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    Batman: Nightwalker
    Batman: Nightwalker
    Batman: Nightwalker
    Audiobook8 hours

    Batman: Nightwalker

    Written by Marie Lu

    Narrated by Will Damron

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    This dark and twisty BATMAN in the blockbuster DC Icons series is an action-packed thrill ride from #1 New York Times bestselling author MARIE LU.

    AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    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. Bruce is turning eighteen and inheriting his family's fortune, not to mention the keys to Wayne Industries and all the tech gadgetry that he could ever desire. But on the way home from his birthday party, he makes an impulsive choice that leads to community service at Arkham Asylum, the infamous prison. There, he meets Madeleine Wallace, a brilliant killer 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?

    Bruce Wayne is proof that you don't need superpowers to be a super hero, but can he survive Madeleine's game of tense intrigue and deception?

    Act fast! The first printing includes a poster of Bruce! Each first printing in the DC Icons series will have a limited-edition poster--collect them all to create the full image!

    "Masterful. . . . A great story for any Dark Knight fan."
    --Den of Geek

    Don't miss the rest of the DC Icons series! Read them in any order you choose:
    * Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo
    * Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas
    * Superman: Dawnbreaker by Matt de la Peña
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateJan 2, 2018
    ISBN9780525525561
    Author

    Marie Lu

    Marie Lu is the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Legend series, The Young Elites trilogy, the Warcross series, the Skyhunter series, Batman: Nightwalker, and The Kingdom of Back. She graduated from the University of Southern California and jumped into the video game industry, where she worked as an artist. A full-time writer, she spends her spare hours reading, drawing, playing games, and getting stuck in traffic. She lives in the traffic-jam capital, Los Angeles, with her illustrator/author husband, Primo Gallanosa, and their son.

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    Reviews for Batman

    3.5/5

    127 ratings15 reviews

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    • 2/5
      his is a fully-text Batman story. Set in his pre-Batman years, Bruce Wayne is a rich spoiled kid coming of age. He is about to graduate from high school when he gets involved in a police matter, putting himself in the middle of the action as Nightwalkers are preying on the rich of Gotham City. Bruce Wayne is to be one of their targets. he interferes with a police chase, or solved the problem depending on your perspective.

      He ends up in court for his interference and is sentenced to public service, cleaning at Gothom’s insane assylum. This was the first of many irrational decisions made by key people that were necessary to further the story. And this is what ruined the story for me.

      There were a number of bad decisions made, from a judge assigning a teenager to public service in a dangerous environment, police confiding in the teenager to get information, the asylum staff not keeping an eye on the teen and allowing him access to areas he should be in. It all felt rather convenient.

      Then the pacing was too fast, in the style of a comic rather than prose. Much of the dialog was more suited to a visual medium and descriptions seemed weak.

      Overall, the story didn’t quite work for me, but it wasn’t all bad. It was interesting to see someone’s perspective on his early life between the death of his parents and his emergence as the Batman.
    • 3/5
      This book was fine. It kept me engaged and it was a quick read. I am actually not very familiar with Batman mythology. I’ve never read any of the comics or seen any of the movies but I’m familiar enough with it to get the general thread of the story. I have some issues with Batman as a character and those sort of colored my perceptions of this book. I didn’t think this story is very unique. From what I do know about Batman, it seems like this story just takes a lot of plot ideas from other Batman stories. I don’t think this book was bad in any way. It took me less than two days to read so clearly it kept me somewhat engaged. I just don’t know if I’m the right audience for this story although I think I may try to read the Superman story in this series next and see how I like that one.
    • 2/5
      Underwhelmed. The narrative/pov choice creates distance. The dialog is frequently stilted and there are a lot of awkward word choices. I have always felt like Bruce's motivational back story needed more nuances and hoped a novel would create some but so far I'm not seeing any evidence of that. Also isn't Bruce supposed to be smart? Overall this book didn't work for me at all. Generally felt like it was a mediocre action plot and the characters could have been anyone. So many missed opportunities.

      (audio version: narrator speaks slowly with more weighty emphasis than necessary. Listening at 1.25 speed helped)
    • 4/5
      This was fantastic! Better than Wonder Woman, almost as good as Cat Woman. I loved really young Batman and would love to continue reading about him. Marie Lu did a great job with this interpretation.
    • 3/5
      Overall this book was not as impressive as the first installment, Wonder Woman. I found that Marie Lu wrote a decent book however there wasn't as much happening in the book and was a little slower when it came to the interesting parts of the plot that caught my attention. Where the first book was more of an adventure book the story of Batman was very much more of a political adventure.

