Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu

1/15/2018

SYNOPSIS

Before he was Batman, he was Bruce Wayne. A reckless boy willing to break the rules for a girl who may be his worst enemy.

The Nightwalkers are terrorizing Gotham City, and Bruce Wayne is next on their list. The city's elites are being taken out one by one as their mansions' security systems turn against them, trapping them like prey. Meanwhile, Bruce is about to become eighteen...

and inherit his family's fortune, not to mention the keys to Wayne Industries and all the tech gadgetry that he loves. But on the way home from his birthday party, he makes an impulsive choice and is sentenced to community service at Arkham Asylum, the infamous prison that holds the city's most nefarious criminals.

Madeleine Wallace is a brilliant killer . . . and Bruce's only hope.

The most intriguing inmate in Arkham is Madeleine, a brilliant girl with ties to the Nightwalkers. A girl who will only speak to Bruce. She is the mystery he must unravel, but is he convincing her to divulge her secrets, or is he feeding her the information she needs to bring Gotham City to its knees?

Synopsis from Chapters.Indigo.ca

PERSONAL REVIEW

I was incredibly excited for this book to come out and couldn't wait to read about Bruce Wayne as an 18-year-old. I'm a huge comic book fan and am loving that DC is bringing in so many great YA authors to reintroduce us to some of these amazing heroes. I thought that Leigh Bardugo did a great job with Wonder Woman: Warbringer, and feel like I've been waiting forever for Marie Lu's Batman to come out. And yet, I found myself incredibly underwhelmed by this book...

Personal Thoughts:

Heroes as Teens are Fun To Read About: I loved reading about Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent as teens and feel like there's so much opportunity for growth when authors get the chance to re-write backgrounds for adult characters. I loved getting insight into Bruce as a teen -- in most of comic book fiction, we either see him as the adult Batman, or are given flashbacks into his childhood, specifically the night his parents were killed. At 18 years old, this is a great opportunity to hint about the man he (and Harvey) will become, while also getting to develop his teens years a bit more. I also loved the addition of Dianne - a fictional best friend of both Harvey and Bruce; Lu did a good job creating another strong female character in Bruce's life. I liked Bruce as a teenager and thought this was a fun take on how he will become Batman.

Lots of Cliches: While reading, I found myself cringing at certain lines that Lu wrote that just weren't up to par from what I've come to expect with her writing. When Bruce feels nervous because "some sixth sense screamed at him", I didn't buy it. It seemed like just a juvenile way to phrase what was happening. Or when Detective Gordon was described: "He was young, but something about him...made him look wiser than his years." Umm, Bruce is 18 -- what does he know about being "wiser than his years"?? I was really frustrated when cliches and awkward lines like this came up because it completely threw me out of the momentum of the book.
Boring "Crime" to Solve: I didn't buy into the Nightcrawlers gang or what they were trying to accomplish. This felt super forced and I found myself pretty disinterested in what Bruce was trying to figure out. It honestly has to be really difficult to come up with new villains for Bruce to fight that don't already appear in the Batman comics, but I think a simpler crime would have been more interesting to read about. The whole Nightcrawlers plan and purpose just wasn't interesting, and then the reveal of who the leader is was pretty bland. Madeline was a really interesting character, but I would have rather read about her and Bruce meeting under difference circumstances instead of him doing probation at Arkham Asylum (who would approve this?!). She would have been enough of a "villain" for him without the rest of the gang.

Overall, I found I had a hard time rating this book. While I liked aspects of it, I didn't find that it kept my attention. There were times where I felt like I had to force myself to go back to reading it, which is something I never want to feel when reading a book. I hate giving it a lower rating, because I don't know exactly what I didn't like about it, but I can't give it a high one because I don't think it was a great read. I like Marie Lu in general, but after reading Wonder Woman, Batman just didn't seem to have the same excitement in it (kind of like the new movies, right?). If you end up giving this book a read, let me know what you think!

FINAL RATING: 3.5/5