Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood book1) by J.R. Ward



Set in present day Caldwell, New York ‘Dark Lover’ is the first in a series of novels about the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The Black Dagger Brotherhood is an ancient order of warrior vampires who defend their race against the lessers, vampire slayers who have been recruited by the Omega (an evil supernatural being who wants all vampires destroyed.) There are six warriors in the Brotherhood and these warriors are all that stand between the civilian vampires and the extinction of the vampire species at the hands of the lessers.
In the Black Dagger novels the vampires are a separate species to humans, to be a vampire you have to have been born carrying vampire blood. At the start of their lives vampires seem like humans, they have no special strengths and can go out in daylight but they go through a dangerous transition to vampire hood in their mid twenties. Although vampires can drink the blood of humans it has little nutritional value for them and they need to drink the blood of other vampires (of the opposite sex) to survive. A human bitten or drained by a vampire doesn’t rise as a vampire - they are just dead.
The vampires are few in number due to the legions of slayers hunting them down over the centuries, high infant mortality and the rigors of the transition to vampire hood that not all vampires survive.
The story focuses on the romance between Wrath, the only pure blooded vampire left on the planet, and Beth a human/vampire half breed who is about to undergo the transition from human to vampire but isn’t aware of her vampire heritage.
There are a lot of obstacles in their path. Wrath hates humans and doesn’t want a mate. Beth finds it hard to believe in her vampire heritage and doesn’t want to need Wrath. That would make their relationship difficult enough without them being the prime target for the lessers who are hatching a new strategy for wiping the vampires off the face of the earth.


My Review:

I like the glossary at the very beginning of the book. There were quite a few words that I had never heard before and it was nice knowing it was there.

This book was written well, the story line & plot were original and laid out well. The story flowed from page to page, chapter to chapter. With some books I've needed to re-read chapters, to ensure that I get all the details straight. One reason I read the books that I do: I do NOT want to have to think to hard about whats going on. I want to get lost in the book. It's important that characters are real while I'm reading about them. This book did exactly that for me! It also helps that Wrath is a 15 on a scale of 1-10!
Next in the series is "Lover Eternal" , which is Rhage's story. I can't wait!!!

1 comments:

Alaine said...

I'm planning on reading this book in the next week or so. Sounds great especially Wrath being a 15 LOL.

Help Teach A Child To Read

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library