Case File #: 00022
The Perp: Ward, J. R.
The Crime: Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood Book 1)
Classification: Paranormal Romance (Vampire)
The Weapons: Lust, bloodlust, dense vampire lore, the evil dudes, bad-asses and mass quantities of black leather.
The Victims:
- Elizabeth ‘Beth’ Randall: The plucky, well she’s disenchanted enough to not really be plucky, journalist who lives a rather ho-hum life until Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Kinda-Scary walks into her apartment. Turns out she’s half-vamp and gonna be transitioning soon, he just didn’t expect to end up in bed with her.
- Wrath, a.k.a The Blind King, a.k.a. One bad-ass mother fucker: Leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood (BDB), who is visually impaired and spends his nights fighting the Lessening Society to defend their race rather than lead them as a king. He’s helping Beth through her transition as a favor to her recently murdered father who was in the BDB.
The Accessories:
- Brian ‘Butch’ O’Neal, a.k.a. Hard-ass: The homicide detective with a thing for Beth, he’s also a tad too-heavy handed with his perps. Eventually he ends up off the force and helping the BDB, plus he’s inexplicably drawn to Marissa.
- Marissa: Wrath’s shellan, a kind of wife or mate. He’s never been interested in her and she’s pined after him for centuries. Eventually she releases him when he finds Beth and isn’t too bummed because she has a thing for Butch.
- Havers: Marissa’s bro who’s a doctor and a dimwit.
- Mr. X: The regional head of this chapter of The Lessening Society, essentially, a vampire hunter. He spends most of his time plotting and causing a ruckus.
- The Brothers: Basically, they are tall-dark-and-frightening. They’re the vampire’s warrior class and they go around with daggers and throwing starts hunting Lessers. On more than one occasion, Ward says that they look like a bunch of sex-offenders (I’m sorry, but that does not make me feel warm and fuzzy about that reading the rest of the series, which is essentially about each of them finding women they love).
- The Omega/The Scribe Virgin: Your macro-conflict. The Scribe Virgin runs the vamps and the Omega runs the Lessers or vamp hunters.
Violations: Overly liberal usage of colloquialisms like ’shitkickers’. Also this line in particular, “His abdomen was ribbed as if he were smuggling paint rollers under his skin.” That line is damn near unforgivable.
Analysis: For me, the concept of a vampire romance has been quite intriguing for quite sometime, and when I first started looking into finding a good series, everyone and their mother online recommended that I read this one. I just happened to fall into Sand’s Argeneau Series by accident.
Initial reaction: this book was crap. Like the first several chapters were hard for me to stomach. The dialog was grating (lots of weird slang peppered with ‘brother’, I thought I was watching a 70’s blaxploitation buddy-cop film), the characters were kinda difficult to relate to and the constant use of terms that Ward coined like shellan was more than a little annoying. But I forged on, and once I got into the middle, I was surprised to notice that I was enjoying myself. Strangely enough, I liked the Beth/Wrath relationship more in the beginning when I was being annoyed by all the other things. Towards the end, they started to get really affectionately mushy, which I felt was out of character for Wrath.
What I liked the most was that this was a novel you could figuratively sink your teeth into. Not like the Argeneau Series which is like eating sugar, this was grittier, there was more back story and there was more plot. The narrative didn’t solely follow Beth/Wrath, there was a secondary Butch/Marissa relationship and it also followed Havers and Mr. X considerably.
Recommended Action: If you are looking for a romance novel akin to an Avon Historical, this is not the series for you. If you like sci-fi/thriller/paranormal settings with lots of sex and conflict, then pick up this novel. That being said, if you don’t like reading stupid lines like what I’ve highlighted in the Violations section, don’t come near this series with a twenty foot pole. I was deadset on giving this novel a really low grade when I started it, but I ended up liking it more than I originally thought: C+