      A group of terrorists blaming their problems on those who have wealth and power within the city of Gotham. I feel that, now more than ever, this plot is something as a society we can relate to it. It was more to the end of the book that the action started happening but then was over very quickly. There was something left to be desired. I would still recommend reading this book as part of the series however for a Batman novel I did expect more. I did expect darker.
    • 5/5
      This novel is #2 in the DC Icons series; the first book was Wonder Woman. I am continually amazed at the talent of authors. Marie Lu perfectly presents the expected atmosphere associated with Batman. I am not particularly knowledgeable about the Batman universe, so those of you who have seen all the movies and know the lore, will no doubt find little tidbits that I totally missed.

      As Bardugo did with Wonder Woman, Lu presents Bruce Wayne as a teen, revealing his first encounter with crime and the police. Bruce turns eighteen and inherits his money and will begin to be groomed to take over Wayne Industries. He’s a good kid who has a few good friends. It’s hard being rich and knowing people are your friends because they enjoy you, not wish for your money. Bruce ends up driving his newest advanced vehicle and sees cops surrounding a building. The bad guy drives away. Bruce knows that his car can catch the guy, so he takes off. He’s always been fascinated by cops and crime fighting, so he feels obligated and excited to aid the police. His help comes with a penalty: probation.

      Bruce’s Wayne’s probation is not the usual form. He is assigned to a criminal asylum-type place where he meets a member of the Nightwalkers, a group of criminals who kill and steal from the rich. He’s fascinated because the girl refuses to talk or be swayed in any manner by her interrogation. Bruce wants to help because the Nightwalkers are terrorizing Gotham City, his city. Bruce’s desire to help and his intelligence bring about truths that will shape his future.

      This novel is dark--like Batman is supposed to be. It’s not too much, however, for tweens/teens to read. It’s a great novel for those of you wanting the mysterious, dark world of Gotham City where life isn’t easy and people may surprise you. The question of how one reacts to the vagaries of life provides the backbone to the novel. What do we do with our choices? How do you know who to trust? Read this novel to see the youthful Bruce Wayne and perhaps a few of the characters you think of when you hear the word, Batman.
    • 2/5
      It functions well as a Marie Lu YA suspense novel, but fans should be aware that this reimagined tale of a young Bruce Wayne does not serve well as a Batman story lest they be dreadfully disappointed.
    • 3/5
      Now it is very true that both Serena and I are big Superman fans here, willing to stand for him and stand up to anyone who would wish him ill or call him anything less than great. And we were solidly Team Superman in the most recent DC movies that involved him. But I do have to admit that even though I want to smack Batman upside the head a lot of the time, especially in his most recent iterations and interpretations, there is a very special place in my heart for him. I will openly concede that I love him, darkness and all. What can I say? I am a true, true sucker for the emotionally unstable messed up problematic loner guy in my fiction. Bruce, take your place alongside J.D. from “Heathers”, Kylo Ren, and Bobby Briggs.

      So you KNOW that I was all about reading “Batman: Nightwalker” by Marie Lu, the second book in the “DC Icons” young adult series. These books tend to take the teenage selves of these superheroes/heroines and give them something of an origin story, or at the very least an early foray into their ultimate heroic destines. I read “Wonder Woman: Warbringer” by Leigh Bardugo last fall, and was very excited to see what the next in the series had to offer. Marie Lu herself has become a bigger and bigger name in YA, with her previous book “Warcross” getting a lot of buzz for its sci-fi and techno thriller premise. So giving her Batman was a natural choice, with his love for tech.

