This collection continues the story begun in Knightfall volume 1: Bruce Wayne, after being horribly injured in his fight with Bane, turns the mantle of the Bat over to Jean Paul Valley, formerly the assassin Azrael, while Wayne leaves Gotham to recover. The only trouble is that Valley is NOT Wayne, and soon starts taking his role as the Batman in a new, darker direction.
I have to admit that as excited as I was for this story arc to finally be collected in it entirety, I have mixed feelings about this volume. Bruce Wayne only appears in the last issue, and Robin is also absent for much of the story; its VERY strange to have almost 700 pages of Batman without Bruce Wayne, Alfred, or Robin. Also, Bruce appears fully recovered from his fight with Bane, which means that this massive volume is still incomplete in terms of story (I'm pretty sure there are issues out there covering what Bruce was up to while he was away).
But let's focus on what was actually in this volume: Jean Paul Valley. In fact, this is almost 700 pages of him and only him. The point of this run was, from what I gather, to emphasize what a crappy Batman Jean Paul is and make the readers want Bruce Wayne back. While the writers achieved that ultimate goal, I feel like they could have done it faster--I'm completely done with Azrael/Batman, and sooo ready to move on. Basically, Jean Paul is a thug, who rejects the careful detective work and strict moral code embraced by Wayne, and instead solves his problems by adding armor and offensive weapons to the Batsuit, then beating his enemies to within an inch of their lives. He faces a range of enemies here, but most of them are small-fry: either minor bad guys from Batman's distant past, generic gangsters, or one-shots created specifically so that Valley could gravely injure or kill (yes, KILL) them. In the entire book, he only faces two serious baddies: Catwoman (which is was pretty awesome, since Catwoman is on Batman's side in that arc), and the Joker (who pretty much loses interest when he realizes that Jean Paul is not the real Batman). Both of those arcs are excellent, but I got kind of bored with the rest of it. Oh, did I mention that Jean Paul is pretty much insane, and is frequently graced with hallucinations? Yeah, that's a problem for a vigilante...
Didn't enjoy this volume as much as the first, but I'm cutting it some slack, as it's a middle book of a trilogy. Can't wait to see what they did with volume three!
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