I won't pretend to not be affected by my previous knowledge of Batman and Bruce Wayne. I will say that this book is nearly as far away from a Batman story as you can get. Change a few names, and this could have been a completely original character, because so little of the story is really relevant to the Bruce Wayne/Batman that we all know already.

Besides that, the book was interesting and a fun read, but I definitely wouldn't have been interested if it hadn't been about Batman. I would suggest this mainly to people who only have a moderate interest in Batman in the first place, not die-hard fans, although they are going to read it anyway.

I love everything that Jeffrey Brown makes. This book is no exception. The only problem I have is that he includes the entirety of EGITEOTWFM, as well as excerpts from a few of his other books. He could have left those out and still had a very good, if somewhat shorter, book. I would definitely suggest reading this if you have enjoyed any of his work.

This is a great Jeffrey Brown book. I would say that this one probably surpasses many of the others so far as story goes. The narrative is still a little disjointed, but it is fairly easy to tell what happened when. This book definitely doesn't have the emotional effect that many of his other books do, but this is definitely different from his other books and it's good.

"A Once Crowded Sky" is not much of a superhero novel. While the premise is interesting, it leaves only one character with powers, while all of the other characters are mostly just angsty. The author also really likes to kill his characters.