Lover Revealed - J.R. Ward

Lover Revealed
J.R. Ward
Signet Eclipse
Copyright: 2007
9780451412355

From the cover of the book:

In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there's a deadly war raging between vampires and their slayers. And there exists a secret band of brothers like no other - six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Now, an ally of the Black Dagger Brotherhood will face the challenge of his life and the evil of the ages.

Butch O'Neal is a fighter by nature. A hard living, ex-homicide cop, he's the only human ever to be allowed in the inner circle of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. And he wants to go even deeper into the vampire world- to engage in the turf war with the lessers. He's got nothing to lose. His heart belongs to a female vampire, an aristocratic beauty who's way out of his league. If he can't have her, then at least he can fight side by side with the Brothers...

Fate curses him with the very thing he wants. When Butch sacrifices himself to save a civilian vampire from the slayers, he falls prey to the darkest force in the war. Left for dead, found by a miracle, the Brotherhood calls on Marissa to bring him back, though even her love may not be enough to save him...

Lover Revealed is my favorite of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. With Butch, there's more to the story than just the happy ending required by a romance novel. He's the only human to have ever been allowed so deeply into the world of the vampires, much less the world of the Brotherhood. Living with them, living off their money, but not able to do anything much in return, something has to change. And it does.

In many ways, the storyline for Lover Revealed was being set up as far back as the first book in the series, Dark Lover. There's been hints and plot points dropped into the previous books, especially in Lover Awakened, all of which come to a head in this fourth book.

J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series is rather a cross between the urban fantasy genre and paranormal romances: each book focuses on an individual character and ends with their happy ending - all classic of the romances I've read, but at the same time, there's constantly something being set up for the next books in the series, which is a lot more like the fantasy series such as the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs.

She's also created one of the most original worlds I've seen - with some of the most different heroes. Are they heroes? Heroes are 'supposed' to be characters you can look up to. These guys get up to some rather dubious activities to say the least. Drug use and dealing is pretty much constant as is drinking and even the use of prostitutes. The language the characters use is also very rough (and flecked with several four letter words not used in polite company).

Even so, I really like these books, and I'm enjoying them just as much on re-reading as I did the first time around.