Leafing Through Pages – Lover Avenged (Black Dagger #7)

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Stars: 3 / 5
Recommendation: The Black Dagger Brotherhood and the vampires certainly creates a universe that keeps you on the edge. Complex plot weaving and anticipation of future books keeps the reader immersed. As much as I want to see story purely for Rhev and Ehlena, author mixes with so many sub-plot lines that are setting stones for future books, it became too large to read.

Lover Avenged is the seventh book in the long running Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J. R. Ward. The series deals with Vampires and Humans, trying to co-exist and at the same time fight the evils in both species. The first book Dark Lover introduces us to the key members of the Brotherhood who we would follow in the subsequent books. This book was published in April of 2009.

Wrath is also the Blind King of the Vampire Species apart from being the leader of the Brotherhood and he is mated to Beth Randall. The remaining Brotherhood we see are – Rhage (shellan Mary Luce), Tohrment “Tohr” (Official leader of the Brotherhood since Wrath ascended the throne), Vishous “V” (shellan Dr. Jane Whitcomb), Phury (shellan Cormia), Zsadist (Phury’s twin, “Z”, shellan Bella) and Butch O’Neal (Dhestroyer, a human turned vampire and inducted into the Brotherhood as of Book #4, shellan Marissa). They work together to destroy the lessers (de-souled human whose sole purpose is to kill the Vampires as a member of Lessening Society) who have been slowly working to exterminate the vampires. So far J. R. Ward has written 23 books in this series before she did a spin-off called Black Dagger Legacy.

We have seen bits and pieces of Rehvenge in the books so far. This is the story about him. We know that he runs ZeroSum, a club that caters to vampires as well. He is a half-sympath and becomes a love slave to hide this from the aristocracy, glymera. He needs dopamine and antivenom of scorpion poison (that he gets from the Sympath Princess) to get the evil out of him, and get out of seeing red. He is also the brother-in-law to Z as his sister, Bella is married to him. He forms like a bridge between the brotherhood and sympaths. He also is the new lehadyre of the remaining original families of the Princeps Council. The evil in him pulls him on one side and the good in him pulls the other way. The only female vampire, Ehlena, brings out the good in him, and light to his life. But will Ehlena accept him with all his good and bad parts and that he is a half-sympath? And what does he do when his position a half-sympath comes out?

The opening of the book contains a page in the old language that the author frequently bring up. This book takes place in December, 3 months after the events in Lover Enshrined (Book #6).

We see Manny again in this book. He the ER doctor at St. Francis that we first met in Lover Unbound (#5). We also the name of Xhex as Alex Hess in this book.

Just like we saw in the #2 book Love Eternal, we see that Bella gets abducted by the then fore-lesser. In this book, we see that Xhex is abducted in this book by Lash. He was going to avenge her. Naturally the next story would be around John and Xhex as he goes to find her. It might be similar to #2, but we have to wait and see when we read his book.

The King also makes Rhev as the ruler of the Sympath colony, after he is rescued. We might see more changes in how the Sympath colony works now.

In the book Love Enshrined (#6) showed from the man’s pov. How a man is forced to pimp himself out for the greater good and forced to impregnate all The Chosen (40 of them). The primale, Phury, turned the antiquated law. Author remedies my original thought of someone so ruthlessly pushed to become one of the Brotherhood member’s shellen even though they are truly not mated.

There is so much that the author packs in this book and naturally it becomes a large one. She has Wrath become blind, no one knows what caused it. She had John and Xhex have sex, and has Xhex abducted that leads to John going after Lash. We also see Thor coming back to normal as he can after being returned back. The Lesser Society continues with their war with the Brotherhood. As much as this was supposed to be a story for Rhev and Ehlena, I feel that there are so many sub-stories in this book that make it more. Naturally it opens to more stories for future books but this book has become larger.

