Black Dagger Brotherhood

By J. R. Ward

There's this new series I spotted in the bookstores. Yes, yes... another vampire series. Lots of them flooding the market. This I found I could read. I told myself I couldn't read another vampire book thanks to the Carpathian Series but I did like this one. It is quite different. Yes, authors today are trying to out-do each other by creating their own vampire myth and legends. I even read one that vampirism is acquired through std! Another is that Merlin is a UFO and he created these vampires to save the world.

Strange?

Well, this one is this: In Caldwell, New York, there is a brotherhood of vampires protecting their race against the Lessening Society. Each member is chosen carefully before being inducted into the brotherhood.
Their vampire myth is this: A being called The Scribe Virgin created the vampires as her children. Her counterpart is the Omega. He hates her children and vows to destroy them. Since the Omega cannot create, he takes brutal humans and eats their souls and he turns them into Lessers, the vampire slayers. These lessers prowl the streets of New York and torture and kill any vampire their get their hands on. The brotherhood must take them down. They also try to keep the vampires from human knowledge.


The Brothers: Wrath (he is actually the vampire king), Tohrment, Rhage, Zsadist and Phury (twins), Vishous, and Darius (deceased)

Darius is killed by the lessers. Wrath must find his Darius' daughter, Elizabeth and make sure she goes through her transition. When Wrath finds Beth, he is enthralled and knows she is the only one for her. A complication arises when Butch O'neal, a dedicated cop sees Wrath for what he is. Since Butch was such a nice guy and he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, the brothers held him in their mansion.

Next book is about Rhage, the handsomest brother. He is called Hollywood and for good reasons. He bumps into Mary and knows she is the one. Only one problem: Mary is dying. Rhage sacrifices everything for her life.

The third book is about Zsadist, the tragic brother. He was kept as a blood slave for the first 100 years of his life. His brother Phury rescued him but Zsadist was not the same anymore. he is broken and maimed. To save his mate, he and Phury make a plan to take on the lessers.

The fourth book is my fave. Butch, the cop who has disappeared from the NYPD felt very much like an outsider. he and Vishous are roommates for the last six months but he was always being pushed aside. He was given money, showered with clothes but never really part of anything. Even in his own family and in the NYPD, he was an outsider. One day, he rescues a civilian vampire and was taken by the lessers. Tortured and left for dead, he is finally rescued and saved by Vishous. Marissa, a female vampire he had a major crush on, nursed him. Still he feels like an outsider. he felt dirty because of what the lessers did to him and he felt lonely because he cannot be what Marissa needs. He risks his life to try to become everything he could be, a warrior vampire.

The fifth book is about Vishous, the genius brother. V is a whiz in everything he does. One day the Scribe Virgin visits him and tells him he is to be the Primale, the mate of her Chosen. That means he will husband 40 chosen females to procreate females for the Scribe virgin's temple and males to become the brotherhood.
But he cannot help but fall in love with the doctor who saved his life, Jane. It's a tragic tale that would force someone to make a huge sacrifice in the end of the book.

All in all, the series is fascinating. It is action, romance and a bit of comedy rolled into one. Thought, the tragedy hits, the characters try to evolve and move on amidst the pain. It lacks more travel. Surely, there are vampires not just in Caldwell. They did originate in Europe. What about the Lessers there?