Title: Dark Lover (A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood)
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Piatkus (3 Feb 2011)
ISBN: 978-0749955229

When I told a very good friend of mine (who is almost as book-obsessed as I am) that I was starting this website, one of the first things out of her mouth was ‘Don’t you dare forget the Brotherhood!’.

Of all the book series’ I’ve recommended to people over the years, this one has proved by far and away to be the most popular. I don’t know what it is – the characters, the writing, the world-building – but when readers describe the Black Dagger Brotherhood as ‘book crack’, they’re not far wrong. Like a bunch of addicts, we’re on top of the latest release in J.R. Ward’s bestselling series the moment it comes out and are soon clamouring for our next fix, regardless of whether the hit we had last was as spectacular as we imagined it would be. (Because, truth be told, some of the instalments are better than others.)

Dark Lover is the very first book in the Brotherhood line-up and although it was initially published in 2005, I was a bit late to the party and didn’t discover it until 2007. In fact, I actually read book three (Lover Awakened) first after seeing it pop up on various recommended lists on Amazon. I um’d and ah’d about buying it – I was put off by the cheesy title and the cover art – but I’m so pleased I did; I went on to devour Awakened and the other three Brotherhood books that were available at the time (Dark Lover, Lover Eternal and Lover Revealed) in less than a week. Book crack indeed.

To give a little context, the Black Dagger Brotherhood is a present-day urban fantasy series set in Caldwell, New York, and documents the lives of a group of vampire warriors who are defending their race from extinction against soulless humans known as Lessers.

Now, please hold onto your groans if you can. I am well aware that we have probably all reached our limits as far as vampires go but let me just say that this series isn’t like Twilight. Not in the least. There’s loads of violence, buckets of swearing, a fair bit of sex and, in the later books, some gay romance. Oh, and a few instances of very vanilla BDSM. So bear with me: you may just find that you’re able to handle a bit more bloodsucking.

Dark Lover sets the scene for the rest of the Brotherhood books and focuses on Wrath, the very last purebred vampire. He is also the king and, in addition to ruling his people, responsible for preventing them from being wiped out by the Lessers – which he does by leading a small band of fighters known as (you guessed it) the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The Brothers are part of a long but dying tradition of warriors whose sole purpose is to hunt and kill the Lessers who would otherwise decimate the vampire population.

Dark Lover opens with two members of the Brotherhood, Darius and Tohrment, sitting in a bar discussing Darius’s half-breed daughter, Beth. The result of an affair between Darius and a human woman more than two decades earlier, Beth is about to turn twenty-five and, according to the lore of J.R. Ward’s world, that’s the age that vampires actually become, well, vampires. Beth has no knowledge of her father but as the product of two different species there’s a chance that sometime around her birthday, she may cease to be human. Darius knows that if she turns, she’ll need to drink the blood of male vampire to survive the transition. However, given that the process of changing is notoriously difficult, and even more so for those who are largely human, he is desperate for a vampire with the purest blood possible to feed his daughter and thus increase her chances of survival. Wrath is the obvious choice.

‘Darius lifted his hand to catch their waitress’s eye and pointed at this empty bottle and Tohrment’s nearly dry glass. “I’m not going to let another one of my children die. Not if there’s possibility I can save her. And, anyway, there’s no telling whether she’ll even go through the change. She could end up living a happy life, never knowing about my side. It’s happened before.”
And he hoped his daughter would be spared. Because if she went through her transition, if she came out alive on the other side as a vampire, she was going to be hunted as they all were.’

Darius is a loyal member of the Brotherhood but Wrath is notoriously anti-human and, consequently, anything but happy when the Brother approaches him with his request for assistance – and he denies Darius his help.

‘If it had been anyone else, Wrath would have used his favourite pair of words: fuck and off. As far as he was concerned, there were only two good positions for a human. A female on her back. And a male facedown and not breathing.’

But events soon unfold that make his initial refusal a lot harder to follow through on than he could ever have imagined and he and Beth are thrown together despite his misgivings.

I can’t say too much more about the plot of Dark Lover without introducing spoilers but from the first chapter, this book is big on drama. As you’ve probably gleaned from the title, it is a romance, but it’s interspersed with some full-on action. If it were a film, I’d say it was definitely more Underworld than New Moon.

