Customer Reviews

Black Dagger Brotherhood, boxed set: Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, Lover Awakened, Lover Unbound, Lover Revealed, Lover Enshrined

5 star:		(154)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This series of the Black Dagger Brotherhood by J. R. Ward is the best I have read. It is absolutely an adult read, but is acceptable for all adults. My daughter who is 39, my friends who range in age from 35 to 65, and myself all have read and reread this series. I am 70. I am totally in love with the great males in this series, and also their females. I cry with them and laugh with them. I have already pre-ordered the next book from Amazon, which should be about John Matthew. Try these books. You will be hooked, and if you order it from Amazon, you get a great price.

I read the first four of the series of six so far. These books are truly page turners. You get sucked into the universe Ward created and care for most of the characters. The love interests are developed well (with occasional cheesy lines but you go along with it) and you can't get enough of them.

On the flipside, here is why I did not give five stars:The "street" slang the brothers are speaking really irritated me, as it didn't sound genuine at all. I live in New York and hear a fair amount of "street" slang, and it does not sound like this. (Questions ending with "..., true?" Who talks like that?) Also, I am not sure if Ms Ward knows what blunts are. Usually they are not made with rolling paper. True connosseurs of rap music, even gangsta rap, would probably find something better to listen to than D-12... Ms Ward needs a "street editor" if she wants to continue this, but also, why do centuries old vampires act like that anyway? I am not usually a romance genre reader, and it also bothered me a bit that every book seemed to follow a similar pattern in terms of the main love interests, and have a happy happy ending where most loose ends were tied.

Having said all this, I read four books in 6 days, so clearly I liked it.

First, I just want to say, I highly recommend this entire series, J.R. Ward is a creative writer and I can't wait for each new book that she adds to the series.
When I saw the reviews for this series, I was almost put off due to the warning of bad language, not that I'm a prude, but because of the fact that these days, the "shock factor" seems to be so popular to the point of nothing else matters...
However, the majority of reviews went on to say that the books we're worth reading...

After getting past the fact that there is "bad language", I realized it fit the storyline, because the characters we're, after all, "warriors on steroids", and more, including a sense of humor, loyal, extremely romantic, compassionate... and with each book, you get to meet each one of them and their in depth story of how they find their true love and how their troubled pasts has molded them into the men they turned out to be... It's steamy, adventurous and each book is extremely hard to put down because I couldn't wait to see what happened next...

This series of books is everything you could ask for in a romance novel and when I got to the the last book that's available at this time, "Lover Mine", I found myself saddened to realize I'd have to wait until next year, before I'd be able to continue on...

I suppose if I can admit to having read Charlaine Harris' Sookie books, I have to cop to these as well. Though I started out with no expectations of reading the whole series, I found I was too intrigued and engaged to stop. Second surprise was that it wasn't the "romance" that kept me reading. The author's inventive modern vernacular and the witty dialog exchange between the characters became the joy the kept the pages flying. Now add a great story arc wherein the characters' complexities are exposed and explored while they strive against more than a single adversary and viola; the dishes went unwashed, the laundry went unsorted, and the floors gathered dust until there were no more pages to turn.

I got this box set when my job required me to sit on location for 8 days and all I could do was read. I finished all six books and they were entertaining but the slang got to be irritating. I mean who says "What's doing?" instead of what's going on? OMG toward the end I felt like throwing the book whenever the word doing came up. And goth vampires listening to rap music seemed off to me. But those parts were easily skimmed over and the books did their job and kept me from getting bored.

After reading the first book in the series, I thought about the other books and decided this was the better value than individually buying each book. Also, I found myself wanting to know more about the other 'brothers' that I was introduced to in the first book.

I love the world that J.R.Ward creates with her vampires, similar to ours, but by the third book, I felt as if something was missing. I'm not sure I like the candy-coated vampire that doesn't hunt humans. It takes out the scare factor that I love. I like not knowing if the vampire is going to kill her or make her his. However, I think that a lot of vampire romance books nowadays are going this way unfortunately, so I'll deal with it.

J.R.Ward does a great job with the pacing of the stories, making it very hard for me to put down the book I'm on. Her action scenes are great and her romance scenes are incredible, and it never really felt trashy as some romance novels I have read.

