Lover Awakened - J.R. Ward

Another five star vampire novel. I've copied parts of this review from my review of the book at All Booked Up. Don't stop with this book though. You've got to read the rest of the series as well.

Lover Awakened is the third book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and I've heard it called the best of them. While I'm not entirely certain that that is my opinion as well, this was yet another book that I couldn't put down, and I found myself reading until one thirty in the morning yet again.

Zsadist's story picks up almost immediately where Lover Eternal left off, with Bella still missing and the search ongoing. This is the book where the lessers as villains really take off to new heights of creepiness. Mr. O is the most normal of the lessers yet, and yet at the same time the least normal.

At the same time Mr. O is more or less stalking Bella, some new things start being hinted about John, the young orphan introduced in the previous book, and Zsadist's background, hinted at in the previous two books is made clear. Yikes! I'm more familiar with the Sherrilyn Kenyon Dark Hunters series so I'll say he reminds me of Zarek from there.

It's a romance novel, so the happy ending between Zsadist and Bella is guaranteed, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets off easily. Plenty of problems are set up by the end of the book for the next books.

That's something I really like about this series. The following books are all built on the situations in the current ones, and all of the characters have important parts to play. In that it reminds me more of the fantasy series I read, where the romances have tended to be more self-contained in each book.

As I've said with the previous books, this is a book that's worth the cost: the font is a normal small, and the text is close set, meaning that the reader gets what they're paying for - namely plenty of story. This is no four hour read. I think it's closer to eight to ten hours for me to finish one of these, and I really like that.

This series isn't for the faint of heart though. There's quite a bit of violence, but if you like the Dark Hunter or the Anita Blake series that shouldn't be a problem. I'd have to recommend this series for fans of either one: unique (so far as I've read, any way) vampires, and their enemies, love and loyalty, all wrapped together in a well written story that moves at a fast and exciting pace.