Before I found J.R Ward's BDB series I'd never read a paranormal romance. I read only historicals and thought that anything that was so weird as vampires and other baddies that go bump in the night were ridiculous until I read Wards work.
Now I'm a Vampire Junkie I can't get enough of them and the first four books of the BDB series will be on my to be read over and over and loved forever shelf..they are in my top 10 all time books and I've read enough books to fill a rather large book store. I am not easily pleased and Ward pleased me very well, gave me everything I wanted and all that I didn't know I wanted in the Brothers. With each book I fell madly in love with the characters, I couldn't decide who I loved most, they were all just so incredible! The leapt off the pages of the books, their world was so real, she brought them to life for me and I loved every word of every book...until V's book.
I felt very sad that V's story was not primarily about V as Wrath's, Rhage's and Z's and Butch's stories were about them. I felt cheated, not because as many others expressed, that V got stuck with a ghost but that he got stuck being a co star in the book that should have starred him. It was quite a let down. But, I didn't give up, I held out hope that she may have just had a problem writing him since he was so very complex. I thought that Phury was next and his would be better.
I am another who waited with breathless anticipation for this book. I adored Phury from day one. I was waiting for his book by the end of Dark Lover, truthfully, about 1 second after I read about him. I thought HE would be THE true romantic hero out of the series when I first read DL. I thought HE was going to be the special story that would be the climax of a truly incredible saga, the biggest and best love story of all. I mean, here he is, this sexy gorgeous creature who gives and gives until he can't give any more. He suffers in silence, his agony about his past kept to himself. He's always more worried about others than himself. And he had major angst build up...unrequited love from his own twins shellan, guilt for being the child that wasn't taken, guilt from not being able to save Z, pain from a childhood that was a nightmare, the shame of his dark side coming out and ofcourse the vigin aspect of it. I was just dying to have J.R. Ward tell me all about this man.
My first inkling that something wasn't going to be right about LE was the way that she let him lose his virginity, something that he held so sacred, he was waiting for his true love and then what...all of a sudden he's changed his mind and had this disgusting encounter in the toilets of a bar? YICK. It was gross and it was WAY out of character for him. I let that go though, hoping that things would eventually right themselves in his story.
It never happened, infact it went from bad to worse and than turned into a complete disaster. I don't know WHO that man she was writing about was but it certainly was NOT the person that she created. The Phury that I fell in love with would never have neglected a woman of worth for 5 months, leaving her to peas and toothpicks while he was smoking his red smoke and doing whatever it was he was doing. He would never have brutally taken her the first time, he would never have treated her the way that he did at all. And the way that red smoke suddenly went from being a mellow pot like kind of drug to something that sounded more like Crack or Meth or Heroin, well that was bizzare too. Everything about him was wrong...this whole wizard bit, why not make it more of a mental issue than a drug issue if he's hearing voices in his head and was a child of abuse, why not go that route instead of hooking him on a drug that we were told was not addictive at first. There was no resolution with Bella either. I was waiting for him to have that lightbulb moment when he realized that he never really loved Bella, I wanted him to explain this to Cormia, to allow her to feel secure in their love instead of wondering if he still wanted Bella. There were so many missed opportunities for major emotional moments, I can't list them all.
And if were going to get into characters who didn't act like themselves...NONE of the Brothers did in this book, what little part they had in the book that is. Why would Wrath cut loose one of only 6 members of the BDB? I mean, he let Z be in when he was abusing women and was a total monster..V and Butch are, in my opinion, alcoholics...Butch especially, they were allowed their failures and were allowed to continue on in the Brotherhood, why did he turn on Phury and why did NO ONE try to help him? It was as if Ward totally forgot their devotion to one another and their cause. Why did she not allow Phury's drug use to evolve from red smoke to something more damaging, that would have been more realistic. And his brothers should have tried to save him, there should have been an intervention instead of just one pitiful effort by Z to stop Rehv from selling him red smoke...which lead to Phury getting the bad drugs that caused his overdose. And that was very sad too, the hero of the book nearly dies and he gets a few pages of Z there with him talking about himself, going on about his pain, being an ungrateful jerk...I LOVED Z until this book, now NOT SO MUCH! He was a jackass. His twin found him, saved him, was willing to sacrifice life and limb to rescue him and the nasty creep couldn't muster up a thanks for him? SOOOO not right, and so off the mark. Where was Rhage? Where was V? Butch...who should have felt a bit of Phury's pain having lost a sister and having had his own family not really care much for him after that. Why was no one there for Phury? He was abandoned by those who were most important to him in his life, even Cormia was not actually at his bedside after the OD! I mean ...C'mon!
It was all wrong. There was no intense emotion, no caring, no giving, no worrying...nothing. I hated that the interaction between the brothers was basically zilch! I hated that the shellans were absent except for Doc Jane..and OH I hated that she was called that VERY VERY MUCH. The parts about Rehv were weird and strange and turned me off of him, someone who I had a great deal of interest in as well. That's gone..done for.
And that's not even addressing the fact that the book was billed to be about Cormia and Phury, their romance. The cover has the two of them on it, the back cover tells only of them...yet...they had only a small part in the story, I wouldn't even say Phury was a co star as V was, he was more filler for what was happening with JM and the newbies. I hated that most of all, the main character of the book should have at least 2/3 of the book be about him, if not more! That's how it was in the first 4 books. And I like another reviewer, always skimmed over the JM stuff..he's dull, lifeless, boring and quite frankly I can't read about him...the stuff I skimmed is now the main event in the books. The realtionships between the 6 brothers, their shellans, ther enemies and themselves is all gone. They've been replaced by a cast of thousands, people that I don't care for...and won't ever care for simply because I RESENT the fact that they have taken over the series, a series that was unfinished...she should have done justice to all 6 of the Brothers before bringing the others into the spotlight, leave them in the background, let them develop...but no, she shoved Phury and the boys into the wings and pulled JM and the kiddies onto center stage. It's obvious that she only cares for one brother and that's Z, he's going to be the only one who has any sort of storyline in the future books. To me, the whole Bella baby drama didn't need to be either, we all knew the baby was going to be ok, that Bella was going to be ok, if it were going to be such a majore emphasis of the books after LA..as it has been...she should NOT have told us what happened. And another thing that angers me....Phury and Cormia had a mating ceremony...on J.R Wards forum...WHAT is that all about? Why not put major developments about main characters in the book that is about them? Oh yea, that's right, no room in Phury and Cormias book for them to become mated...noooo we all had to hear about JM until I was ready to vomit. For me, he's now the main lead of the series...personally, that's the final nail in the coffin for me. A boring lackluster nothing..that's how I see him, I can't even tell you what he looks like, that's how little attention I paid to him throughout all of the books.
So, for me, that's it, done with this series. I am moving on, letting go of what I had hoped for and expected and accepting that this is not paranormal romance but now Urban fantasy, something that I don't care for. I won't be reading any further books affiliated with this series. I feel I've been disappointed enough with the last two books, especially this one, to realize that it's over and done with for me. I will be forever grateful to J.R. Ward for introducing me to the vampire world, I will always love those first 4 books, they are perfection to me, they showed me how good books can really be..which makes the sorrow over how bad LE really was sting all the more.
