In this entertaining adaptation of the Marie Lu novel, a young Bruce Wayne - literally traveling home on the evening of his eighteenth birthday - has a brush with the newest crime syndicate to terrorize Gotham City: the Nightwalkers, a gang of avenging vigilantes who are murdering some of Gotham's richest citizens after relieving them of their fortunes. Bruce's rash decision to try and stop a particularly daring Nightwalkers crime lands him in trouble with the law, and from there to a stint of community service if he's to avoid trouble with the cops. To make an example of the newly-minted millionaire head of Wayne Enterprises, the cops make Bruce serve his sentence at none other than Arkham Asylum, where Bruce finds himself drawn to Nightwalker member Madeleine Wallace - a heartless murderer with her own plans for Bruce Wayne, even as he tries to use her to break up the Nightwalkers gang for good, though it becomes clear pretty quickly that it's up in the air who is using who. Though a bit slow in spots (while still building up to a more-than-satisfying climax), I genuinely liked the story here; another bit of character background for Bruce Wayne, pre-Batman, that develops and spotlights the personality that would become the Dark Knight. Madeleine Wallace got on my nerves from time to time, yet I think she was supposed to; for most of the graphic novel she seems always two steps ahead of both Bruce and the cops, which is quite vexing for Wayne himself. Artist Chris Wildgoose's depiction of Gotham and young Wayne are spot-on and dark in tone, though I would have liked a bit more variety of color in the book; that said, having read this first I am more than anxious to dive into Marie Lu's novel now, while the graphic novel itself is definitely a worthy addition to the story of Bruce Wayne's road to becoming Gotham's only hope of redemption. 4/5 stars
Note: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
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