Review: Catwoman: Soulstealer

Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Third time is...ehh...not so much the charm for DC Icons, a series I was eagerly awaiting when it was first announced but have now found myself feeling increasingly less excited for. The first book, Leigh Bardugo's Wonder Woman: Warbringer, was a well-deserved hit and a half. Marie Lu's Batman: Nightwalker wasn't half bad, but failed to live up to the usual Marie Lu gold standard for me. And as for what comes after this one, I'm still disappointed that DC didn't postpone the Superman novel after its author was accused of serial sexual harassment (though it's unsurprising given the case against MDLP appears to have gone absolutely nowhere, lost as it was in the brouhaha around certain bigger names that were exposed at around the same time.)

Then there's this Catwoman: Soulstealer novel, about which I'm kinda torn. I mean, it actually felt, at times, like a better Batman book than the one Marie Lu did, even though it was decidedly more anti-heroic and also carried a certain Suicide Squad vibe. Helped, of course, that Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn were major supporting characters, both canon sapphic and in a relationship. Though Sarah J. Maas has rightly been called out for her terrible diversity record in the past, books like this one and Tower of Dawn do, at the very least, indicate that she's listening to reader response and attempting to compensate accordingly. It's not perfect - Ivy and Harley are referred to as "more than friends" at some point, and Selina's bisexuality from various canons is so barely-there it might as well not even be. But Maas also gives us a black POV in Luke Fox, who of course brings up a few nods to police brutality and racism just like Marie Lu alluded to in Nightcrawler. And Luke, he's an army vet with PTSD, which actually gave me more than a few Chaol vibes. There's more than a bit of the usual SJM style at times, too, and I'm not just talking about how Selina and Luke's dynamic reminded me a lot of Celaena and Chaol. There's some use of the infamous "purred" dialogue tag, for one thing. But hey, at least this time SJM remembered she was writing YA instead of her usual NA-masquerading-on-the-YA-shelf, so we're not wall-to-wall with sex scenes the size of Rhysand's dick (and good thing too, 'cause I'd have hated to have seen her try to write sex scenes with Luke and Selina - I'd probably have to DNF.)

All in all, a better book by Maas than the disappointment that was ACOFAS this spring, but also evidence of the unfortunate downward trend of DC Icons. Shame, because, again, my hopes were high from the start.

View all my reviews