Continuing on with my Vampire fixation as of late, I recalled my sister talking about this series of books that had an interesting take about the vampire world.  So I asked that she express-mail it right away before I get bored and kill myself.  My sister called me straight away.

Sister: "Are you sure about this?"

bb: "what's that supposed to mean?"

Sister: "I mean, do you know what the books are about?"

bb: "er, vampires? and coolness?"

Sister: "Yeah it's sorta cool, but maybe you wouldn't like it, and it takes money to send them to you."

bb: "Yeah whatever.  Send it."

See, right at the last line shows me resigning to care.  Remembering this actually helped me go through all three books in three days.  And they're about 400++ pages each.  This was not an easy task to accomplish, as you will soon find out.

Before saying anything close to a review, I'd really want to share with you J.R. Ward's very interesting concept that she has built for this series: the vampire world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood is a group of elite male vampires that serve to protect their race.  Vampires do not threaten humanity as it is in other literatures.  It is them who are hunted by entities called lessers.  Lessers are humans who sold their souls to become immortal and gain abilities for the sole purpose of eliminating vampires.  Still, the fact remains that vampires are far more superior to humans, even lessers.  Some are born with abilities such as seeing the future, spontaneous combustion (although not the kind where they die), ESP, etc. etc. etc.  All vampires have more strength than humans: a male "civilian" vampire may put up a decent fight against one lesser.  You can imagine what the elite male vampires, specifically those of the brotherhood, could do to some five lessers in battle. 

Having such an important task, the brotherhood is a super-sekrit organization.  Members are handpicked, and usually an impressive lineage would help with being one.  Because being a brother means being bred as one, raised as one, and trained as one.  These vampires are so elite that because of their genes, they have become a sub-species of their own.  And as the author would like to add, they're all oozing with sex appeal.

Interestingly, the vampires don't drink human blood.  Well, they do, but they don't prefer it.  To drink human blood would be the lowest of the low, since human blood is weak.  Sort of like eating sub-standard, pre-packed, processed chicken over steaming hot, juicy, freshly roasted whole chicken.  Vampires feed off each other, and can feed only on the opposite sex.  Not in a cannibalistic way.  This is where all the interesting concepts come in.  In a very kinky way.

To make the game fair between humans and vampires, the vampire race does have its weaknesses.  They may be superior in the looks department, and kick-ass in motorskills, and other special powers but they have very high mortality rates.  First, vampires don't multiply with a simple bite-a-human stunt.  Vampires should be born from at least one vampire parent.  Next, young vampires take the form of extremely weak, sexually unaware humans until their mid-twenties, where they undergo transition to become full-fledged, bloodsucking bad-asses.  But during their transition period which lasts for days, they are subjected to extreme pain as their bodies change.  Men become more muscular and grow taller by a few feet, as do the females.  Because of this transition, most don't survive the pain and die.  Add the fact that adult females can only become fertile every ten years, and their fertility period can last only about two days.  Kinky note: these two days make the female OVERLY HORNY and she must bite the male every single time they do the twist.  All males in the vicinity respond aggressively to the female's scent, but the lucky male ends up entirely shriveled down below after an average of 16 "performances" straight, and weakens due to the amount of blood lost.  Talk about girl power! If statistics say that it is often males that don't survive the transition, nature balances it off because most females cannot survive the pregnancy.  In fact, pregnancy is not popular as a bringer of life in the vampire world but the bringer of death. 

As I'm spewing all these stuff, you may be noticing the mood of the books by now.  Especially when I move on to describing their mating behaviors...

On second thought, I shall move on to the review, since 80% of the series will handle talking about these mating behaviors.  Oh, sorry, did I forget to mention these were erotic romance novels?  Haha.  Gotcha.  In popular Filipino terms: these are Bobo Books! No-brainers!  Virtue required: Patience.  Or if you don't have that, you can always go for speed reading, which I opted for in the end.

I'll tell you something you don't hear me say very often.  I'm actually a very patient person.  In this case, I just had to skip a few pages altogether when it would start talking about the lessers.  Seriously, who's interested reading about soul-less humans (therefore incapable of emotion, therefore no character development whatsoever, so what's the point)?  The stories have 10% plot, and 120% vampire sex.  And if we're all adults here, sex can also be in fast-forward mode, right?  Thus, reading a book of this series would only take about 10 hours. 

What came to mind after reading the first two chapters was UNFORGIVABLE writing style.  I had so many complaints.  Out-of-character-ness, annoying language, tasteless descriptions that gave the feeling like the writer was grown from fanfiction.net.  I can't even enumerate all the reasons that made me gag so much while reading the books.

And yet!  And yet, I read through three books.  Amazing.  It's just that, well, after that, I really couldn't go further.  Originality can only take you so far.  You cannot overlook the lack of technique in delivering this could-have-been-masterpiece-but-PHAILED-miserably piece. I could take this concept and the characters with their base personalities (as they tend to change personality in a turn of the page ) and make a fanf*ckingtastic movie or graphic novel.  That's an overstatement.  A good high-school editor could make a better piece using these elements.  (Yeah I'm better than a good high-school editor, thanks)

As this started with a conversation with my sister, I also end it with one.

bb (after reading the third book): "You have all of the six books of this series?"

Sister: "er.. yeah."

bb: "What's up with that reaction?"

Sister: "Well, you know what's up."

bb: "Yeah. What the hell."

...

bb: "So why do you have all six?"

Sister: "I didn't enjoy after the third book though."

...

Sister: "So should I send the rest of the books to you?"

...

bb: "No."

Title: Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, Lover Awakened (Books 1, 2, and 3 of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series respectively)

Author: J.R. Ward (Female. go figure.)

Official Site: http://www.jrward.com/

Rating: The fact that I think about rewriting the scenes in my head to make the story kick-ass accounts that the books have an ability to grab on to its readers (even in a bad way).  Plus the original world it created, I give it a: