“You have a heavy heart, for someone with everything.” —Madeleine Wallace, page 98

as a story, this was . . . fine. lu is definitely comfortable in her prose and her ability to weave a narrative. she’s part of the reason i’m not giving this a one-star rating tbh. the thing is, this is barely a batman story because bruce wayne has been watered down enough to feel like he’s just some grown-up, rich, ipad kid with a predilection for morally questionable women. gotham doesn’t even feel like gotham! it’s just like every other major city. like i get that this is pre-batman which means no rogues gallery, but there is a pulse to gotham that i think lu never managed to capture right (e.g. nolanverse gotham just being a punched up version of chicago vs. reeves’ gotham which feels as dirty, slimy, and yet still oddly beautiful as it’s depicted in the comics). and to me, if you can’t get gotham right, you’ll never get bruce right. this can’t even be construed as fic because i have definitely read better AUs than this. literally today, even. there are nods to future batman iconography, but it rings hollow when the bruce wayne portrayed isn’t the bruce wayne, yk. anyway, tldr: if you know nothing about batman, this will be a fun, quick read for you; if you’re agonized and tormented by brainrot over batman in the way i am . . . my sincerest condolences fr