The reason why I gave it only 4 out of 5 stars is because I'm not entirely sure if something that has lived 300 years would love rap so heavily or talk the way they do. I suppose some would love the low frequencies of the music, I do enjoy a few songs myself, and many more when I was younger, but all of them? (I guess maybe if you lived over 300 years, you'd get sick of hearing classical over and over again?) And the way they talk annoyed me at some points, with their slang, but again, I suppose if you were a secret being you'd have to hide among people so you'd learn the slang also, its just no one uses the slang they do >.< I also hated their names, if you are going to be called something like Fury, don't spell it Phury. That was easily overlooked though because J.R.Ward used only the first initial most of the time, Zsadist was 'Z' and Vishous was 'V' a lot of the time so that didn't weight on me as much.

I did like the series, probably will buy the others in the future. They are fun reads and if you don't take it too seriously very enjoyable and easy reads (I can read one book in two days). I liked how she created endless antagonists and pretty much (as we saw with John Matthew) endless 'brothers' showing up one day with their birthmark so there will always be a story to write. A good series to get into with a promise of more to come.

Let me first start with what a bargain this set was. Six books for $25 or so pleases me.

I have to admit to at first being disappointed with Dark Lover. I really prefer my vampires with a true blood lust, so the fact that they only feed periodically and only off of other vampires was a bit of a let down. Then I realized that this is really a romance novel with vampire stuff thrown in. Once I came to that realization I found myself hot for these hot men.

Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, Lover Awakened and Lover Unbound were good books that focused on one brother and his life and the rest was all background.

Moving on to Lover Revealed and Lover Enshrined, I felt cheated. V and Phury had to share their stories with the plot line to forward the next book. I really felt bad for Phury because there were several stories going on in his book. While I can appreciate the need for the other characters and those stories, couldn't they have been woven in better, or more slowly in other future books?

I will continue to read this series because once I start a series, I cannot stop - I just need to know what happens next. I only hope that the author resumes her storytelling as she did in the first few books.

Sold as a box set for $25, the first 6 books are a great deal for an awesome series; I would not pay the individual price. Different twist on the vampire story, but the storyline for each book is fairly repetitive and predictable. Each character (with his ridiculously "cheezy" name) is introduced, story tells how he meets his shellan (mate), there are misunderstandings between the two, and then in the end they get together. The protagonist characters are interesting, but the antagonist characters (the Lesser enemies of the BDB) are drop-dead boring and after a while I found myself skimming these chapters. Nevertheless, these are a really easy, quick, enjoyable read and perfect for the times when you just want to chill-out and relax at the end of a long day. The stories of Wrath, Rhage, Zsadist and Vishous are the ones I enjoyed the most, and in that order. The story of Butch is good. The story of Phury is really weak and boring, and the reason for the 4 stars instead of a full 5 stars. Although not essential, I would recommend reading them in order to avoid "spoilers." I liked that the covers are not "trashy" and do not give you photo of who you should be "seeing" as each character.

Well if you love vampires and a bit of raunch then these are for you! I love all vampire books and I thought the true blood books were a bit sexy, but these are hot!! Can be pretty graphic so if you aren't into sex scenes these aren't for you, but the are a good read.

I purchased these separately as they were published but will rate as the box set because they are all fantastic! I absolutely enjoyed the writing, the characters, the romance and the brotherhood. It left me with a sense of longing to belong to something so fierce and committed.

Good vs Evil - Brood of huge vampire hunks are actually the good guys. JRW gave these warriors distinct personalities and their inner character was portrayed to the point that I felt as though I knew them personally. Their interaction with each other and those around them was enjoyable as well.
I have to admit that the "bad guys" and their tale was a tad boring for me but, of course, is needed. I've read some reviews knocking the slang. It really didn't bother me one way or another. Once I was into the story, it all fell into place.

Best, for me, was RHAGE aka Hollywood - absolutely had all the attributes of the other books but by far funnier than hell too! Worse so far - Book 7 Rhevenge. It didn't grab me like the others and I can't begin to tell you how aggravating it is that the paperbacks come out nearly a year after the hard copy (of course I bought the hard back immediately). I cannot wait for Book 8 -- soon but not yet. In the meantime I think I'll do Book7 one more time....maybe it was just me! Probably going to have to purchase this set because my originals are still "out" being read by others. They've gone through at least 5 others so far - my 20yr old and all her friends are true fans so these books really do span the ages!

Love the Brotherhood and, if you like paranormal, passionate love & fighting along with allegiance and true loyalty - you'll like this!