On Starships and Dragonwings

Indigo Awakening by Jordan Dane is the first book in the Believers series. While Indigo Awakening had a promising premise, everything else was either annoying, confusing, or just plain boring. The cover is fairly pretty though, curse pretty covers and their deception!

Note: I borrowed Indigo Awakening from my library; all opinions are my own.

Indigo Awakening by Jordan Dane (The Hunted #1)
Published by Harlequin Teen on Dec. 18th, 2012
Genres: Paranormal Romance, YA 
Length: 304 pages
How I got my copy: NetGalley
IndieBound - Book Depository - Goodreads
Purchases made support this blog 

Because of what you are, the Believers will hunt you down.

Voices told Lucas Darby to run. Voices no one else can hear. He’s warned his sister not to look for him, but Rayne refuses to let her troubled brother vanish on the streets of LA. In her desperate search, she meets Gabriel Stewart, a runaway with mysterious powers and far too many secrets. Rayne can’t explain her crazy need to trust the strange yet compelling boy—to touch him—to protect him even though he scares her.

A fanatical church secretly hunts psychic kids—gifted “Indigo” teens feared to be the next evolution of mankind—for reasons only “the Believers” know. Now Rayne’s only hope is Gabe, who is haunted by an awakening power—a force darker than either of them imagine—that could doom them all. 

Strengths:

• I love the premise of children being born with psychic powers and a secret organization trying to hunt them down. Indigo Awakening even seemed to take a new spin on this fairly standard story with the blue flames and auras element.
• I found myself with some lovely mental imagery while reading Indigo Awakening. There are fireflies conjured and I love fireflies!

Weaknesses:

•  The psychic powers that the Indigo Children had were freaking all over the place. We only got details about a couple of kids’ powers, so I don’t even have a good idea of what the rule system is for this magic, but it very much seemed like powers were being made up as Indigo Awakening progressed for whatever was needed in the plot. This is one of my huge pet-peeves in fantasy stories! Rules are important for magic to be interesting.
• On top of that, there are a couple of scenes during the epic battle that involve magic that makes absolutely no sense given what has been done previously and is never explained. This irks me unbelievably.
• The church that is hunting these children is never given any background. How did this church emerge, how does it sit with the general populace, what are the tenets of its beliefs? The big bad organization needs to actually be something other than “those people who are hunting our MCs down, grrr on them” ya know?
• The dialogue is sooooo cheesy. I’m all for people talking normally, but Indigo Awakening took teen slang to a whole new annoying level on top of teens saying cheesy romance lines.
• Speaking of the romance: insta-love!
• You know how we hate when animals are in stories just to be killed and make you sad? It’s even better when human characters are so obviously placed in the story just to die and make you sad. Except I wasn’t sad, I was really really angry at how cheap of a trick this was.
• There are subheadings within the chapters that specify time and place, but some of them say “Minutes Later” or “Seconds Later.” This was so disruptive and unnecessary while I was reading. If there is a blank line, that very much implies that there is a slight break, such as to transition to a new scene, but not a huge one since that would be a new chapter. I’m not dumb okay!
• The big reveal at the very end of the book is just freaking stupid. I didn’t see it coming because it’s just too unbelievably cliche, and that is not a good was to surprise me.

Summary:

Honestly, there are more weaknesses listed in my notes, but I feel like this list is too long as it is. Indigo Awakening is almost certainly not worth your time. If you don’t care about a complete lack of world-building, character development, interesting plot development, or dialogue and the premise sounds awesome, go for it! But maybe borrow it from the library or keep that receipt. I definitely would have DNF’d Indigo Awakening if I hadn’t stupidly requested the sequel for review before realizing it was the sequel to this one…. I swear I thought Crystal Fire was a first in series! Why did I do this to myself???