      The Bruce Wayne that we meet in “Nightwalker” is not Batman yet. He’s still a teenager, recently turned eighteen and trying to keep going in spite of the loss of his parents, a trauma that still haunts him. Lu’s Wayne feels more like the teenage self of Michael Keaton’s version of Wayne. He is damaged and sad, but he still wants to see the best in those he cares about and wants them to be safe. There isn’t any disproportional arrogance here; he’s reflective and cautious, and has genuine connections and affections for the important people in his life. He also is fully aware of his own privilege in this world, and Lu takes many opportunities to address that his wealth and skin color has given him all the advantages that other people in similar situations just would not have (more on that later). It’s a characterization that I found refreshing, and one that has been sorely missed ever since Bale took the cowl over and Affleck went from there. Lu does a very good job with Bruce, and with most of the other characters she writes, both familiar and original ones. Alfred is a properly dry but loving guardian to Bruce (and yes, he’s still a bit too permissive, but then Alfred would kind of have to be for Bruce to turn into Batman later in life). Lucius Fox is a gadget fanatic but has some other background and abilities, mentoring Bruce in his love for all things tech. And my favorite was the appearance of Harvey Dent, who is one of Bruce’s best friends. I don’t know what it is about so many newer stories framing Harvey as a good person who’s turn to villainy as Two Face is steeped in tragedy (probably because of “The Long Halloween”), but I am HERE for it and I have to say that Lu has written the best one yet. There is no hint of what’s coming for him in the future, there is only a moral person and a wonderful friend who cares deeply for Bruce. Whenever Harvey was a perfect cinnamon roll of an individual (so pretty much ALL THE TIME) I just whimpered and clutched the book to my chest.

      The original characters, however, did not fare as well for me. Okay, let me rephrase that. Most of them did. I liked Detective Draccon, who puts Bruce on the Arkham community service beat, though she wasn’t really doing much beyond being Gordon before Gordon was around. I REALLY liked Bruce and Harvey’s bestie Dianne, a smart and empathetic brain who is fiercely loyal to her two main dudes. I had a harder time believing Madeline, the antagonistic (or IS SHE?) criminal genius who may or may not be connected to The Nightwalkers, who are targeting and killing the rich in Gotham. While I liked that she was super intelligent and super morally ambiguous, I felt that the forced star crossed lovers sort of vibe that she and Bruce gave off was unnecessary. I didn’t really need their empathy and understanding towards each other to turn into a romance that couldn’t be, I think that it would have been just fine if it was left platonic. I felt that by making her pine for Bruce undermined her own agency and self-actualization. Also, their constant “do I trust you or should I not because there’s this sexy charge between us but you are on the other side of this big long conflict” dynamic was WAY TOO Batman/Catwoman, and that just will not do. There can be only one Selina Kyle. The Nightwalker concept itself did feel very Batman villain-y, and also brought in some interesting questions about capitalism and wealth distribution in this country. I greatly enjoyed that entire aspect and how Bruce approaches it, and explores it just beyond the black and white morality and fully into the greys of capitalism’s winners and losers.

      Overall, I found “Batman: Nightwalker” to be a pretty fun book. I would absolutely recommend it to any fan of Batman, especially those who may need Batman with a little more hope.
    • 4/5
      If you are a fan of Marie Lu's Lunar Chronicle series you will love her origin story of Bruce Wayne during his teen years.
    • 5/5
      Thank you @kidlitexchange for providing the review copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ?????Batman by Marie Lu. This book has it all. Murder, injustice, justice, thieves and charity all mixed in with complicated 18 year olds graduating high school. And of course good guy falling for wrong girl, or maybe she's the right girl in the wrong place. Regardless this Batman edition did not disappoint with high tech gadgets and drones. Bruce Wayne just turned 18 and inherited the fortune he is parents worked so hard to save for him before they were murdered and now the Nightwalkers have him in their sites. After a car chase gone wrong Bruce's world will change forever. Review also posted on Instagram @jasonnstacie, Library Thing, Go Read, Amazon, Goodreads/StacieBoren, and my blog at readsbystacie.com I purchased my own signed copy of this book from Barnes and Noble
    • 3/5
      The Nightwalkers are terrorizing Gotham City, and Bruce Wayne is next on their list.... Bruce will walk the dark line between trust and betrayal as the Nightwalkers circle closes.
    • 2/5
      Alright folks, I didn't want it to come to this but it happened
      My most anticipated release of the year disappointed the fuck out out of me
      I don't even think disappointed explains what I feel towards this book correctly. It's like; if this book was a person, I'd punch it square in the face.


      Now before I get into this review let me just add this little disclaimer:
      Objectively speaking: This was a good book. It was very well written and had all the elements a good book is supposed to have, and it this was called anything but Batman I would've enjoyed it a great deal more than I actually did. So my whole opinion is biased for this book.

      Phew! Anyways, now that that is out of the way let me spill the tea!

      When I first heard that there was a series about DC Icons coming up I was so thrilled, Justice League has been my favorite thing while growing up so such books are like a godsent gift to me.
      When I read Wonder woman, I fell in love. I adored that book! So naturally I was even more excited for the upcoming books.

