Review: "Indigo Springs" by A.M. Dellamonica

[megwrites]

Title: Indigo Springs
Author: A.M. Dellamonica planetalyx
Genre: Fantasy/Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 317
Publisher: Tor





Basic Plotline: When Astrid's father dies, she inherits his house, living there along with her step-brother and best friend, Sahara Knax. It is not long before they discover that the house, and Astrid's father have a secret. Beneath the house flows a river of "vitagua" - magic water - with the power to imbue objects with incredible magic. But as they use the vitagua more and more, things get more and more out of hand, eventually leading to a catastrophe that will change the world.

The Positives: I want to first off compliment the cover art and design. Its the kind of art that a book ought to have, eye catching, storytelling in its own way, and setting the general mood of the story contained therein. A lot of cover art fails to do that, and even directly gives the reader the wrong idea about what they'll find in the pages.

As for the novel itself, overall I found it to be a very good, enjoyable read.

The worldbuilding is simple enough and takes only a paragraph or two to explain, if you really need that much. The deceptively simple premise serves the book well because it allowed for almost no exposition and more time spent exploring the characters and the effects of the vitagua. As for the marriage of the magic and mundane that happens with this type of fantasy (don't know if I'd classify it as straight up urban fantasy), Dellamonica has also created a very convincing, quirky small town atmosphere for her story to take place in. I appreciate whenever authors dare to venture outside of London, New York, L.A., or Chicago to tell tales of magic.

I appreciated that this book was very leanly written. As a reader, I tend to resent excessive narration and description because I think telling the reader too much inhibits them from becoming a partner in the journey that's taken. The prose itself had hints of lyricism here and there and I'm a sucker for poetry in prose form.

The characters are probably the most skillfully written part of this book. Like the cover, they pop out from the page but not in a way that does not let the reader understand their flaws and short comings. Though colorful, there is a reality to them, a basic sense that you might actually encounter these people out on the street or in some small town somewhere. The characters are never 100% likable, even the good ones, but they are compelling to read about. Astrid is a mix of kindness, generosity, and desperation to be loved that makes sense without creating a weak, whiny character. Similarly, Sahara comes across as that friend I think everyone has at least once in their life, that person who is so interesting and exciting that we get carried away with them even when they have deep, deep flaws.


The Negatives: The major flaw in this jewel of a book is that the frame story format used makes the book come out feeling badly lopsided and unfinished. There are two storylines in this book, and one of them withers in the presence of the other.

The novel is told framed by Will's interview/interrogation of Astrid after she is caught and taken into custody by the government who is trying to cope with the out of control disaster of vitagua, and a vitagua-contaminated Sahara being unleashed on the world. This frame is told from Will's first person, present-tense point of view while the story of Astrid inheriting the house and discovering the vitagua and the secrets of her childhood is told in third-person, past-tense point of view.

This really takes the wind out of Will as a character. He comes to Astrid trying to find his wife and children who have gone off with Sahara's cult, and there is obviously a lot of storyline there that is never explored. Thus, I think the reader doesn't get a good sense of Will or feel anything for/about the character. In fact, if Will himself hadn't mentioned it a few times, you might not know that he was looking to Astrid as the means of finding his family.

But the frame story also makes the main story seem drawn out even though it goes at a fairly quick pace. By having Astrid's story stretch out so long and in great detail while events in the present tense unfold so rapidly, the pacing feels like start and stop rush hour traffic.

Not to mention the book gets off to a bumpy start because the setting and situation are not as well established as I would have liked so, it feels like the reader is left a few steps behind, trying to figure out who, what, when, where and why as they try to keep up with the story - which then slows down suddenly when we get to the storyline advertised on the back of the book.

The ending felt chopped to me, coming too abruptly and not resolving many of the issues in the book. Will's storyline seems to evaporate, and as resolutions go, while they do accomplish one goal, it's done rather too quickly and easily.