The romances that J. R. Ward spins between the main characters of each book are very romantic and erotic, all spun into one tale. Yet, it bothered me that the characters get attracted to each -other just because they are mated to each other. There are other series’ by Christine Feehan (Dark Series, Leopard Series, Shadow Series, etc.) that follow similar plot. It bothered me there as well, but I read those series. Same goes with this series as well.

The author shows multiple plots within the story and also writes each plot in multiple POVs. This leads to new characters as John and Bella get added to the existing characters. Obviously we will see more future books centering on the new characters also. There is a glossary of all the Terms and Proper Nouns used in the series at the beginning of each book.

J.R. Ward thanks Sue Grafton, the author of the Alphabet series (A series I have to read from E yet.), as one of the Executive Committee member. She mentioned in her blog that Sue had mentored her. Sue passed away in 2017. There is a TV series based on these books in the BDB series by J.R. Ward since 2025 with mixed reviews. This can be watched on Passionflix and Amazon Video with subscription.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood and the vampires certainly creates a universe that keeps you on the edge. Complex plot weaving and anticipation of future books keeps the reader immersed. As much as I want to see story purely for Rhev and Ehlena, author mixes with so many sub-plot lines that are setting stones for future books, it became too large to read.

Spoiler Alerts:

1.Grammatical / Character / Plot / Geographical / Historical / Mythological Errors:
    a. On pg. 338, Rhev asks Ehlena to come to his place at 3AM. But on Pg 349, The time changes to 4AM. Which is correct?
2.Plot Reveals:
    a. Tohr takes blood from The Chosen Selena. Will she be in his story?
    b. John and Xhex have their first sex. But with loss of Mhurder that she went thru she safe guards her heart and doesn’t reciprocate to John. 
    c. Wrath truly become blind in this book as opposed to semi-blind he was before. He has a dog, George, assist him in his blindness.
    d. Lash takes Xhex with him, and everyone try to find her.
3.Sub Plots:
    a. From Love Eternal (#2): Havers, a physician to vampires is introduced in this book.
    b. From Lover Awakened (#3): John Matthew is adopted by Tohr and Wellsie in book #2. He is approx 21 yrs old and when he goes thru transition. 
    c. From Lover Revealed (#4):
        i. Xhex, a trans-gender vampire who goes mostly as a female, is the security officer for Rhvenge, works at ZeroSum, and is a sympath.
        ii. Butch is distant cousin to Wrath. Butch's mom in her one of the lucid days mentions that she had sex with one of the doctors which resulted in Butch. That is why his adopted father hated him. Will we see more of it in future books?
        iii. The Omega and The Scribe Virgin as brother and sister, but both work in opposite directions - one kills the vampires, one makes the vampires.
    d. From Lover Unbound (#5):
        i. All three, Blaylock (in the book #3), Qhuinn and John in this book, become full-vampires after going thru their transition.
        ii. V gets his visions back in this book. He gets a vision of Dr. Manny, Jane's supervisor, that  he is a brother. Will we see more of Manny in future books?
        iii. We see that John is the son of Darius and his name in the brotherhood is Tehrror.
        iv. V has a fraternal twin Payne, from the Scribe Virgin, his mom.
    e. From Lover Enshrined (#6):
        i. From the time he had transitioned in Book #5, John Matthew has fantasized about Xkhex. Will she be his shellan when his story comes?
        ii. Lash, who is the enemy of John, is actually the song of Omega, who got adopted by the founding family of Princeps Council.
        iii. Qhuinn becomes ashtrux nostrum, an antiquate position like a private guard, to John bestowed by Wrath to avoid the punishment he would have faced on killing Lash.
        iv. The brotherhood find Tohrment, courtesy of the fallen angle Lassiter. Both Tohr and Lassiter stay at the brotherhood compound. Will we see Wellsie's journey to Fade (she gets killed in book #3)?
        v. We see in previous book that Scribe Virgin as a female child, a twin of V. We come to know in this book that Xhex is actually Payne, Scribe Virgin's Child.