Guilty Pleasure: Black Dagger Brotherhood

One look at the covers and it looks like something you made fun of your mom for reading. Or, okay, maybe it looks like something I made fun of my mom for reading. I always start my defense by going “the covers don’t really have anything to do with them”. I’ve been using this excuse for any number of books that I don’t want to be called out on for years.

Wherever the trends in literature may lead us, lately they’ve been leading us to vampires. And while some incarnations can be totally off the wall, others are well-built enough to weather the “well that’s not Anne Rice” backlash. Because let’s face it, for most of us, Anne Rice WAS vampires. Before there was Laurell K. Hamilton and Stephenie Meyer, there was Anne Rice, and she was queen of vampire canon.

There hasn’t been a lot of reworkings I’ve been comfortable with – I pitched a fit when Blade came out and vamps were allergic to silver (wait, wasn’t that werewolves?!) and garlic (old wives’ tale!), but I completely jived with Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000 because he gave me a surprisingly good reason for the silver thing. Well now, at the root of it, vampires have to be allergic to sunlight. While I could wax folkloric for pages about the whys and wherefores of certain aspects of vampire legend, I’m going to accept that at the very least, they have to burn in the sun.

Luckily that very least is also where J.R. Ward draws the line. She does not, however, ascribe to the fact that vampires, are, well, dead.

I know, I know. “Back up the soul train! What do you mean vampires aren’t dead?!” Well, lemme ‘splain. No, let me sum up: they’re a different species. They’re alive and they eat food, they have children, they mature, and they die. The latter sometimes just as easily as any other biological organism, but their natural lifespan is prolonged – several hundred years. I can hear it now – “well do they even drink blood?!” Worry not, they definitely do. However, it is the blood of their own kind (specifically the blood of the opposite sex for some tasty genetic variation – though don’t let this lure you into thinking Ward only supports the m/f) that provides them with the nutrition they require. Human blood is not as filling nor does it have the tasty amino acids required to sustain them.

Ward develops an intensely intricate culture – including a religion, a society with very strict rules, and even pretty creepy nemeses. The Brothers are the warrior class of the society (which is quite small – once spanning continents and numbering in the tens of thousands, now they number in the hundreds and live in a relatively small community in upstate NY), and it is their role to defend the rest of the vampires against the Lessers. Brothers are genetically superior to their civilian brethren – they’re larger, for one, and stronger. Whether or not one is a Brother seems to be (so far) a note of genetic lottery and predestination. Males are generally larger than females, but those destined for Brotherhood are even more foreboding.

As children, vampires are skinny, weak, and have very picky digestive systems. They do not yet drink blood, consuming bland food chock full of vitamins, and have little strength and no sex drive. When they hit adulthood, they really fill out – including possibly reaching a height of nearly seven feet and developing muscle mass in an extremely painful, sudden sort of way. Think of how painful that werewolf-transition looks in Underworld or American Werewolf in London – bones shifting and all that. Ouch. It’s a dangerous transition, requiring their first imbibing of blood. If they do not drink “pure” blood (that is, the older the line the better), there is a chance they will not survive. Even then, some who do drink pure blood do not survive. The low birth rate and dangerous puberty has essentially made sea turtles out of these guys. Even better, birthing can still be quite dangerous, and sometimes both mother and child will perish. Not a lot of good things going for them there, evolutionarily.

But let’s get to why I have to defend these and they get ranked as my “guilty pleasure” rather than just some cool books I happen to read.

Each volume focuses on a Brother and his mate – and the difficulties that relationship presents. These mates call to the Brother in their very blood, forcing them to desire to protect and shelter – which are their primary directives as Brothers in the first place. There’s a really sweet little tidbit about how a woman offering her food to her mate gives him extremely fuzzy feelings. However, none of these guys are really the “fuzzy feelings” sort – they use bad language and drugs (or alcohol), listen to very loud music about loose women, drugs, alcohol, guns and cars, and live in bachelor hovels. On the other hand, they have fantastic table manners in company, always saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Something to be said for nuture there.