J.R. Ward writes men exceptionally well and although Wrath isn’t my favourite Brother (Vishous and Qhuinn do it for me), undeniably appealing. He’s bloody massive in terms of physical size and freaky as hell in manner but Ward counters this – and makes him infinitely more ‘human’ to the reader – by giving him a physical flaw. I’ll leave you to discover what it is for yourself but suffice to say it’s one that will shape Wrath’s life and behaviour through the rest of the series. Interestingly, disfigurements, disabilities and health issues are associated with nearly all her male characters to varying degrees – one is missing a part of a leg, another a testicle – and these imperfections serve to make them more compelling than they otherwise would be. Rather than just falling back on the classic ‘I’m an emotionally wounded/emotionally crippled/soon-not-to-be-so-arrogant-asshole-because-I’ve-found-the-right-woman’ hero device, Ward gives her male leads some genuinely difficult and believable issues to contend with.

Beth, the heroine of Dark Lover, is perfectly lovely and I really enjoyed her interactions with Wrath. There’s some great tension between the two of them and watching her come to understand what Wrath is, the world he inhabits, and her relationship with him is both endearing and amusing.

‘“Would you like something to drink?’ She winced. Not blood. Please don’t say blood.
He grinned at her, as if he knew what she was thinking.
“You got any beer?”
Beer? He drank beer?
“Ah, yeah. Actually, I think I do.” She disappeared into the kitchen. Bought back two Sam Adamses. She needed a belt right about now, too.
After all, she was playing hostess to a vampire.’

That said, her characterisation is not quite as strong as Wrath’s and I sometimes felt that this was ‘his’ rather than ‘their’ book. It’s something to keep in mind if you read on through this series; every so often Ward writes women who are bit on the weak side (read: a couple of vertebrae short of a spine) and they’re somewhat annoying because of it (yes, I’m looking at you, Marissa). But I nearly always forgive her because her ability to write action, male relationships and the by-play between the latter is outstanding.

The bad guys? Well, as far as evil-doers go the Lessers tick all the boxes. Collectively known as the Lessening Society, they are absolutely brutal in their methods. They’re violent, remorseless, creepy, smell like baby powder (really, that’s not a typo), and have given their souls to a very nasty mystical entity – known as the Omega – in return for immortality. Again, I don’t want to spoil things for you, so let’s just say there’s nothing lightweight about these guys. They’re truly worthy adversaries and you don’t get the impression the Brotherhood is fighting ‘soggy’ or ‘limp’ villains.

Some general notes …

- If you’re at all allergic to the letter H, step away now. In the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, this consonant reigns supreme and is applied liberally to just about every word you can think of as well as ones you can’t. You only have to look at the Brotherhood’s names to see what I mean: Tohrment, Phury, Vishous, Rhage. (Hold your giggles.)

- References to luxury labels are sprinkled very, very liberally throughout the text – to the point that the series feels like a brand directory at times. No GAP for this lot; the Brothers like their European cars, designer suits and the top-shelf booze. The brand-whoring didn’t annoy me too greatly, but I know that others have found the constant references to Gucci, Brooks Brothers, Tiffany, etc., a trifle wearing.

- Don’t expect anything overly raunchy – Dark Lover is sensual rather than explicit – but do prepare yourself for lashings of lusty fang action; blood-drinking and sex go hand-in-hand with the Brotherhood. If you want a bit of romance in your life, offset with a side of gritty drama, you can’t go wrong.

Dark Lover is a great start to a series that I’ve become very attached to. It sets the tone for everything that follows and provides a comprehensive introduction to the central characters, the world they inhabit and their customs and beliefs. Book three, Lover Awakened, is when the pace really picks up and the world explodes outwards with a level of detail and complexity that’s really quite astounding, but this book is the entry point – and it’s a good one. The tenth Black Dagger Brotherhood, Lover Reborn, was published in March of this year. I bought it straight away and will no doubt be ready to devour Blay and Qhuinn’s story – Ward’s first full-length m/m (male-male) romance – when it comes out early 2013. That fact that I’m still purchasing these books on release day, five years down the line, is testament to how much enjoyment they’ve given me.

Dark Lover is available from: Amazon.co.uk (Paperback ; Kindle), Amazon.com (Paperback ; Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Paperback ; Nook), Kobo (eBook)

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