'Dark Lover' J.R. Ward

*please note: there may be some spoilers in my post. I tried hard not reveal anything that actually happens in the novel*


 Some background:

Book one of J.R. Ward's Blackdagger Brotherhood series begins with Dark Lover. The Brotherhood consists of different species of vampires that are physically superior to other vampires. To be a warrior in the Brotherhood, therefore, is both dangerous and lonely. Dark Lover tells the story of the King, the warrior named Wrath.

Like so many vampires in so many other vampire novels, Wrath is dark, exudes danger, and the picture of physical male perfection. I think Ward does a wonderful job, however, of making each of the Brothers look different from the generic vampire readers seem to know and love. (They definitely do not sparkle).

The novel begins with the Brother, Darius, asking Wrath to help his daughter, (who knows nothing of her father, nor of vampires,) through her transition from human to vampire. In Ward's novels, vampires transition physically into vampires at around their twenty-fifth birthday and must drink the blood of a vampire of the opposite sex in order to survive. I found this to be a rather clever way of bringing Wrath and Beth together, whilst also allowing for the potential to present obstacles for some of the other relationships that are developed in subsequent novels.

Throughout the novel, Ward slowly introduces the rest of the Brothers, Rhage, Vishous, and the twins, Phury and Zsadist. (I found the names rather clever and befitting to each brother's character, and you either love the names or you grow to love them with each passing book).

There are also layers to this series that is distinctly lacking from a lot of vampire novels (not just Twilight!) There are so many novels that are all about telling a ridiculously over-the-top lovestory, and then adding a villain that simply materialises out of thin air because the author has not clearly presented why the couple are in such danger. It makes it difficult for me, as the reader, to want the couple to succeed, (rather than wish the villain would just kill one or both of them already), if the characters are irritating me with their endless professions of undying love. In Ward's novels there is a believable threat to the vampire nation known as the Lessening society, highlighted through the frequent pov shifts to Mr. X as he recruits and plans the society's next move against the Brotherhood.  They, unlike vampires, can travel in daylight but are otherwise unlike vampires. What I like is that against the Lessening society, the Brotherhood are vulnerable in number as well as in race. They are not invincible, and Darius's unexpected murder at the beginning of the novel proves this.

Like humans, there are different social circles in Ward's series. I found this to be highly beneficial to the novels as it showed that the warriors, despite being protectors of their race, are not always worshipped and loved (something that many 'Twi-Hards' would perhaps find difficult to believe). There is also a focus on vampire politics in the novels and it comes to the fore the more the threat of the Lessers increases. Just like the human world, Ward's vampire world is also complicated by politics (something the Twilight series did include but I wish there had been much more of it).

Unlike the irritating Bella Swan, I found that Beth exudes personality in abundance and I felt like I got to know her, despite the fact that she is supposed to be an average young woman. It would have been easy for Ward to make Beth submissive and pathetic once she eventually falls in love with Wrath, but she does not. There is a noticeable change in Wrath that progresses throughout the novel the more he time he spends with Beth. There is growth in their relationship despite the understandable fear that Beth feels once Wrath enters her life. Stephenie Meyer could, perhaps, benefit from tips from Ward on how to construct a seemingly average female heroine who can also be a stand-alone character once she falls in love. Unlike Bella, Beth does not lose herself to the point where her character becomes unequivocally attached to Wrath.

What I found difficult to read was Wrath and Beth's first meeting which was essentially two strangers having sex without so much as a "hello." I suppose it served to highlight the instant connection between Wrath and Beth but I was, and am still not, entirely convinced that this warranted such a scene. I felt that the connection could have been presented in an equally sensual scene without it ending with the characters essentially engaging in almost anonymous sex. The rest of the love scenes in the novel get increasingly better the more you read, as opposed to some of the boring love scenes in other vampire novels. It would have been easy for Ward to fall into the trap of other writers such as Laurell K. Hamilton whose, once fantastic, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series became annoyingly full of gratuitous (and badly written) sex. So shockingly bad did this series become that I stopped reading the series altogether. But this is not the case with Ward because with love comes the act of "bonding," a physical 'mating' that marks a vampire's love, identifiable only by scent. There is a primal element to this bonding that adds another dimension to the novel that makes it so different to Hamilton's endless scenes of rutting supernaturals.


It should be noted, therefore, that these books are not for the faint-hearted. If swearing, drugs, alcohol, sex, or violence, offends you then these books are not for you. Though not the best of the series, Dark Lover is a brilliant beginning to a fantastic series. 
The covers have been changed with the success of the series, something I am rather relieved about as the earlier covers were too sexual for me because it gave the impression of an erotic novel. I think this was a correct decision by the publishers to change the covers because with a title like Dark Lover it would be easy to dismiss this book as genre of fiction that it is not. I am glad it has changed, and for the better I think.