Pop Culture Curmudgeon paranormal romance

Book Review: Lover Avenged by J.R. Ward

J.R. Ward, I wish I knew how to quit you.

I love the Black Dagger Brotherhood books, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. The heroes have become alpha male caricatures. The stories jump back and forth so much it is almost impossible to keep things straight. And the product placement. Oh my god, it has become insane.

In Lover Avenged, we see Rehvenge’s love story play out. As you may remember from the earlier books–and don’t even think of jumping into the series with this book; you have to have read the others, or you will be hopelessly confused–Rehvenge is the town drug lord and owner of ZeroSum, the bar where the Brothers hang out. Rehvenge is using massive amounts of dopamine to supress his symphath side. In a routine doctor’s visit, he is tended by Ehlena, the only nurse who can stand to be around him. Ehlena feels strangely drawn to the enigmatic man, but she prefers to pursue a safer choice in men and rebuffs his advances. For a while.

Their love story follows the typical course: Rehv pursues Ehlena. She agrees to see him once, and somehow on their first date, she and Rehv wind up in bed and he releases his bonding sperm. They angst over their star-crossed romance, but eventually get their happily ever after, which coincidentally soothes all of Rehv’s lifelong emotional baggage. (I’m not giving away any spoilers, here. We know the HEA is coming.) There is a bit of a role reversal, with Rehv being the partner in peril, but other than that, it is pretty standard BDB fare. I was afraid to read Rehv’s story because I did not like him at all in the previous books, but Ward did a good job of making me care about him and his woman.

We get too-brief glimpses of our other brothers. Wrath and Beth work through some relationship issues. Tohr gets back on the Brotherhood horse. Vishous, Butch, Phury, Zsadist, and Rhage get perfunctory roles, mainly so we don’t forget they exist. John Matthew pursues his bizarre attraction to Rehv’s androgynous henchwoman Xhex, but Blay and Quinn are almost completely absent. These younger Brothers have become my favorite characters in the last few books, which have focused on unappealing brothers and lackluster women.

We get cold, emotionless sex scenes that have no romance whatsoever. The sex scenes are written well, with the level of detail you expect from J.R. Ward, but they are so unsatisfying because the characters are either having sex for revenge, blackmail, or malice or because the characters involved are keeping themselves closed off, so the sex is not an extension of the characters’ complete openness with one another.

All of this should add up to a book that I hate, but I enjoyed it. I read it fast because I needed to see how it all played out. I recommend Lover Avenged to the BDB diehards. If you haven’t experienced the immersive and sometimes bizarre world of J.R. Ward’s vampires, visit her website to get a feel for it before committing to the series.

I still enjoy Black Dagger Brotherhood books. They haven’t become an unpleasant chore, as some other vampire series have. Perhaps the final blush of the happy ending outweighs the annoyances throughout the book. I don’t know. I can’t explain it.

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Book Review: Demonica Books 1-3

[digg=http://digg.com/arts_culture/Book_Review_Demonica_Books_1_3_by_Larissa_Ione] Yup, it’s another three-book review for the price of one.

Here, I review Pleasure Unbound, Desire Unchained, and Passion Unleashed by Larissa Ione.

As a whole, the books are a lot of fun, and full of lots of good hot sex, gorgeous demon men, and fun, feisty women. I enjoyed them wholeheartedly.

Pleasure Unbound introduces us to Underworld General, a hospital that treats demons, shapeshifters, vampires, and assorted otherwordly creatures. The head of the hospital, Eidolon, meets a new patient who isn’t any of these things. Instead, Tayla is a human. A human whose sole purpose in life is to kill vampires, shifters, and demons.

As Eidolon and Tayla explore their forbidden feelings for each other, they also must work together to stop a band of black-market organ thieves. We readers learn about multiple species of demons and the special powers of Eidolon and his brothers Shade and Wraith. These three are Seminus demons, incubi with ridiculously strong sexual gifts and needs.

The intrigues and relationships of all the hospital workers and patients reminded me quite a bit of General Hospital, probably because I was raised on a steady diet of ABC soaps and Diet Coke.

Shade takes center stage in Desire Unchained. As the title implies, there are more than a few chains and whips involved in this book.I didn’t love the BDSM elements in this book–it’s not really my thing–but it was still quite fun to read.

Shade, who carries an inordinate amount of guilt over the deaths of his mother and sisters, is coming up on his sexual maturity, when he will be forced to either mate with a female and eschew all other women, or go insane bedding female after female trying to impregnate them. The typical Seminus demon is killed by a jealous husband before insainty sets in.

Shade meets up with, Runa, a former girlfriend who has since been turned into a werewolf. The organ harvesting ring the brothers thought they shut down in the last book has started back up, and the leader turns out to be someone very close to them with a very macabre plan for bringing the brothers down.

Finally, we move on to Passion Unleashed, Wraith’s story. The book opens after Wraith has reached sexual maturity and has gotten himself infected with an incurable demon disease. The brothers must find a way to save Wraith’s life, because they soon realize that Wraith’s life is not only inextricably linked to the welfare of Underworld General but also to Eidolon and Shade.

The brothers also see the signs of an epic battle brewing between the forces of good and evil, one that could bring about the Armageddon, or the Reclamation, as the forces of evil call it.

Eidolon finds a solution. A woman, Serena, holds a charm that protects the wearer from all manners of physical harm. But while Wraith works to get Serena to willingly give him her charm–it must be given willingly–he finds himself falling for her. Wraith must choose between saving the woman he loves and saving himself, his brothers, the hospital they built, and the entire world.

Find out more about the books at Larissa Ione’s website.

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I Read Another Book

I started and finished a book last night: Darkest Night by Gena Showalter.

I added it under demons and human with special powers. The men in the story are possessed by the demons released when Pandora opened the box, and the woman in the book hear voices. Not like schizophrenia voices, but the voices of all people who spoke in the area where she is.

I recommend it wholeheartedly, but not on a night when you actually want to sleep.

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