Hello everyone!
So this is a sort of cheat (unfortunately) since this isn't the first time I've read the book I'll be talking about, but it's the one I finished most recently (I think it was yesterday, actually) and so I figured it'd be better if I talked about it instead of trying to remember something else entirely. I think it was a year ago, potentially even some more, when a very good friend of mine talked about a book series titled the Black Dagger Brotherhood. When she initially told me about it, I wasn't all in for this band wagon, mostly because she said it was another series on vampires, with certain twists, and I wasn't sure I hadn't seen it all by that point.
I was so wrong.
Curiosity got the better of me, and this was before I had my e-reader so I read the books on my phone, and the poor thing died SO many times while I was devouring them haha. Needless to say, the Brothers are now some of my favourite characters and I actually enjoyed this particular spin on vampire lore.
image not mine
A couple of facts first: there are currently twelve books in the series, with the thirteenth one coming out in March, and the titles go as follows: Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, Lover Awakened, Lover Revealed, LoverUnbound, Lover Enshrined, Father Mine, Lover Avenged, Lover Mine, Lover Unleashed, Lover Reborn, Lover at Last, The King, The Shadows. The author, JR Ward, will also be writing a companion series, the Black Dagger Legacy, and the first book is coming out at the end of this year, I think.
Now for some terms and a very quick, pretty much crash-course before we dig in to book seven: Vampires get incinerated in the sun, they are sometimes more animal than remotely human, can only feed from the opposite sex of their own species, mate for life, they are a monarchy with the royal family, followed by the gentry, and then regular vampires at the bottom. The Brothers are a special group of warriors specifically bred for the protection of their race against the lessers, who are basically undead human beings that smell like baby powder. Vampires are also enemies of sympaths, or sin-eaters, who enjoy feeding off emotions of others, although their colony is at the moment connected to the vampires because of its king, Rehvenge.
Which is where we jump into book seven.
Rehvenge, aka the 'Reverend' as we have come to know him by this point, is a Broher-sized male with a mohawk, amethyst eyes, and a brutal nature since he has to survive as drug kingpin of Caldwell. His younger sister Bella is mated to the Black Dagger Brotherhood Zsadist, which ties him in to that particular group. Rehv has problems; once a month, he has to head up north to pay a tithe to the Sympath princess, and to basically let her have her way with him, otherwise she'll report him to Wrath, the vampire king, and he will be deported to the sympath colony. Rehvenge is a half-breed, his mother having been abducted and raped by a sympath before marrying her later husband, father of Bella. Now, the family life wasn't precisely happy as Rempoon was violent towards Madalina, and this resulted in Rehvenge killing the vampire.
Later on, this would come to haunt him as another vampire would get an affidavit out of the dying male in which he pretty much told it all, but it wouldn't be until more than twenty years later for that to happen, during a botched council meeting between the King and the glymera (gentry) council. Now, the council and the high society in general don't really like Wrath at this point, but Rehv has thrown his lot in with the other vampire because of his sister's situation ... and because at the time, it felt right. He even assassinates the pompous idiot who suggests that the King must die.
But his problems with the Sympath princess and his inner struggle against his dual nature have him always on dopamine, which basically kills his body temperatures, and makes him feel absolutely zero, so he uses a cane for balance and his veins are shot because of medicine overuse. This is how we first meet Ehlena, a nurse at the medical clinic where Rehv gets his treatment, and the two begin to tango. Ehlena is a no-nonsense kind of woman who has been cast out by the glymera after a very bad situation, and lives with her schizophrenic father, needing to work for her living. Unfortunately, trying to help Rehv by getting him some penicilin, she gets fired from the clinic and things soon come to a head despite the fact the lovers do make progress: as the Sympath princess pays her a visit, Rehv has no choice but to clue Ehlena in to who or what he really is, disgusting her and ending their budding relationship.
He bombs ZeroSum, the club he ruled out of, and under the pretense of death heads up to the colony, leaving behind Xhex, another half-sympath, and his two Shadows, Trez and iAm. Ehlena, curiously enough, gets her inheritance through the previously-assassinated would-be-King-killer, and has these nagging suspicions that Rehv is still alive. This results in a conversation with Xhex, which leads to a confrontation with the King and the Brotherhood, which then happens to unfurl into a full-blown vigilante extraction from the sympath colony as they head up north to get Rehvenge back. And in the process, with the death of his uncle, the current king, and the Sympath princess, heir apparent, Rehv becomes king of the colony, allies with Wrath, and mates Ehlena.
Sounds perfect?
Well, not everything is, as Xhex is currently missing, having been abducted during the action, and several other characters still need to have their say, but Rehvenge got his happy ending, which was the whole point of book seven!
As I've said before, I've fallen in love with the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and I really enjoy the writing because it's no-nonsense, to the point, directly how the Brothers speak with little to no censure (which means a whole lot of swearing and bad mouthing one another) and it just comes off as REAL. What I hate sometimes while reading books nowadays is that half of what the characters spew out their mouths sounds so artificial you try to imagine anyone honestly saying that. And the characters in these vampire books are also well-thought out, with their own demons and shadows, pasts, potential futures, distinct personalities ... what's not to love?
Have you read any BDB books? What did you think?
xx
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