An incomplete, unrehearsed, and unhinged recap of JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series
When we look back at the early 2000s vampire craze, one book obliterated all the others in terms of success and cultural influence. But almost a full month before "Twilight" hit the shelves, “Dark Lover” introduced us to the Black Dagger Brotherhood. We are getting an adaptation twenty years and more than 40 books later.
Now, full disclosure: According to my Goodreads, I am not up to date with anything published after “Lover Arisen” and “A Warm Heart in Winter,” but that also means that I read more than 30 books in this series, and I have been part of the fandom for more than half my life.
These books are one of my Roman empires, so if you are a BDB fan or just want to be given an admittedly shallow but hopefully entertaining dive, take a seat, babe. I’m about to have so much fun, and I hope you do too.
I have never met anyone who reads these books in real life, yet they are always at the top of the bestselling list, Ward’s conventions are always full, and the series has been going long enough that vampires are cool again.
I refuse to Google the author. Here is what I think you should know about this woman: she looks like she came from money, married into money, and will die with money. Why does that matter? Because she is talented, that is newsworthy!
Ward’s writing style is one of the most unique I have ever come across. The only thing that dates her books is the technology and pop culture references, because everything else? Immaculate. Her female characters are more than love interests, her male characters feel complex emotions other than anger, her villains are terrifying not because they are monsters but because you know and see them on the news every day and the problems that these characters come across and have to fight against are your own. Yes, these are vampire romances, and they are still easier to relate to than 95% of the books I have ever read.
Disabilities, addiction, sexual orientation, classicism, discrimination, misogyny, poverty, grief, and all kinds of trauma… are all big parts of a lot of the characters’ lives not to differentiate one from the other or offer a man an opportunity to be a woman’s saviour, but because they are things that the characters survived and still have to deal with every day, even after they meet the love of their lives, get married and have children.
Ward is not a Mormon, fyi, the spice is unbelievable, and she can have your heart pumping at the grittiest fighting scene, to smiling at the friendship displays, to laughing out loud at the dialogue, to sobbing at a loss and jumping in bed and kicking your feet at the love declarations.
In this universe, vampirism is not a decease or a supernatural occurrence but an evolutionary branch of homo sapiens going back thousands of years. In their own theology, vampires were created by The Scribe Virgin (surely a capitalist goddess since other people do all the writing for her), not a girl’s girl, since she loves keeping women imprisoned and a liar too. How are you a goddess and create and uphold a patriarchal system that deletes women! You are going to learn to hate this, pick me, B. Her younger brother (the Omega) is even worse. Unable to create a species from scratch, he simply used humans as the raw material to create Lessers, the evil guys that are trying to hunt vampires to extinction and doing an amazing job at that.
To fight against this new enemy, the vampires created the Black Dagger Brotherhood, whose aim was to protect the species from their sworn enemies and serve as the Royal Family’s private bodyguards. The product of centuries of selective breeding and rigorous training left Darius, Tohr(ment), Wrath, Rhage, Z(sadist), V(ishous) and Phury an almost separate species inside their own, able to do and withstand things that even normal vampires couldn’t.
Ward’s vampires can easily live up to 1000 years and only noticeably age in the last hundred, they’re stronger, the males possess a biological instinct to help them select a mate that they can scent mark to warn other males not to get close to, they can read thoughts depending on their own ability and the other person’s mental strength with a lucky few even having special abilities, they have incredibly sharp senses, they heal fast, they can materialize if they know the place where they are going to and up until they are 25 they can tolerate sunlight and don’t need to drink blood.
The biggest difference between species is that vampire maturity happens in a matter of a few hours around their 25th birthday, and many don’t survive. After their transition, they need to feed from the opposite sex every few months or more often if they are sick or hurt. The only thing more dangerous to a vampire than their transition into adulthood is pregnancy and childbirth. Couple that with females only being fertile once every ten years and their pregnancies lasting a year and a half, human and Lesser persecution and a centuries-old monarchic crisis … these vamps are going through a lot, and there aren’t that many of them left.
Ward built this world brick by brick by creating a culture, festivities, traditions, subcultures and generational differences and was incredibly smart to base these costumes in the vampire’s unique biology and history, so every little choice made sense, and she adds to it with every character’s viewpoint and experience. Hardcore fans will know that there are a few continuity errors, mostly amongst smaller characters and details, but those are mere details in this amazing tapestry.
I love romance, but sometimes, and I think we all know it, the world building can be as flimsy as the hero’s shirt, being blown apart by the strong wind, letting us look into his eight pack.
Or if you are Gen Z or younger, those cartoon covers that are making people panic about teens finding corn!!! You know, the vintage kind that you have to buy and read hidden away, rather than just opening Instagram. These books are the real deal, and I hope we get the adaptation they deserve. And who should we start with if not with the King himself?
snowghoul
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
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