While I enjoyed the premise and realistically relatable characters, I honestly didn’t like this book very much. It read like a middle grade novel: simplistic syntax with an excess of adverbs that bogged down the (many) action scenes.

Even knowing this is meant to be a different version of Bruce Wayne’s story, it didn’t feel like the character I grew up loving — the major similarities seemed superficial; while eighteen-year-old Bruce Wayne is naturally a significantly different character from the classic adult Batman, it just seems a stretch. (Although it’s mentioned that Bruce enjoys working with technology, the gadgets he actually uses in this book were all developed by others at WayneTech; despite the time that would hopefully heal the sharp pain of his parents’ murder, his recurring proclamations of grief seemed more habitual than spontaneous.)

Furthermore, I was disappointed in the black-and-white, us-vs-them morality that pervaded the novel to the end. Despite many opportunities to explore his own values and morals, as well as Gotham’s flaws, Bruce seems more idealistic, even naive, in his determination to defend the city as-is — which undermines Madeleine’s alleged influence on him and possibly reduces her to the archetypical antiheroic love interest. (Don’t even get me started on archetypes and tropes; even for a superhero novel there were way too many.)