A review by brittanyallyn
Indigo by Charlaine Harris, Jonathan Maberry, Christopher Golden, Kat Richardson, Kelley Armstrong, Cherie Priest, James A. Moore, Seanan McGuire, Mark Morris, Tim Lebbon

1.0

Maybe 1.5 stars? The only thing I liked about this book was the premise, which is very disappointing since I really enjoy three of the authors, Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong, and Jonathan Maberry. But this novel was a mess, and I can only assume it's because of the amount of authors. For one thing we have literally no time to understand Nora's life, personal or as the vigilante Indigo, before she starts questioning what is and isn't real which gives readers no frame of reference to decide for ourselves. This is only underscored by Indigo's literal comic book origins, Nora's childhood love of comic books led to her origin being pulled from their pages, but readers have no knowledge of her comic book love until it's told to us after it's revealed that her origin is false. Characters and groups also came and went with such speed and lack of description that it was really hard to remember who was good and who was bad. That's not even getting into Nora herself who is full of contradictions, she's only worried about saving children, but unless I misunderstood something (possible given how confusing the narrative could be) she completely forgot about two missing children and I guess left them for dead. There were also her cats which she "lovingly" called the Assholes, who lived in constant fear due to her alter ego and were neglected at various points in the novel. Their existence was pointless and only went to further show what a mess this novel is. The thing that most undermined Nora's stance as a good and righteous character was the fact that upon finding out her best friend was a sort of shadow puppet she had created for company she didn't hesitate to obliterate her without much of a good reason in the text. I found myself counting down the final fifty or so pages, because at that point I had come too far to quit. I'm very disappointed with this book.