So, having not played the second or third game in this series, I wasn't sure what to expect with this novel. I DID recently read the Riddler prequel book...which leads me to the weird thing about this story. The Riddler's not even in it. Which is very strange because they spend the whole last book talking about how the Riddler was going to be basically the new Joker, and then he doesn't even show up in this. It's more than a little annoying.
The biggest issue I had with this novel is that you can tell it's based off a video game. What I mean by that is, it's a "Go to the next place" type of writing. Batman will do something, the next part will be in this new location and will have X amount of guards. Scenes you can pretty much see in your minds eye was supposed to be a video game level. And honestly, after the 15th time of reading "he brings his shoulder on the thug's neck, causing him to drift into blissful unconsciousness", it gets a bit old.
The writing, I have to say was actually pretty good in terms of the way it was written. Poor Marv doesn't have much to work with as his job here is translate a 30 hour game into a 360 page book. He doesn't get to write his own story, he's basically transcribing. However, he DID make it a quick an easy read which I am very thankful for.
The story in itself however isn't really, when it boils down to it, a very good one. The scarecrow is going to use fear gas to make Gotham scared. And they act like this is a big deal. Forgive me, but that's kind of Scarecrow's deal...ALL THE TIME. I really CAN'T remember a time when Scarecrow's goal WASN'T to fear the town with fear gas. That would be like Gotham being shocked that Mr. Freeze attacked somewhere that was cold.
Throughout the whole story they had this weird thing where they had joker's blood in Batman's body and it's threatening to take over his mind and he keeps seeing hallucinations of the dead joker. To me, this really just slowed down the story and padded it out. Unfortunately though it was sort of needed because the story wasn't that large in scope as it was.
I'm not going to reveal the end because I want to keep this spoiler free, but i'm just going to say that the overall villain's plan of the story wasn't worth the ending.
Speaking of the ending, I hope you like 340 pages of build and then a 20 page rush to the finale. As I said, the story didn't justify the end, especially with their attempt to close up every loose end. Which...just didn't work. This story didn't deserve to be a swan song for Batman, it was more like a random episode with finality tacked on for added "drama".
I AM giving this a 3 though because, while annoying at times, and it felt like a mental batman beatdown with no real spots of levity, it read very well and at least kept me reading even though the ending was very disappointing. Once again, I am not blaming the writer on this, I am moreso blaming the writer of the actual Arkham Knight video game. For what Marv had to work with, he did a really good job.
As I said before it was EXTREMELY disappointing that the Riddler's role was monumentally built up in the previous novel only to show up exactly 0% in this story. It left me scratching my head for the entire novel wondering when he was going to show up.
When it all boils down it, here's what I have to say. If you would rather read a more detailed version of what happened in this game than say a wikipedia page (probably because, like me, you don't want to invest 30ish hours playing a game that's super repetative), I would recommend this book if only to catch you up to speed. If you're looking for a fun Batman adventure....I'd say skip this one. 2.5 out of 5.