Let's face it: there are Vampire Books and there are Vampire Books. There are the Anne Rice kind, the ones with orgies and gory bloodsucking and in-depth mythologies that cannot help but grow tiresome. And then there is lightweight drivel like Twilight, in which the vampires voluntarily give up that which they need most (you know... human blood) and don't generally adhere to any vampiric precept.
I find that most of the time I need something somewhere in between those two extremes. Thank goodness, then, for J.R. Ward and the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.
Lover Avenged, the seventh installment, follows already familiar characters, but focuses primarily on Rehvenge aka The Reverend, the pimp/drug dealer/club owner/sociopath who we have come to know and... love? fear? in previous chapters of the saga. While not exactly a member of the Brotherhood, his ties are close enough (his sister is married to one of the more dangerous warriors, they all hang out in his club, etc.) , and they all respect him while guarding his illegal (in both the human and vampire worlds) secrets.
Rehvenge, apparently, is half sympath, Ward's made-up genetically determined race of sociopaths. In Rehv, the sympath and vampire sides vie for dominance to the point that he keeps himself... er... doped up on dopamine to numb out his more dangerous tendencies. Naturally when he meets The One, a nurse named Ehlena, his vampire tendencies become so dominant his sociopathic urges can no longer compete. I think. But more on that later.
Like all of the Brotherhood books, the romance is not even close to the point of the book. There are three main story arcs; that of Rehv and Ehlena, one following Wrath, King of the Vampires and the head of the Brotherhood, and one following John Matthew, a constant and constantly conflicted Ward presence since Book 2. The thing is, that these all manage to flow together, and beautifully. At times I didn't even want to hear about Rehv and Ehlena, because I was so caught up in all of the other things that were going on.
This is typical Ward. These books cannot be read out of order because the ongoing arcs are so massively developed in each successive book. Issues from Book 3 are still being worked out in Book 7, and if you missed even a step, you're in a whole lot of trouble in terms of catching up.
My only complaint about Lover Avenged is that, as weird as it sounds for a book that is 544 pages long, the ending is rushed. I'm not sure exactly how Rhev is going to handle his new drug-free existence, or if he even is, and I really wish he and Ehlena had had a bit more time to sort things out between them, rather than about 12 hours. All I'm saying is, as much as the other story arcs are great and wonderful and perfect, maybe a bit more attention could have been paid to the subjects of the book.
Rating:
Plot- 1 (Complex and titillating... But I'm not sure about Xhex and John Matthew)
Characters- 1 (If there was any more character, we'd all be in trouble)
Sex- 1+ (Rehv and Ehlena, Wrath and Beth... my goodness, is it warm in here?)
Style- 1 (any scene with V and Lassiter is worth the price of purchase)
Consumption- .5 (takes a while to flow, but once it does, watch out!)
TOTAL-4.5+
What's with the obligatory H's?
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