      Batman has been and will always be my absolute favorite superhero of all times, so one can only imagine how excited I was about his book, especially after loving Wonder woman, and falling for Marie Lu's Warcross.

      To say I was disappointed would be the understatement of the century!

      So the story follows up 18 y.o Bruce Wayne who somehow gets himself into trouble from the very first page, off to a great start, but then he gets a sentence to serve at Arkham Asylum, the infamous prison that holds the city's most brutal criminals because ya know that's where you send 18 y.o boys who go out of their way to help the police catch the bad guys.

      Things were all good, then Bruce started talking to Madeline and I bet you can guess what happens next He starts developing a schoolboy crush on her [I bet you can hear me rolling my eyes from there]

      This book, was just not Batmanish enough for me. A lot of things were just out of character and it bothered me to no end (again Batman is my fav so I'm biased)

      For example bats were mentioned once or twice in the beginning and Bruce mentioned how he was fascinated by them , I suppose Marie Lu put that to do some kind of foreshadowing that he will become BATman, I even suspect she expected the fans to be like "Oh that's why he named himself like that" or "Ha! He's batman and he's talking about bats"
      And that would've been the case, except
      BRUCE IS SCARED OF BATS AND HE NAMED HIMSELF AFTER HIS GREATEST FEAR; He's not fascinated by bats, he's fucking afraid of them!

      This may not seem like a great deal for anyone else, but for me it was very bothersome, it left me reeling for hours.

      Anyways, back to the plot;
      The whole idea of Bruce falling for Madeline was just absurd. It's not even the fact that she's a criminal that bothered me {Long lives Catwoman!} it's just that the whole thing was stupid.
      The most dangerous criminal is all of Gotham City decides to say two words and the next thing you know little Bruce is breaking into Crime scenes and disabling cameras at the prison just so he can talk to her more.
      I know, I know, he did that because he wanted to learn more about the Nightwalkers and all but let's face it. Had it been an ugly 7ft tall huge tattooed bald guy in that cell Bruce would've just left the GCPD do their job without interfering.

      The whole "almost falling for the bad guy/girl while thinking they're good and then them turning out bad but with a good reason" thing kinda worked in Wonder woman because:
      a- I wasn't expecting it
      b- the fact that Jason was the bad guy was actually a plot twist, not a known factor in the story from the very start.
      So basically, it did NOT work here. At least not with me.

      There were little parts where I got some Batman vibes from the book, like when Bruce broke into that underground place and fought with that Nightwalker, but they were too short to satisfy my hunger for more Batman.

      I wish I could say the plot twist and big reveal that happened towards the end took me by surprise, but how can I be taken by surprise by something I saw coming from miles away.

      In general, I feel like Marie Lu took Bruce Wayne and tried to make him her own character, but in doing so, he lost a big part of his core, what made him who he was.

      Honorable mention to: ALFRED!
      I've always loved him
      I still love him
      I will forever love him

      All in all, this was a good book, just not a good Batman book (if that makes any sense)
      I would've enjoyed this way more if it was called something like "Duckman" or "Bunnyman", in other words if this was an original character by Marie Lu, the book would've been amazing for me.
      Alright, I think that's all I got to say about this, peace!
    • 3/5
      I am not a huge fan of comics or superheroes and I don’t care about Marvel vs. DC so my only knowledge of Batman is from the old TV series and more recent movies.

      Lu’s version of Bruce Wayne’s origin as Batman is a fast, mildly entertaining read but it doesn’t tell a new story like Leigh Bardugo’s WonderWoman: Warbringer. I skimmed a lot of the descriptive detail because I know what a modern Gotham City looks like. Bruce is a pretty standard teenager until he’s provoked into a fight. No elements of fantasy are employed. In fact, no superhero elements are employed by either the hero or the villain. Nightwalker ends up being a pretty standard action/crime novel with a touch of romance, enhanced only by some ill-described technology.

