Creating a Camelot with Vampires

Black Dagger Brotherhood #1:  Dark Lover by J.R. Ward

Paranormal Erotic Romance

I don't know what I expected when I was recommended this book, but...Thank you, Liz, for sending me down this path!  Girl, you've done right by me.

In the book, vampire king Wrath is irresistibly drawn to his soon-to-be mate, Beth.  He doesn't really need the love complications as he is trying to quell a potential uprising and hunt down bad guys who smell like baby powder. However, big baddie that he is, he is putty in her hands.  Beth has problems of her own; namely, she isn't aware she's a vampire-to-be.  This start of the series is the Camelot of vampire love lore.

This paranormal eroticism was my first foray into this genre and, yes, that's a genre. This book was like a pile of dark chocolate kisses--luscious, sinful, addictive and impossible to stop at just one.  You have to rush on to the next book in the series.  Those 500 pages slip through your fingers like water and minutes mean nothing until you get to the end.  This book is like a literary masturbation with multiple orgasms.  If that line offends you, make no plans to read this book series.  That language is tame by comparison and reading the book will surely fry your brain neurons.  It's a total overload of word sex.

My only pet peeve is with the ridiculous spelling of the character's names.  Vishous, Phury, Tohrment...they sound (and probably look like) WWF wrestlers gone awry.  It would be hard to keep a straight face when meeting them for the first time.  It just seems a bit silly.

Overall, I love the fantasy world Ward has created. It has breathed new life into what was becoming a very tired genre.  So amazing, so unbelievable and, yet, so very credible.  The real strength of the books is with the incredible job Ward has done with characterization.  There are so many characters and Ward fleshes each one out completely, forcing us to follow numerous subplots of very inhuman creatures with such human needs and failings.