God, he even knew their names. Rhage. Phury. And that scary-ass Zsadist guy. Yeah, no Tom, Dick, and Harry names for the vampire types. But come on, could you actually imagine some lethal bloodsucker named Howard? Eugene?
-from Dark Lover, book 1 of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

Wrath, their king, has fallen hard for a half-human woman – one who may or may not transition into her vampirism, and thus may or may not actually be a viable candidate for his queen. Being half-human, she has less of a chance of surviving the transition if indeed it does hit her, so Wrath does his level best to try and forget her, just in case she checks out. Rhage (are you seeing a pattern already? Just wait til you realize how much she loves the letter ‘h’) is cursed and shapeshifts into this Chinese dragon-like thing and tends to…eat people. He’s the most attractive of them all, and his mate is the far from a swimsuit model. In fact, she mans a desk on the suicide helpline. Go figure. Zsadist was a slave, and has more than a few psychoses, including a hefty dose of chauvinism, so accepting that he has found a mate is not very pretty because he hates himself and does not believe himself worthy of such a person (and kind of love-hates her for not hating him…all very complicated). Vishous has some funny powers and is the son of a great war leader – a great war leader that imbued in his son some potentially disturbing sexual appetites. But he’s good with IT and has visions of the future, so he’s good times. And he’s a big Red Sox fan. Which, it turns out, is integral to one of his friendships. Phury is Zsadist’s twin, the one that didn’t get made a slave, and has more survivor’s guilt than any one person deserves – he may actually have “M” for martyr tattooed on his forehead, but I can’t quote you textual evidence on that. He’s also a bit of a drug addict. What a role model.

Admittedly, not a lot there to love, on paper, but each of these men (and I didn’t even tell you about my two favorites because they aren’t strictly Brothers when they’re introduced – Butch, the womanizing drunkard ex-cop, and Rhevenge, a drug-dealing pimp) becomes a driving force – their stories interwoven with the struggle against those who would annihilate their species.

“You so need to lighten up about that potato-launcher incident,” Butch said.
Phury rolled his eyes and eased back in the banquette. “You broke my window.”
“Of course we did. V and I were aiming for it.”
“Twice.”
“Thus proving that he and I are outstanding marksmen.”
— from Lover Unbound, book 5 of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

Ward writes men in their natural environment better than any other female writer I’ve seen. The non-sex parts (and yeah, there’s a lot of that, hence being lumped into the romance category though I think there’s more to them than that by a long shot) recall what I’ve seen male authors write about men – they do not feel fluffy or dumbed down to “sensitive” versions of what women think they want, or want to read about. They’re scary and powerful and they make no excuses for their masculinity. At the same time, Ward gives them very real emotional and psychological problems – bricked together by childhood and experiences which cannot just be blown away with a kiss. These are dudes with Issues, and while having someone that loves you deeply and understands you helps, it is not a fix-all.

“V, just the other day you threatened to use that hand of yours on me. Remember? When I told you what I thought about that goatee monstrosity?”
“I had to do something to shut you up. Every damn time I’ve run into you since I grew it, you ask me if I’ve French-kissed a tailpipe.”
“And I’m still convinced you’re doing my GTO, you bastard.”
-from Lover Eternal, book 2 of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

I adore the world she’s built – one that exists as a parallel to our own. Rhevenge, a dealer and a pimp, caters to both humans and vampires, and the humans have no idea that there are things he offers to certain clients that they would never be able to understand. The vampires and their enemies, the Lessers, have an unspoken agreement: keep it out of the human purview – and so while they may make a lot of noise in an alleyway, they always clean up the dead bodies. As the books go on, the plots, though intertwined with the relationships between the Brothers and their prospective mates, take precedence – so if you think to read them just for the smutty bits, you’ll be sad you skipped the plot as things start to get more complicated.

“So would you like to try on some clothes?” Beth nodded at what was in her arms. “I don’t have many dresses but Fritz can get you some.”
“You know what?” Marissa eyed the blue jeans the queen had on. “I’ve never worn a pair of pants before.”
“I’ve got two pairs here if you want to try them out.”
Well, wasn’t this a night for firsts. Sex. Arson. Pants.
-from Lover Revealed, book 4 of the Black Dagger Brotherhood

I admit that I hid these books at the start – I devoured the first one in a day, immediately returning to my local Borders to collect the next one, and then the next three. Character development is easily my favorite aspect of any story, and Ward doesn’t disappoint. Readers chose their favorite brothers, and ask any fan, cling to them and will textually defend their specific awesomeness. Me? I like the Boston-Irish cop and the drug dealer. The former tells it like it is and discovers he does care for something, and the latter wears a mink coat and has no qualms about killing folks who interfere with his pursuit of capitalism. Upstanding citizens, right there.

I could wax poetic for hours (I haven’t even gone into my favorite women of the series – fluffy females most of them may be, but let it not be said they aren’t strong characters in their own right. And then there’s Xhex, who will hand your ass to you on a platter), probably, but what I’d prefer is to find out who is your favorite brother?