"Investigative reporter Nora Hesper spends her nights cloaked in shadows. As Indigo, she's become an urban myth, a brutal vigilante who can forge darkness into weapons and travel across the city by slipping from one patch of shadow to another. Her primary focus both as Nora and as Indigo has become a murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos. Children are being murdered in New York, and Nora is determined to make it stop, even if that means Indigo must eliminate every member. But in the aftermath of a bloody battle, a dying cultist makes claims that cause Indigo to question her own origin and memories. Nora's parents were killed when she was nineteen years old. She took the life insurance money and went off to explore the world, leading to her becoming a student of meditation and strange magic in a mountaintop monastery in Nepal...a history that many would realize sounds suspiciously like the origins of several comic book characters. As Nora starts to pick apart her memory, it begins to unravel. Her parents are dead, but the rest is a series of lies. Where did she get the power inside her? In a brilliant collaboration by New York Times and critically acclaimed coauthors Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James Moore, and Mark Morris join forces to bring you a crime-solving novel like you've never read before"--
Anyone who reads my reviews would know that I love both Kelley Armstrong's and Christopher Golden's work. That being said, these are very different authors as are the other eight authors that joined on to create Indigo, a novel project. I understood going in that I was reading what amounted to a writing experiment, but being an author myself, I was interested in seeing how it turned out.
The answer was, pretty damn good, but not perfect. Indigo is the story of an investigative reporter, Nora Hesper, and her crime fighting alter ego, Indigo, a superhero created from shadows. Both are pursuing The Children of Phonos, a murder cult that has been escalating their victim count. As she investigates, she begins to unravel exactly what the Phonoi are after, and their dangerous connection to her mysterious shadow abilities.
The tale was interesting enough, the writing well composed, the characters compelling, and the general situation was fun to experience, however there were some issues with the story. I'm guessing here, but I think the fact that there were so many authors working on this killed any chance of a unique voice in this story. I think they each tried to tone down their voice so the tone would feel continuous, but it sometimes just ended up feeling monotonous. Still, the story did capture my attention, and I was truly interested in solving some of the mysteries involved.
I did feel like there were things I wanted to learn more about that were glossed over, and I felt like the end may have been a bit too easy, but all in all, Indigo is a fun novel-length comic book, but the pictures are in your mind. ;) So if you're into that genre, and want to read that crossed with a suspense novel, this should definitely be your cup of tea.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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10 July, 2017:
Finished reading
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10 July, 2017:
Reviewed