      A short and fast-paced entertainment but nothing impressive.
    • 4/5
      I couldn't wait for this book to come out, having enjoyed the first book in the DC Icons series, 'Wonder Woman: Warbringer', and because it was author Marie Lu that would be taking on the task of the story of the origins of the Dark Knight. I think that anyone taking on such an iconic character outside of graphic novels is pretty brave, but massively exciting! After reading 'Warcross' it seemed like Marie was primed to take this on.
      First of all, as a reader of a story about such a notorious character as Batman, I needed to remind myself going in, that this wasn't the character with the mask and the cape and the gadgets. This is about a teen called Bruce Wayne, with his teenage friends, who still has the sad backstory of his parents being brutally murdered in an alleyway in Gotham City, and he is primed to now inherit the family fortune. He has barely realized his desire to rid the streets of the 'bad guys' yet, and he hasn't developed the emotional 'shield' that we witness in various popular incarnations of his character. It's like reading a a fresh and quite naive version of the young Batman/Bruce Wayne we have all come to know, to the point that we are wondering if it's the same guy...until about the last quarter of the book, where the action picks up for young Bruce Wayne.
      The novel seems pretty slow because from most of our recollections of this character, where he's usually busy doing what he does best: hauling in the crooks for the police department in Gotham City. In 'Nightwalker', Bruce Wayne is doing community service work inside Arkham Asylum (as you do), mopping floors, and talking to a mysterious and beautiful criminal called Madeleine (so there's quite a bit of talking and mind games, honestly). You get the sense that Bruce has a lot of personal work on himself to do, and has a long way to go before he's going to be a kick-ass crime-fighter (this girl really knows how to pull a fast one on him). But you see the beginnings of the Batman that eventually emerges and how his personal relationships are a vital catalyst for him. It's fun to read his interactions with his butler Alfred, and I'd love to have seen more of that, but that's probably out of familiarity that I say that.
      Overall, it's a fun read, but low on action content (I hoped for more!), and I wanted more insight and a deeper window into his personal and emotional world; there could have been more development with his friends, especially given his age. This fits in pretty nicely after 'Warbringer' and I enjoyed reading the snippet of the Catwoman book at the very end; I have high hopes for that one too, even though I know less about that character. My son's biggest complaint (he's just ten), is that these well-known YA authors (to me!) are not doing his favorite Marvel Icons as well. Captain America, Adam Silvera?
    • 2/5
      Bruce Wayne is a young man with his whole future ahead of him. He has everything he could ever want at his fingertips except the parents killed by a thief when he was a child. While testing out a prototype car, a police chase passes him by involving the notorious Nightwalkers responsible for terrorizing Gotham City. Despite the police telling him repeatedly to stay away, Bruce decides to chase down the Nightwalker car and disable it so the police can catch it. The police give him community service that entails cleaning Arkham Asylum, home to hundreds of the most notorious criminals the city has seen. He's immediately drawn to a young girl named Madeleine imprisoned for murder and working for the Nightwalker gang. She only speaks to him and the police agree to allow him to try to get information from her, but she is more than she seems.

      Batman: Nightwalker isn't like any other Batman incarnation because he isn't Batman yet. Bruce is the most innocent and naive you will ever see him. His intentions are pure and he still acutely feels the pain of his parents' absence. Unfortunately, he also is heavily influenced by his own arrogance and the assumption that he knows everything. Even when warned of Madeleine's methods of manipulation and reading people, Bruce assumes that he's just too competent to fool. (Spoiler alert: he wasn't.) He succeeds in feeding her information and making himself look like a fool. His whole attitude around Madeleine frankly disgusted me. He invented an entire senario in his head where she is truly innocent because she's female, young, and attractive. I was doubly disgusted when his sexist theory was correct to a point. The entire narrative only proved to reinforce his arrogant and sexist ideas.

      Many plot points in this novel are hard to believe or unnatural feeling. The police having a teen work at Arkham Asylum is like having one work at a maximum security prison. No one would do that because that teen would be at risk. They also wouldn't ask him to do exactly what he was being punished for: interfering in police matters even when he thinks he's helping. It kind of ruins the whole point of his community service. The drones Lucius Fox made seemed more like something out of Robocop than something made today. The whole situation with them was completely predictable. The most egregious part of the novel for me was Madeleine's turnaround from bloodthirsty killer to reluctant criminal in love with Bruce Wayne. The entire time they spoke, she was manipulating him (too much like Sherlock Holmes if you ask me), but somehow she grew to like him? I didn't see it at all and it came out of nowhere.

      Batman: Nightwalker did not meet my expectations. The most natural feeling parts of the book are between Bruce and his friends. These parts are unfortunately few and far between. Very little of the book is believable and I found myself exasperated and annoyed most of the short book. Bruce didn't really learn anything by the end of the novel and his arrogance is reinforced. I would not like to see this Batman in the future.
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