Also-why was everyone disappointed about Butch? I didn't read it-but for him to get together with Marissa didn't he HAVE To become one? Plus, wasn't he becoming an AA candidate in the last one? (I forgot) Thos two tip offs to me meant he was going to be one. And he loved the Brotherhood, so I have to admit, I wasn't so stoked for LR because I guessed where she was going with it.

Eva, no, Butch was not a candidate in the previous book and I don’t think he had to be a vampire to be with Marissa. My own disappointment in his change stems from the fact that I liked him better than the vampire characters because the fact that he wasn’t super-hero strong and was filled with insecurities about that made him feel more flesh-and-blood real to me, in comparison with the Brotherhood, and this made me care about him more.

Also, I don’t expect fantasies, especially sexual and romantic ones, to always conform with the politics of women’s liberation and other issues. I can accept a certain degree of regressive elements for that reason, and I will often follow an author whose books are progessive in some regards, to see if that impulse toward progressiveness will break free in future books. To take your example of Rosenthal, even though I did not care for Almost a Gentleman, in large part because it wasn’t as progressive as I wanted it to be, I continued to read her and was rewarded with the (in my opinion) very daring The Slightest Provocation.

To get back to Ward, although it was not the case for me with Lover Revealed, I do agree with you that often the side characters are the most exciting. I will be very interested to see where Ward goes with Xhex, for example. And I will be sorry when John Matthew goes through his transition. But the fact that the side characters are more interesting doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the books overall. I have yet to love one of her books eough to give it an A- or A, but they have all been solidly in the B range for me. And since I enjoyed Lover Revealed most (it was one book where the main characters interested me most), I’m feeling more optimistic about the series than you are.

I’m working on it. :)

Also-why was everyone disappointed about Butch? I didn’t read it-but for him to get together with Marissa didn’t he HAVE To become one? Plus, wasn’t he becoming an AA candidate in the last one? (I forgot) Thos two tip offs to me meant he was going to be one. And he loved the Brotherhood, so I have to admit, I wasn’t so stoked for LR because I guessed where she was going with it.

Maybe the reason Butch and Marissa felt more magnetic to me than Btuch and V was that Butch and Marissa were the first couple in the BDB series that felt like equals to me. Marissa, although she was a vampire, was just coming into some power, and Butch for most of the book was human and as vulnerable as she was (I was actually disappointed that Butch was turned into a vampire at the end). They were on equal ground, each had his or her strengths and weaknesses, but they were more or less equals and I found that really, really sexy.

Butch and V were never equals, so that relationship, as interesting as it was, just wasn’t as hot to me. Butch felt like V’s pet in that relationship, and so, it doesn’t have the same appeal to me.

I liked V’s feelings and I didn’t think Ward needed to make so explicit the fact that nothing would happen between him and Butch, but they never, ever felt like the real couple of the book to me because the zing between Butch and Marissa was just so potent.

I see Ward’s books as a mixture of elements, some progressive and some regressive, but to me, that still makes her more ballsy than authors who don’t attempt to do something different in their books.

I think this is it right here, Janine — what I call the “Almost A Gentleman Effect.” When I read AAG, I thought at first, wow, look at how edgy this is — the hero actually has feelings for someone he thinks is a guy! But then, when the secret was revealed so early on, and the hero made the heroine dress as a girl so immediately, and when he was all relieved that he was really a she, blah blah blah, it felt like bait and switch to me. So instead of feeling that the book still went out on a limb, I felt instead that not only did it hug the trunk, but it cut the limb clean off the tree (and if you’re thinking castration here, I think that’s the appropriate metaphor).

It’s the same with the BDB books for me, I think. At first, for example, right after I read LR, I thought it was kind of neat the way Ward blended V’s desire for Butch with his own unacknowledged yearning for a mated relationship. But then, after people started talking more about Butch and V, and when a friend of mine insisted that LR was a failed Romance to her because Butch and V were the *real* couple in the book, I started rethinking my own interpretation of V’s mixed feelings. Were they a nice nuance or a way to mainstream an erotic attraction for Butch by making it all about sublimated desire for his own mate? Or how about the way the BDB is so feral in some ways, but when it comes to their women, they’re basically slaves? When that point got pounded into the ground in LR I sighed, as well (poodles, anyone?).

I haven’t traced through all the elements in the books, Janine, and you’re probably right that Ward should get more credit than I’m willing to give her right now, but whenever I get the sense that a book is rolling something edgy out only to transform it into something mainstream, I’m less tolerant than in other situations. Also, let me be clear that I’m not talking about simply declawing a danger, but actually turning something progressive into something *regressive* — that is, drawing it backwards so far it lands farther back than the place from which it seemed to begin.

On the surface, Janine, I agree with you. But maybe because MaryJanice Davidson already did the whole feeding/sex with other people thing in the first Betsy Taylor book, some of that stuff in Ward doesn’t seem all that groundbreaking to me.

I haven’t read MJD’s Betsy Taylor books, so I did not know that.

And the thing with Marissa felt really traditional to me, because she was the virgin heroine, and pain is a traditional marker of the virgin heroine, paranormal or not.

I didn’t state my point well. Romancelandia is full of orgasmic, even multi-orgasmic virgins. Yes, pain is a marker, but so is orgasm, especially with the hero. For a heroine to sleep with the hero and not see rainbows is unusual. For her to feel disappointed and not particularly enjoy it is even more unusual.

As for Mary, yeah, maybe that’s riskier. Why doesn’t it feel that way to me, though? I’ll have to think about that.

Let me know if you come up with a theory.

I know I felt disappointed when Ward put a nix on the Vishous/Butch possibilities so explicitly in Lover Revealed. And I wonder if in V’s book, once he finds his mate, will he still dig on Butch?

I was disappointed by the nix too. It will be interesting to see what happens with V and Butch.

I see Ward’s books as a mixture of elements, some progressive and some regressive, but to me, that still makes her more ballsy than authors who don’t attempt to do something different in their books.