butch and Zsadist, I felt that even I could relate to the characters. The side stories I thought were well written to keep the story flowing....There's a lot of from the vampire's points of view and switching to the lessor's points of view through out the book. The dialogue was catchy and there was a touch of humor laced through out this book.  I thought that the transition from Wrath and Beth at the beginning of the book to the end of the book was very smooth.  See at the beginning Wrath was 6'9" of hard ass and didn't particularly care for females or humans (two strikes against Beth) and Beth was sort of a loner lost in the world (her mother died when she was born and she was put in the foster system), then Wrath shows up and things start to change for both of them.  I thought that they were beautifully matched.

Overall, I think that this book was a great start to this series and I can hardly wait to read further on into the Brotherhood.  I'm off to start reading about Rhage and his curse...sounds awfully delicious!