The Jackal

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. She lives in the South with her family.

THE JACKAL is the first instalment in JR Ward’s contemporary, adult PRISON CAMP: BLACK DAGGER LEGACY paranormal, romance series-a companion / spin off to the author’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. This is vampire Jackal ‘Jack’, and Nyxanlis ‘Nyx’ story line. THE JACKAL can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Several of the characters cross-over from the original series for cohesion and familiarity. Told from several third person perspectives following two timelines and two intersecting paths THE JACKAL focuses on the atrocities of the glymera prison, thought to have been disbanded and disarmed. Nyxanlis aka ‘Nyx’ has been desperate to free her sister Janelle, who was sentenced to the subterranean prison fifty years earlier for the murder of a man for which she had worked. Sneaking into the prison was easy but Nyx never expected to find herself falling in love with a vampire, a prisoner who called himself The Jackal, a man whose own life sentence was questionable and wrong. Working together alongside several vampires and wolven, Nyx and Jack would go in search of information regarding Nyx’s sister only to find themselves facing a potential death sentence when their adventure is discovered. Meanwhile, the author takes the reader back a century where we get our fist glimpse into the life of the man known as The Jackal, and his initial encounter and association with the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Following a fight with the lessers, an injured Rhage finds himself recovering at the home of one of the Glymera, where he will meet a man, whose face is familiar, but a man who will be falsely accused of a crime against a female vampire. One hundred years will pass before Rhage will get a chance to meet his half-brother, for the second time. THE JACKAL is a story that focuses on the heart breaking, and unethical conditions of a vampire prison where ‘The Command’ controls with an iron fist. Most of the prisoners has been sentenced for who they are, and not what they have done but at one time the rich and powerful thought they controlled the world of the vampire, and in doing so, sentenced anyone and everyone who got in their way. JR Ward, once again, pulls the reader into the world of the vampire-a different world than what we have seen with her Black Dagger Brotherhood. The prison camp shows the underbelly of corruption , power and control by the wealthy Glymera, an underbelly I would have thought the BDB should have had some idea still existed. The premise is engaging and captivating-there is a bit of a twist to the story line premise; the characters are energetic and dynamic; the romance is a case of insta-lust to love, a fated relationship that quickly develops in the face of potential discovery and loss.

Pretty good! I stopped reading Mrs. Ward's books awhile ago, because they got boring and repetitive. But this one was different and a fairly decent read. I recommend it for a nice way to relax on a lazy day.