Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death Review

Finished reading Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death, bringing famous Batman foe into the forefront of her own story as writer Amy Chu takes Pamela Isley back to her roots as a scientist before she became Poison Ivy. The book opens up with Doctor Pamela Isley in Africa retrieving a thousand year old plant from the desert for the Gotham Botanical Gardens where Pamela is currently working at. While giving a tour of the place to a group of students from Gotham Academy Harley comes in to meet with Pamela as the two go to a local bar to catch up. The next morning when Pamela returns to work she finds her coworker and the person who hired her Dr Luisa Cruz is found dead with the pairs research into human and plant DNA splicing. Overall this was a good book as it brings Poison Ivy to the forefront of her own book that allows the reader to dive into the mindset of Poison Ivy by show her views on the world and the different relationships she has with other characters within the DC universe and Pamela's human plant children. The mystery surrounding the deaths at the Botanical Gardens with Luisa being the first is intriguing especially with how it effects Poison Ivy's power source of the Green that then leads to a great appearance by Swap Thing at the end of the book. The artwork is great as it does a great job in depicting each characters emotional nicely and making the scenery look amazing with how the different variations of plants are showed in the book and how the colour palette works wonders for the book. What does let the book down is the there is quite a few inconsistencies between the character and costume designs due to the different art styles within the book. 7.5/10.