First half of Lover Eternal (spell much? Eternal, not Enternal)

The vote was unanimous -- start with Ward's Lover Eternal. So I did. And I'm at about the half way point of the book. It's moving much faster (for me, anyway) than Dark Lover did. I think that's because less world-building is necessary now: the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood has already been established, readers have been introduced to the main characters, etc. Plus, I get Rhage more than I got Wrath. I didn't (still don't) understand why his blindness wasn't changed with his physical transformation. The problem for me wasn't that Wrath is nearly blind, it was that the transformation had an impact on him physically otherwise but seemed to selectively skip over that. ::shrugs::

Anyway, things I like about LE so far:

1. The beauty and the beast theme. Although Mary isn't a beauty queen, she's utterly beautiful to Rhage. I'm guessing that at some point, she'll have to accept his inner beast. I'm also guessing that since she's human and ill, Rhage will try to work a deal with the Scribe Virgin to save her life and it will include something to do with the inner beast, maybe with keeping it forever in exchange for her health.

2. Connectedness of the brothers. Pretty much all of the brothers have small parts to play in this book so far. Their appearances contribute to the plot and also give glimpses of their own stories to come. We see more of Tohr's relationship with his wife, Wellsie; Phury's relationship with Zsadist; and we meet the woman who will be Zsadist's heroine. I was kind of thinking that I'd like to read Phury's story before Z's, but that wouldn't make sense now. P's guilt about Z and his interactions with Z and with Bella make it clear that P can't have a HEA unless/until Z does.

3. Chemistry between Rhage and Mary. Hot, hot, hot.

There are a couple of minor things that bother me: the lessers and the slang. The lessers seem amorphous and aimlessly evil to me. Maybe I need to re-read DL, but I just don't get what drives them. They seem like faceless villains without much characterization. And some of the slang is overused. There has got to be another hip way to say "Are we clear?", other than "feel me." Call me a perv, but when I read the words "feel me", the meaning "do you understand" is not the first thing I think of.

Major ick factor for me -- SPOILER : Rhage and Mary have sex after he's had sex with numberless, faceless women earlier in the evening. I know that sex is a release for the beast, and Rhage hates it. There's an awesome exchange with Tohrment early on about his sexlife that really highlights his distaste for what he does. Mary & Rhage's chemistry is burning, but he's worried about losing control of the beast while with her, so he won't have sex with her. [Which is awfully Clintonian of him, since pretty much the only thing he hasn't done with her is outright penetration. But that's another debate.] She has issues about sex, too. And she knows where he's going and what he's going to do. She's mad when he returns, so what does she do? She has sex with him. Literally, she jumps on him. I have mixed feelings about his sex with other people after claiming her as his mate to his brothers, but I can deal with that. It's just the way they have sex the first time squicks me out. All I could think through the love scene was, "Sloppy seconds -- ewwww!"

Having said that, I'm looking forward to finishing the book this evening...assuming that life does not interfere and ruin my plans.

Blah, blah, blah.

If I hear Carrie Underwood's song, Jesus Take the Wheel, one more time I'm going to vomit. It's playing almost everywhere. Country stations, easy listening stations, Top 40 stations, Jack FM (all music no dj, playing multiple musical genres), even the 70-80-90s station. The only stations not playing it are the Spanish-language station and the hard rock station. If I wanted to listen to songs about religious conversion/redemption, I'd listen to gospel.