I've heard that there is a sequel in the works, and if so, I hope it continues following the threads that were left dangling in this book. Because despite these

CoC Score: 2.5. There weren't a lot of CoC's in this book. It is not directly stated whether Sahara Knax is a character of color not. She's described as having brown skin, but I couldn't find any passages that would point to her being a CoC and not just a white person with a deep tan. In fact, we're told precious little of Sahara's past outside of her prior interactions with Astrid. I suspect that she was intended as CoC by the author, but that's never brought up or pointed out. Patience Skye is a "Native woman" - her specific tribe/band/people is never specified, but the vitagua has caused her to become a shapeshifter, reappearing as different women of color each time she's seen. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the idea of a character who goes between several outward racial appearances, all of them non-white. There is some feeling of CoC's being interchangeable by virtue of being non-white that made me uncomfortable, and I was doubly uncomfortable with Patience sticking around to help Astrid just because she's that nice even when Astrid was undoubtedly the cause of her contamination and it was due to Astrid's own weakness and selfishness.

The big failing, and the reason for the low score was the handling of the vitagua and Indigo Springs in regards to the history of the town. It is mentioned that the birthright of being a chanter (those who can enchant objects) was stolen from a "half-Native" woman, Elizabeth Walks-In-Shadow, who was adopted after a potlatch fire that killed all the rest of her tribe. Mrs. Skye is also as well mentioned as being Native, but what tribe, band, or people is never stated. They are always just "Native" or "Indian". I have a big problem with authors who do this, because saying "Native" is like saying "European". As a broad descriptor it has limited legitimate uses. Most times it's part of the erasure and white re-imagining of those varied, diverse peoples. They become one, big homogenous group of people who were all just alike. In describing interactions between settlers and Native peoples, white writers are very specific about the settlers (English, Scottish, Dutch, French, Spanish, etc) but will either just say "the Indians there" or "the Native Americans of [insert place]."

There was absolutely no reason not to have specified which people were being discussed in this context, especially since this centers around a specific group. There's no reason Jacks wouldn't have been able to find that information easily in his research. If someone bothered to write a book on the subject, you'd think at least once the name of the people would come up.

If anything, exploring how the vitagua's powers were misused and the disaster set in place when Elizabeth Walks-in-Shadow's birthright was taken from her would be interesting. But it's passages like this that really made me cringe:

She sighs. "Will, the witch-burners owned Europe when they started their crusade against enchantment. They had to take the Americas, inch by inch. There were people here - spirits, walking gods - and they weren't dumb. They saw what was happening and banked their power in the unreal. They hoped their shamans and medicine women could trickle magic back drop by drop, without doing any harm --" (pg. 218)

Wow, it's amazing how Astrid, a white woman who descends from a line of people who stole and mishandled the vitagua generation after generation, knows what ALL the Native peoples of an entire continent were thinking and hoping and planning. It's amazing that somehow, the Umpqua and Siuslaw and the Dine and the Pawnee and the Arapahoe and the Muscogee and all the Algonquin Nations and the Tsalagi were thinking the exact same thing and weren't differing in their approaches or anything. Gee, aren't those Indians just so good at exotic, weird things? It must because because Indians are so mystical. Unlike us civilized, rational, logical-thinking white people.

This book could only have been improved by the author telling more of the story behind Elizabeth Walks-In-Shadow, her tribe, and their conflict with the white people of Indigo Springs. Or at least giving them the dignity of their specific identity.


Gender Score: 10. While the race score is sadly low, gender is something that the author does get right.

GLBT Score: 10. The author herself identifies as lesbian (on her LJ profile page) and the main character is a queer person, and one could see Sahara as being bisexual as Astrid is, depending on how you read it. I was happy to see an actual bisexual person as a main character without it making her evil, a slut, or otherwise a complete freak. There is a conversation between Astrid and Sahara in which Sahara claims that Astrid is "too gay" to be bisexual when Astrid tells her she's in love with Jacks - but I was okay with this and did not read it as erasure so much as showing the completely plausible reaction Sahara would have to the situation. I've gotten the other side of that argument (specifically, "You like boys too much to be bi!") and I understand completely why Astrid reacts the way she does. And, Astrid's ex-girlfriend, who is identified as a lesbian, does not die! At all!

Ablism Score: 0. There are no people with disabilities as characters in this book. The vitagua causes "madness". There are some terms like "crazy" or "insane" used a few times, but I didn't detect a lot of background ablism, even if there were no PWD's in the story.