Gallery Books Presents: Prisoner Of Night by J.R. Ward

From #1 New York Times bestselling author J.R. Ward comes an unforgettable story of passion and vengeance in the Black Dagger Brotherhood world.                                                                            

When Ahmare’s brother is abducted, there is nothing she won’t do to get him back safely. She is unprepared, however, for the lengths she will have to go to save his life. Paired with a dangerous but enticing prisoner, she embarks on an odyssey into another world.                                                                                         

Duran, betrayed by his father, imprisoned in a dungeon for decades, has survived only because of his thirst for vengeance. He has been biding his time to escape and is shocked to find an unlikely and temporary freedom in the form of a determined young female.
       

Battling against deadly forces and facing unforeseen peril, the pair are in a race to save Ahmare’s brother. As time runs out, and the unthinkable looms, even true love may not be enough to carry them through.

Excerpt: Twenty-One Years, Three Months, Six Days Ago . . “Where is it! Goddamn you, where’s it at!” Duran spit blood out of his mouth and spoke over the ringing in his ears. “I’ll never tell you—” Chalen the Conqueror swung his open palm again, nailing Duran’s lacerated face like a bat hitting a fastball. But it didn’t hurt as much as the other shit they’d been doing to him in this castle’s great room. They’d already pulled out his fingernails, broken all of his toes, and whipped his back until strips of his own flesh flapped against his ribs. At the moment, he didn’t have the strength to keep himself on his feet, but no worries there—two guards, with grips locked under his pits, were holding him up off the floor.                 As his head flopped back into its lolling hang, he shook it to get the sweat and blood out of his eyes. In the hissing, kicking light of the hearth, the male in front of him was stocky of build and ugly of feature, an oak stump with a bulldog’s muzzle and a hungry bear’s bad fucking attitude.                 “You are going to tell me the location.” Chalen took Duran by the throat with one of his meat hands. “And you’re going to do it now.”                 “Sorry, not . . . a big talker—”                 The conqueror grabbed onto the lower half of Duran’s face, squeezing so hard his jaw split and the inside of his mouth was forced between the hard-and-sharp of his molars. More blood welled, spilled, fell on his bare chest.                 “Why are you protecting the male who put you here?” Chalen’s opaque eyes searched Duran’s expression as if he were trying to extrapolate a map of Maryland in the features. “All you need to do is tell me where that facility is.”                 Duran waited for that grip to release. When it did, he spit more blood out. “I’m not . . . protecting him.”                 “Then what are you doing?”                 “Making sure you don’t cheat me of what’s mine.” Duran smiled, aware he must look deranged. “You kill him . . . I don’t get to.”                 Chalen crossed his strong-man arms over his barrel chest. He was dressed in weapons, whatever clothes he had on underneath the holsters of guns and knives largely hidden by metal. No daggers, though. He’d never been Black Dagger Brotherhood material and not just because he was a mutt according to his lineage: Even among black market thieves, there was a code of conduct.                 Not for Chalen. He had no code. Not in the Old Country, and not during his last century here in the New World. There was only one male who was worse. “I will break you,” Chalen said in a low voice. “And I will enjoy it.” Duran laughed in a wheeze. “You have no idea what I’ve already been through—” Chalen swung that palm wide again, the crack so heavy Duran lost his vision, everything going checkerboard. And then there was a drop in blood pressure, his brain emptying of oxygen, floaty disassociation riding in, a foggy savior buffering the suffering. The sound of chains moving and gears shifting brought him back to reality. A section of the sweaty stone wall rose by inches, the great weight ascending like a gate, revealing a corridor . . . Revealing a male who was naked but for a black hood that covered his head. “I will make you pray for death,” Chalen said. “And when you give me what I need, you will think back to this moment. When you could have saved yourself from so much.” Duran exhaled in a gurgle. His body was on fire, the pain burning through his veins, turning him into a semi-living, kind-of-breathing, sort-of-conscious incubator for agony. But fuck Chalen. “Do what you will,” he mumbled. “I’m not going to give you a goddamn thing.” “I will make you wish you were never born.” As the hooded male came forward, Duran was dragged over and slammed face-first down onto a table, his torso bent parallel to the floor. Turning his face to the side, he smelled the spoiled meat and rancid fat embedded in the fibers of the planks. “Already there, asshole.”

My Thoughts
J.R. Ward presents fans of her acclaimed Black Dagger Brotherhood series with quite the irresistible treat.  In the form of ebook exclusive Prisoner Of Night.  Releasing January 7, 2019.
Though touted as a novella.  As most .5 editions of series are.
Book 16.5, to be exact.
Readers will be quite pleasantly surprised to find that this novella is in fact, a 300+ page novel.  Complete with a very mouth watering prologue.

As for the meat of the story.  What readers are presented with is pretty standard hunky vampire + tragic past + revenge + female that he can't live without + a little PTSD thrown in for good measure =
Been there.  Done that. Seen the movie.

With most of the really must-read parts of this book taking place in the prologue.  When the actual story begins, some 20 years in the future.  A great many things have changed.  Just not our hunky leading man, Duran.  Who has somehow managed to flourish amid the constant pain of unrelenting torture.  Being housed in subhuman conditions, and seething with anger and resentment for the people and years that his captivity has cost him.
Hmmmm...

Enter Ahmare.
Sister of yet another inmate of the same dungeon prison currently inhabited by our leading man.
Sentenced to kill a man as part of a bargain for her brother's release.
A bargain that will bring her face to face with...
Wait for it!

Duran.
And so, the book, the action, the carnage, a weird sort of story, and an even weirder romance begins.
In all fairness to both this book and its author.  It must be said that a great many of the historical details surrounding pivotal characters in this story are either missing altogether. Or scant at best.
A flaw that not even the heart-stopping action or break-neck plot speed seems to be able to compensate for.
A flaw that, as the story progresses actually serves to make the characters seem progressively less dimensional.

Not to mention that the plot of this book, though very well written.
For the most part.
Is one that has made its way around the vampiric romance block a time or 200.
Circa 2010+

In short.
While this reviewer is willing to bet that there are a great many BDB fans who will absolutely love book 16.5 of this seemingly endless series.
As a first and only foray into said series however.  It is blatantly clear that this book is one that can not stand alone.
       

About J. R. Ward

J.R. Ward is the author of more than thirty novels, including those in her #1 New York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. There are more than fifteen million copies of her novels in print worldwide, and they have been published in twenty-six different countries around the world. She lives in the South with her family.

Find Her:  Web / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook / Instagram

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