I read this book first ages ago when I met the author at a conference. I could talk about my experience with her, but this is a book review and that is therefore irrelevant. She was smart, nice, and endlessly interested in the craft, though.
Indigo Springs is about Astrid Lethewood and finding out the legacy that her father left behind that she’s since forgotten. There’s blue magical water, vitagua, that she can use to enchant items that will produce a single spell, and a whole world of this water frozen in ice behind the chimney of her father’s house that she has now inherited. The blue water is melting and she and her roommates are all caught up in the mess that this creates.
I like the ideas in the book quite a bit. While there is a feeling of danger that there’s some outside force that may come after them if the knowledge of the magic gets out, that works more to keep the narrative contained to the characters and how they interact with the magic. In the end, it’s much more about how Saraha, Astrid’s best friend, manipulates the people around her for her own ends and how Astrid really doesn’t have enough of a backbone to stop her before it’s much too late.
There’s also a lot of interesting queer content. Astrid’s bisexuality is portrayed matter of factly, with mentioned of an ex-girlfriend that she lived with and how Astrid’s hesitation to stopping Sahara is rooted in large part in the fact that she has feelings for her.
And, of course, in how she chooses Jacks, her other roommate, in the end because he will actually love her back.
I am not sure if I wanted more or less of Astrid struggling to understand her mother coming out as a transman, especially since there wasn’t much of a coming out so much as it just was at one point. The conflict all seemed to happen before that coming out point, and vanished after, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
The climax also felt really messy. There was a big emphasis on the fairy world that felt like it could have been cut, but it might have just been because I am not interested in the fairy world whatsoever. The big bad that showed up felt like a plot device so that there could be a climax, since he was mentioned only in passing before this point, but he had no real character or build up. There was no real fear or tension, and I feel like instead they could have made it Jacks’ father instead of some guy melted from the vitagua ice who came in to try and murder everyone at the end. It just felt bloated and unnecessary.
Overall, it’s pretty interesting and I do recommend at least checking it out. The way they treat magic as more of a chemical spill and how they deal with the switch from modern present to flashback with the tense switch is interesting to see, if nothing else, though there is plenty else to like about it.
On to reading Blue Magic!