J.R. Ward: Dark Lover

J.R. Ward ~ Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood 1)
From: Penguin

Comfort
Feed
Embrace
Love
And protect me
Ain’t that what I’m here for
You said you would die for me
Remember

How come it feels
So cold every time
You step into this room
Why does it feel so cold
I’m freezing
Junkie XL ~ Between These Walls

I swore to LBea a while ago to read these books and I did try. I bought the eBook read a bit but put it down. After starting and stopping Dark Lover twice in eBook format I decided to go out and get the first two in paperback. I will explain why later.

Well, finally LBea here is your review. So what did I think…

Mr. X took off Rid­dle’s stain­less- steel Rolex and then pulled the col­lar of the guy’s shirt open. He reached in­side, fol­low­ing the plat­inum chain Bil­ly wore around to the back. He re­leased the neck­lace, slid­ing the links free un­til he cap­tured them in his palm. The met­al was warm from ly­ing against skin.
“When you speak with your fa­ther, you will re­main calm no mat­ter what he says to you. You will re­as­sure him that your fu­ture is a promis­ing one and that you have been cho­sen out of many ap­pli­cants for a very im­por­tant role. You will tell him that he may al­ways reach you on your cell phone, but that it will be im­pos­si­ble for him to see you, as you will be trav­el­ing.”
Mr. X ran his hand over Bil­ly’s chest, feel­ing the pads of mus­cle, the warmth of life, the hum of youth. Such pow­er in this body, he thought. Such mar­velous force.
“You will not men­tion the acade­my. You will not re­veal my iden­ti­ty. And you will not tell him that you are com­ing to live with me.” Mr. X spoke right in­to Bil­ly’s ear. “You will tell your fa­ther that you are sor­ry for all the evil things you did. You will tell him that you love him. And then I will pick you up and take you away.”
As Bil­ly breathed deeply in peace­ful sur­ren­der, Mr. X re­mem­bered his own in­duc­tion cer­emo­ny. For a brief, pass­ing in­stant, he wished that he’d thought more care­ful­ly about the of­fer he’d ac­cept­ed decades ago.
J.R. Ward ~ Dark Lover

Well, first off I think Mr. X is a creepy chicken hawk of a villain is what I think. In fact the villain’s in this book were sorta Keystone Cops of the “Hannibal Lecter Hobby Kit” variety. I am getting ahead of myself here.

Beth Randall is a busy reporter for the Caldwell Courier Journal about to have a life changing event and find herself herself smack dab in the middle of a war between Vampires and Vampire Hunters. She will also be picking up a boyfriend by the name of Wrath thanks to a debt owed to a father she never knew. I think that about covers the story without giving too much away. Oh, I figure everybody here has read it already.

I would like to thank J.R. Ward for providing a prime example of a style of writing that sets my teeth on edge.

I have so much respect for authors like Josh Lanyon who can whip out an interesting story while maintaining a single “point of view” of the main character throughout. A single POV is intimate, you almost have a relationship with the character and you really get to know the hero/heroine and how they see the world and even catch occasional clues of how others might see things differently from various conversations. There is always room for discovery and learning something new. People can maintain a mask of behavior that might eventually be discovered to hide some thing or motive not realized by the main character. Which for a Mystery is a great idea.

In Romance I have gotten used to the dueling “point of view”. The hero/heroine or hero/hero both get equal time allowing the relationship to be explored. This helps me the reader accept the relationship even if it evolves at a rapid pace because I know what both people think and feel. I have even enjoyed books where they added a third constant “point of view” of the villain so we get to know why and what they are up to when not doing terrible things to the couple.

You can also run into the “one off” POV. The sudden use of another character to bring the reader up to speed on some piece of information without a lot of info dumping. J.R. Ward does that right at the beginning of Dark Lover where we see things form the “point of view” of Darius, Beth’s Vampire father. Which is cool because it is not like Darius is around for long after that so there is no chance we will come back to that POV again.

Unfortunately J.R. Ward goes way beyond the dueling “point of view”. Because she decided to have not one but two Romances go on with this book. We have Darius to begin with and then Beth and Wrath and then we add in Butch and then Mr. X, the villain. THEN to frost the cake even higher we add Marissa, the virginal debutant Vampire, and her brother Havers, the bitter wussy boy. I started losing count to be honest. It got to the point where I would read one chapter and put it down. I kept doing that so I went out and got the paperback to finish this thing.

Another thing I like in my Romances is balance. If you are going to have this super stud hero then is it too much to ask for an equally interesting mate? Beth just did not cut it for me there. Butch, the cop, was in your face great but poor Beth. In fact I had to wait till almost halfway through the book before Beth started coming to life as a character and only then by interacting with the Brothers Grim. I mean up till that point she was either editing stories or running an obstacle course of manly come-ons. In fact it seemed like every man she met wanted to bed her and yet she is this loner chick with no friends. Oh and Marissa, the virginal debutant Vampire, not knowing what a prostitute was… LOL! Did they lock her in the basement or something? Was she brain damaged?

OK is that enough slamming there? Sorry but this was some painful reading. In fact ignoring the dated hip-hop references and the slang was easy. In fact I barely noticed those issues.

J.R. Ward can do no wrong when it comes to her male characters though. Wrath, super stud god. Flawed, dark, sexy, all that and a bag of chips. Butch, was a funny, smart mouthed, good guy. Every one of the six Brothers Grim. Fascinating, highly dysfunctional, violent and you know because of that they will each get their time on stage.

I get why people love this series. I can see it’s plainly all about her male characters that you want to know what happens next and the world she built is full of surprises. I can also see why anyone itching to write a paranormal would grab this thing in a minute and start stripping it down to the core elements. Slice off the whole Havers story. Get rid of the parade of POV. Chop Marissa’s scenes down to nothing because Wrath or Butch witnessed anything worth reading about. Hell, get rid of her and let Vishous have Butch like LBea said.

