Review: Lover Avenged by J.R. Ward
Book seven of the Black Dagger Brotherhood gives us Rehvenge, the half-symphath drug lord with a cane and a secret, paired with Ehlena, a nurse with a sick father and very little patience for nonsense. By this point in the series Ward is no longer writing tight romance novels; she’s writing big sprawling soaps with five subplots running at once, and Lover Avenged is the book where I think that shift becomes undeniable.
The Rehv/Ehlena romance itself is good. Ehlena is one of the most grounded heroines Ward has written. She has a job, a life, a sick parent, and Rehv has to actually earn her, which is refreshing in a series that increasingly leans on fated-mate magic to skip the courtship work. The symphath worldbuilding is also some of Ward’s most interesting; the colony scenes have real menace.
What’s harder to defend is everything else stuffed into this brick of a book. We have Wrath running the king business, Tohrment’s slow return arc, Lash and the Lessening Society subplot, John Matthew and Xhex circling each other, Qhuinn and Blay in the early stages of their thing, plus the Ehlena’s-dad subplot and the Rehv-Xhex sibling thread. It’s a lot. Some of it is great. Some of it should have been a different book.
Ward’s prose tics are also at full volume here: the brand-name dropping, the made-up words with random “h”s, the dialogue that sounds like the Brothers all share a chat thread of catchphrases. You either love this or you hate it. I love it, mostly, but I will admit I started skimming the Lash chapters.
For who? Existing BDB devotees. Don’t start the series here.
Not Ward’s tightest book. Not her worst. The Rehv/Ehlena scenes alone earn it shelf space, and I’m still very much along for the ride.