I recently finished reading Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu. When I first heard about the book, I wasn’t planning on reading it; I am so not a superhero person. My husband drug me to see a couple Spiderman movies a while back, and I’ve seen the Superman movies and some others… but it’s definitely not my genre. That being said, I loved Brad Meltzer’s Book of Lies, which has something to with Superman, that I read several years ago.
Anyway, I had started saying that Marie Lu could write about the alphabet and make it interesting. If I really believed that, then I should read her Batman book to see if it’s true. It actually was good, so that theory still holds. It’s probably my least favorite book that she’s done (but she set the bar really high with her other seven books), and it’s not going to make my top 10 books of 2018 list (which is okay because she might have two books on that list anyway), but I definitely enjoyed it.
The story follows Bruce Wayne right after he turns 18, about the time that he’s graduating from high school. He’s already fabulously wealthy, and is already realizing that there are some people that just care about him because of his influence. He’s ready to spend his last summer before college with his two best friends… until he happens to run across a crime scene.
He has a cool car that can chase down the bad guy, so he does — and gets in trouble with the police as a result. He is sentenced to community service at the local insane asylum. There, he discovers a little more about the string of crimes happening in the area, committed by a group called the Nightwalkers. He ends up bending the rules a little bit, but in the process ends up saving the day. Oh, and he also develops a thing for a criminal that may not be as bad as she initially seems to be.
One of the things that I love about this book (and pretty much all Marie Lu books in general, I’ve come to realize) is that it shows compassion for people that many would otherwise dismiss. People sometimes can be condemning of people because they happen to be the wrong race, or had to make difficult choices because they were poor, or did something stupid in their past. Our villain, Madeleine, might be a criminal, but there were forces that drove her there. I love how the book delves into the reasons why she chose the path that she did rather than just writing her off as a bad person. This book also deals briefly with sexual harassment, which is very timely in the #metoo era.
Batman: Nightwalker introduces us to Bruce Wayne discovering some of the cool Batman toys that he’ll later use as Batman. I thought it was also cool how the book goes a little bit into his interest with bats.
I thought that Batman: Nightwalker was a good story worth reading. My daughter is reading it now and also likes it; she enjoys superhero movies in general. Although this book isn’t in a genre that I routinely read, I did find it interesting.