My favorite scene in the whole book…

Butch flopped around, half-​awake. The bed wasn’t his. The thing was a twin, not a king. And the pillows weren’t his. They were supersoft, as if his head were on Wonder bread. Sheets were likewise way too fine.
But the snoring beside him really confirmed it. He was definitely not at home.
He opened his eyes. Thick draperies were down over the windows, but the glow from a light in the bathroom was enough for him to see some things. The room was decked out in high-​class everything. Antiques, paintings, fancy-​schmancy wallpaper.
He looked to the snoring. In the other twin bed, a man was sound asleep, dark head buried in a pillow, sheets and blankets pulled up to his chin.
Everything came back.
Vishous. His new buddy.
Fellow Red Sox fan. Wicked smart IT guy.
Fricking vampire.
Butch put a hand to his forehead. There’d been many times that he’d rolled over and been unnerved by who was next to him.
But this was a goddamned chart topper.
How’d they…That’s right. They’d crashed after kicking Tohr’s bottle of Scotch.
Tohr. Short for Tohrment.
God, he even knew their names. Rhage. Phury. And that scary-​ass Zsadist guy.
Yeah, no Tom, Dick, and Harry names for the vampire types.
But come on, could you actually imagine some lethal bloodsucker named Howard? Eugene?
Oh, no, Wallie, please don’t bite my—
Holy Christ, he was totally losing it.
What time was it?
“Yo, cop, what time is it?” Vishous asked, groggy.
Butch reached for the bedside table. Next to his watch was a Red Sox hat, a gold lighter, and a black driving glove.
“Five thirty.”
“Cool.” The vampire rolled away. “Don’t crack the drapes for another two hours. Or I’m up in flames and my brothers will leave you shitting in a bag.”
Butch smiled. Vampires or not, he understood these guys. They spoke his language. Related to the world like he did. He felt comfortable around them.
It was damn eerie.
“You’re smiling,” Vishous said.
“How’d you know?”
“I’m damn handy with emotions. You one of those annoying, cheerful-​in-​the-​morning types?”
“Hell, no. And this isn’t morning.”
“It is to me, cop.” Vishous turned onto his side and looked at Butch. “You know, you handled yourself last night. Don’t know many humans who would have taken on Rhage or me. Much less in front of all the brothers.”
“Ah, now, don’t get all mushy on me. We ain’t dating.” Except the truth was, Butch was kind of moved by the respect.
But then Vishous narrowed his eyes. His intellect was so fierce, getting assessed by him was like being plucked naked and sandblasted.
“You got one hell of a death wish.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah, maybe,” Butch said. He waited to be asked why. When the inquiry didn’t come, he was surprised.
“We all do,” Vishous murmured. “That’s why I’m not asking for details.”
They were silent for a moment.
Vishous’s eyes narrowed again. “You’re not going back to your old life, cop. You know that, right? Because you’ve seen too much of us. We wouldn’t be able to scrub your memories clean enough.”
“You telling me to pick out a casket?”
“Hope not. But it’s not my call. Depends a lot on you.” There was a pause. “You don’t have much to go back to, do you?”
Butch looked up at the ceiling.
When the brothers had let him check his messages this morning, there’d been only one. It had been the captain, telling him to come in for the re­sults of In­ter­nal’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion.
Yeah, like that was an ap­point­ment he need­ed to keep. He knew damn well what the out­come would be. He was go­ing to be fired and served up as a sac­ri­fi­cial lamb to com­bat the im­age of po­lice bru­tal­ity. Or he was go­ing to be put out to pas­ture at a desk job.
As for his fam­ily? Ma and Pop, bless them, were still in their row house in Southie, sur­round­ed by the sur­viv­ing sons and daugh­ters they loved so much. Though still mourn­ing Janie, they were hap­py in their re­tire­ment years. And Butch’s broth­ers and sis­ters were so busy hav­ing ba­bies, rais­ing ba­bies, and think­ing about hav­ing more ba­bies, that they were to­tal­ly tied up with their fam­ily obli­ga­tions. In the O’Neal clan, Butch was just a foot­note. The Dark One Who Had Failed to Pro­cre­ate.
Friends? José was the on­ly one he could even re­mote­ly con­sid­er a friend. Ab­by wasn’t even that. She was just a screw ev­ery now and again.
And af­ter meet­ing Maris­sa last night, he’d lost his in­ter­est in ca­su­al sex.
He glanced over at the vam­pire. “Naw, I don’t have any­thing.”
“I know what that feels like.” Vishous rus­tled around as if he were try­ing to get com­fort­able. When he set­tled on his back, he threw one heavy arm over his eyes.
Butch frowned as he caught sight of the vam­pire’s left hand. It was cov­ered with tat­toos, dense, in­tri­cate de­signs that ran down the back of it, on­to the palm, and around each fin­ger. It must have hurt like a bitch to have done.
“V?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s do­ing with the tats?”
“I didn’t pester you about your curse, cop.” Vishous put the arm away. “If I’m not up by eight, wake me, true?”
“Yeah. True.” Butch closed his eyes.
J.R. Ward ~ Dark Lover

Yeah, Butch and Vishous baby! Why can’t we have more dark and violent flawed heroes like this in Gay Romance?

So in the end I will go on to the next one but I have a feeling this series is not really for me. I give this a Grade C because I can see the draw the story would have but I can also see why this would not work for many people who like a simpler less confusing and jumbled Romance. Not to mention Beth is no Buffy that’s for sure.

Tags: Black Dagger Brotherhood, Grade C, J.R. Ward, Penguin, Straight Romance, Vampire