Review: Lover Revealed by J. R. Ward

Note: The following review contains a few spoilers. You have been warned, so read only at your own risk.

Title: Lover Revealed
Author: J. R. Ward
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Grade: C+
Reason for Reading: J. R. Ward is the diva of cracktastic, crackaliscious crack pie with whipped cream and crack sprinkles on top. I loved the first book, thought the second was less good, and the third was simply OK. I’m not even sure why I’m still reading, other than the fact that Ward can be a fantastic storyteller when she’s on her game.

Synopsis: Butch O’Neal is a fighter by nature. A hard-living ex-homicide cop, he’s the only human ever to be allowed in the inner circle of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. And he wants to go even deeper into the vampire world-to engage in the turf war with the lessers. His heart belongs to a female vampire, Marissa, an aristocratic beauty who’s way out of his league. And if he can’t have her, then at least he can fight side by side with the Brothers.

But fate curses him with the very thing he wants. When Butch sacrifices himself to save a civilian vampire from the slayers, he falls prey to the darkest force in the war. Left for dead, he’s found by a miracle, and the Brotherhood calls on Marissa to bring him back, though even her love may not be enough to save him.

My Thoughts: To be honest, I had put off reading this book for a while, because Lover Awakened left me feeling a bit cold. I’m not sure how many more books in this series I’m actually going to keep reading, because invariably when I finish one of these books, I’m left disappointed at the potential that could have been reached but wasn’t. It’s that lingering feeling of disappointment that has me starting out one of these books thinking I’m going to hate and be disappointed by it.

I was pleasantly surprised when I actually found myself enjoying this book. As usual, Ward writes a compelling story that keeps me drawn in until I stop reading and think about what I’ve just read, whereupon I have to swallow a hell of a lot of “What the fuck?” I really liked how character-driven this book was, and I liked that the romance was a fairly strong focus of the story. The plot didn’t really seem to be as all over the place as some of the other books.

Contrary to my expectations when I started the book, Butch really starts to come into his own during the course of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it’s that I was spoiled or if it’s because I’m just that smart, but a lot of the plot revelations about Butch were fairly obvious to me as I was going along. The only thing that really hit a false note with me was his family. I thought that the angst over Butch’s crappy childhood was a tiny bit over the top, and I didn’t really buy the reason for it. I don’t know if that’s just me, or if it’s also the fact that I really do find “my family sucked” to be kind of a lazy cop-out for a character being tortured. I mean, for heaven’s sake. Butch ruminates at one point about not getting any presents when his siblings did, and how he was always treated as an outsider. When he grows up, his siblings all seem to be OK with this, even though in the main they seemed like good people. Which just floored me and really threw me off.

As for Marissa, well, I didn’t much like her when the book started, and I can’t say that I warmed up to her particularly at the end. I think a lot of that was due to my general annoyance with everyone’s attitude that Marissa was a sweet little virginal creature made of spun glass and should be protected and adored at all times. She also had a huge martyr complex that absolutely drove me apeshit. I did like that she discovered her inner proto-feminist, but it was just too little too late.

As for the romance, it didn’t work for me. I really hate it when characters spend too much time dancing around each other without talking to each other, and I felt that Marissa and Butch had too many moments where Marissa basically acted like a martyr after Butch fucked up. I can picture them, years from now. Butch will be the type of husband who fucks up and then gets all bewildered, begging to know what he did wrong, while Marissa stands there, beautiful and silent, and gives him a whole lot of, “Nothing, sweetie” through clenched teeth.
Thankfully, aside from the romance, there was a lot gelse going on. I was completely fascinated by Vishous, and Ward did a good job of making me want to read his book without, oh, I don’t know, dangling a huge unresolved plot in my face. I also definitely enjoyed the Butch/Vishous vibe, and given how much I disliked Marissa, I was definitely irritated that there wasn’t much payoff there.

I also really liked the glimpses of Rehvenge we got in this book. I read somewhere that his book is the one that comes after Phury’s, so dammit, Ward has me for at least the next three books, whether I want to be intrigued or not. I really liked Rehvenge’s relationship with Xhex, who is the kind of character that I’d love to see more often in the BDB–a tough-as-nails, take-no-shit-from-anybody kind of chick.

I enjoyed the John Matthew storyline a bit less this time around. I thought he spent too long being self-indulgent and kind of emo, but he did have some good scenes with Wrath and Zsadist, and I’m glad to see that at the end he straightens up a bit and starts to let people in.

There were subplots I hated, too. I was really disappointed by Havers at the end of the book. I really wanted to like him when we first met him in Dark Lover. I thought it was fascinating to glimpse a non-roided out civillian vampire, and I thought that, even though sending the Lessers after Wrath was pretty damn stupid, he at least did it for the right reasons. So I was hoping he’d turn out to be interesting and morally ambiguous. But no. What we get instead is a sanctimonious, pansy twit. He softens up at the end, just a bit, but it’s still pretty clear that he is not a male of worth. And you know what else bothers me? It feels like Ward is saying in these books that to be a male of worth, a guy needs to be roided out and ready to fight, and to be a female of worth, a woman has to be weak and helpless and dependent on her mate for protection. My inner feminist, needless to say, has severe problems with this idea.

The Lesser plot I also felt was fairly weak. I really liked that particular aspect of Lover Awakened because we finally got a sense that the Lessers are an actual danger. But this time I felt like I was watching Wile E. Coyote trying to chase after the Roadrunner. Not only are the lessers evil, they’re also seriously incompetent, and instead of reading their scenes with any kind of interest or fear for my beloved characters, I just kind of yawned and rolled my eyes.

Another eye-rolling bit for me was JR Ward’s attempt at writing out prophecies. She really mainly sounds stupid when she does it, and that particular passage didn’t flow well.

I also thought that there were a few scenes that, oddly enough, needed to be expanded on, and here are where the spoilers come into effect. First and foremost, I want to know what goes on in an ancestor regression and we never found out. It was just like, suddenly they were done and Wrath was saying, “Hey, dude, you’re related to me.” And then there was Beth and Mary and Bella’s Come-to-Jesus talk with Marissa there at the end. I really would have liked to knoiw what they said, because it’s obvious that that conversation was important, and so I felt like Ward not including it was a great way for her to drop the ball.

Overall, there’s enough good stuff here that I’m glad I read it, but once again, I’m left with that sense of disappointment, because the book could have been so much better than it was. That’s why I’m really not sure how to grade this. Because I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but thinking about it afterwords brings up a myriad list of problems. I think I’m going to settle for a C+ grade because I’m going to keep reading, and she does enough right that I’m still interested, but it was definitely a very flawed book.