Dark Lover

The Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 1

By: J. R. Ward

Narrated by: Jim Frangione

Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

The first novel of J. R. Ward's New York Times best-selling Black Dagger Brotherhood series features a unique take on vampire lore and heavy doses of sensuality.

The vampire Darius fears for the life of his half-breed daughter, who is unaware of her unusual destiny. To oversee her transformation, Darius seeks help from Wrath, a dangerous loner and the world's only purebred vampire.

©2005 J.R. Ward (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Love the book

It took a while to get used to the men speaking the book, you know, reading the story out loud. He got better as he went on. I love story line.

Really good. Book

Where does Dark Lover rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Well, it's a lot more graphic than I like, but the story was good.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Dark Lover?

When the woman found out she was part vampire.

Which character – as performed by Jim Frangione – was your favorite?

The female lead.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Neither,

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed the book, it was well written, and Jim Frangiine was great.

Love this audiobook

Great start to a vampire series. Can not wait to hear the other brother’s story’s.

Excellent narration.

An intense, sexy, violent vampire tale. I’d read the book. I loved every word of this audiobook. Intense. Perfection.

Dark Lover

I was introduced to this series of books
Several years ago I read as hardback books. I enjoyed reading them then but now I’m enjoying them on my way to work on audio. I will recommend them for anyone!

Oldie but Goodie

Over ten years ago, I read the first seven books of the series. Dark Lover was one of my favorite of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I have actually read this book two times. So listening to Dark Lover was definitely fun experience for me. For newbies to this series, the BDB is a group of warrior vampires that are alive and more specifically another type species that co-exist with humans, even though humans do not realize that other types of species exist. These warrior vampires are massive, damaged and are dangerous killers. They protect their kind and humans from the sole-less Lessors, which are evil men who are considered non-living in which they are turned into killing machines for the Omega in order to wipe out the vampire race. Lessors will bait and kill humans in order to set traps to kill the Black Dagger Brotherhood and other civilian vampires.

Wrath is the Blind Kind, who continues to deny his destiny to rule his people. Wrath feels his only destiny is to be leader of the black dagger brotherhood, until he is asked to care and protect one of the other BDB's half breed daughter. Darius has secretly watched his daughter, Beth, throughout her life and feels like she will go through the Change and he is worried that if his daughter does not receive blood from a pure bred vampire, Beth will die. The problem, Beth has no idea of the vampire race or that she is a half-breed. The recluse King is reluctant at first, but due to the death of Beth's father, Wrath accepts the responsibility to help Beth through her change. This is where the fun begins listening/reading about Beth, Wrath and the brotherhood.

This book is a fantasy/action/love story. J.R. Ward creates an alternative world and allows her viewers to step into the fantasy. Since this book written over ten years ago, it seemed a some what dated. At the time, the love scenes seemed very erotic. In today's romantic literature, I don't think it's quite as steamy as some of the current paranormal romance books. Yet, she writes intense passion for her main characters. Also, this is fun action packed story with big hot vampires, with definitely has a happy ending. You get three types of genre all rolled up in one.

As for the narrator, he was perfect for the book at the time this was produced. His voice is smooth but he does alter his voice much to differentiate characters. I feel that back when he originally narrated this book, most people would have been considered the narration awesome. Narration has come so far since then because current day narrators can really make you feel like they are the actual characters in the book and not just reading the book to an audience. I would consider this book and the audio like a great classic. A little dated but still first rate material. The books should be listen to in order to fully appreciate the story. I loved the first 6 books, but after that J.R. Ward creates too many characters and sub-plots that made her books more difficult for me to enjoy. *the first six books are offered on the romance package.

A Beautiful Love

it had my attention all the way! I couldn't wait until the next page was turned

Better late

Started on these late but I am hooked-great start filled with vampires, a fight between good and evil, love and friendship/family- loss and gain- gotta get to the next book- this is definitely a 5 Star read for paranormal lovers.

HIS HEART WAS AS EMPTY AS HER STARE

SMOOTH AS GRAVEL
This has been in the top 50 of Horror for a long time. I had avoided it, believing it was probably not for me. Than it went on sale for a pretty good price. I was right all a long, this was not for me.

WHATEVER HE HAD, SHE WANTED
Had there been some horror, I might have got into it. Ward seems to come up with a complicated society of Vampires, Lessers, Shelots and Doguns (I am sure I misspelled most of those). The vampires had warriors (which are the main characters.) and even had a scientist. I was interested in that part of the story. The writing is very clichéd. The main character is described as BEAUTIFUL WITH LONG DARK HAIR, IMPOSSIBLY BLUE EYES, LONG LEGS, CREAMY SMOOTH SKIN, THIN WAIST, FLAT STOMACH AND PERFECT SHAPED BREASTS. The main male character is 6'6", extremely wide shoulders, arms bigger than most people's legs and a male member to match.

HE HAD TO TASTE HER BEFORE HE INVADED HER.
It is not a bad book, it just is not a great book. I am too impatient to put up with something that is not great.

Narrator
This guy does not help. I put him on 1.25 speed and he was still slow and boring.

I'm Sorry - But Really?

While I am not a die-hard Vampire fantasy fan, I have enjoyed the Sookie Stackhouse series and the Elizabeth Hunter Elemental series. And I love Molly Harper's Vampire books. So I was pretty open minded when I started this series. I knew it had a huge following so I had high hopes. This series is entirely different from those. These vampires are big, hulking testosterone-laden giants who wouldn't know nuance or sophistication if it bit them in the neck. And that would probably be OK. They don't have to be humorous, or brilliant, or classically good looking. I can deal with stories centered on alpha males who don't profess to be mental giants. But then they had to open their mouths.

Seriously? If I take the most positive spin on the dialog I can assume it was tongue in check and that the author intended that her big, giant heroic hulks sounded like an 11 year old boy's version of "cool" when they spoke. But I am afraid that wasn't her intent. I think that they were supposed to sound like ultra-cool heroic hulks. Instead they sound like idiots.

These vampires don't need fangs to be instantly recognizable by humans. As soon as they open their mouths to speak, once everyone around them stops laughing hysterically about how silly they sound, they would instantly know they must be vampires because no one else sounds quite so, well, stupid. And don't even get me started on the vampire's names.

I found one of the vampire's interesting, so I admit I read the next books in the series until I got through Zs. I had to stop then. Either that or I was going to slap the next person I met who uttered the word "True". Even if they used it in the right context. And each book went downhill from the first.

Two other serious flaws with the book - the author does a good job of creating some of the female characters and then barely mentions them again in later books. They were far more interesting than the males, but they just seem to disappear. And finally, most fantasy series I have read spend an enormous amount of time making the alternate universe their characters inhabit plausible. They create rules and give enough details that explain the unexplainable. They let you suspend belief and think that maybe that universe could coexist with ours and we just don't realize it. Ward makes no attempt to explain how these creatures co-exist with humans, how we are unaware of all the carnage they leave in their wake, where the money comes from that they spend on clothes, booze and drugs, which she describes ad naseum or why on earth anyone would consider them remotely heroic.

Just to be a little more perverse from the diehard fans - I thought the narrator did a great job with a lousy text.