I had a really hard time taking this book seriously, because it is made of velveeta, there is so much cheese going on. Allow me to introduce you to the members of the Brotherhood. Aside from Wrath, we have Rhage, Tohrment, Vishous, Phury, Zsadist... and Darius. Guess which one is dead by the end of chapter two.
Once you get past the unfortunate nhames, the prose is full of lines that made me go back and read it again, just to make sure it really said what I thought it did. And it always did. Things like "If sex were food, Rhage would have been morbidly obese." "The guy was like lint in food: an irritation that made you want to spit." "He wanted to give her what females liked: a little TLC." Needless to say, I spent a lot of time laughing while I was reading this book, and I don't think I was supposed to.
The Bhrothers spent so very much time convincing themselves and each other they were bad bad very bad men, it ultimately left me unconvinced. You know how Eminem gets himself all tattooed and then uses gangster colloquisms, curses and insults people, trying so hard to look cool and edgy and mostly comes across as insecure and grasping for attention through cheap shock tactics? Yeah. That pretty much sums up the Bhrotherhood. Their attempts at gangster speak are just awkward enough to add to the overall cheese factor of the book, because you know it totally needed more of that, you feel me? True.
Ok, all of that aside, I can see why this book series has a devout following. It's fast-paced, it's sexy, and Ward has done some really creative things with vampire lore and worldbuilding. I like the idea of vampires and humans being completely different species, and once you get over being able to tell the lessers apart from normal humans because they smell like baby powder and are impotent, the idea of people giving up their souls for a greater chance to commit violence has some serious potential. It's just that you have to wade through a whole lot of bizarre to get to the good points. If you have an absurd sense of humour and enjoy watching campy movies, you might enjoy Dark Lover. Alternately, if the names of the Bhrotherhood don't make you think "say what?" you may get along nicely with this series. If you're looking for some seriously gritty, powerful urban fantasy, though, you might want to give this one a miss.
