Volume 3 of the Indigo series is my least favourite to date. It starts out with some promise - Indigo and her sentient wolf friend Grimya have travelled to the eastern continent in search of the second demon that they must destroy. They join a caravan to travel along the coast to the city where Indigo's now deceased mother was born, but soon learn that invaders have attacked the city. Indigo and Grimya travel on alone, going through the desert to avoid any soldiers on the road, and find an injured woman at an oasis, with her baby daughter. She tells them she is the wife of the city's ruler and that they must help her escape or her child will be murdered. Unfortunately, troops arrive, led by a nobleman who the woman denounces as a traitor: he is one of the indigenous nobility who is now working for the conqueror.

Indigo, Grimya, the woman and her baby are all conveyed to the city but there, despite Indigo's immediate assumption that the conqueror must be the demon, they are treated kindly and decently, even though there have been some deaths - the old ruler among them. The widow refuses to care for her child and Indigo is asked to take charge of the Infanta - the child's title - and her household. Initially she plans to act against the conqueror but things start to slide: she makes friends with his court astrologer and starts to take various drugs that the woman offers her to help her to sleep - for she suffers nightmares which worsen in the months before the Infanta's birthday. This becomes a repeating pattern each year with the Infanta herself also apparently affected as well as others in the palace.

Eventually, Indigo is drawn into a conspiracy to overthrow the new ruler but this doesn't go far - the chief conspirators are packed off to the Jewel Islands as ambassadors and without them, the only other member still in the capital refuses to act. He is a relic seller at the Sea goddess' temple and has a background which includes information that would be vital to Indigo if he would only divulge it. Years drag by and Indigo is completely ineffective as she lives an idyll at the palace, helping to raise the Infanta who is destined to marry the conqueror. Meanwhile, the heat and the city environment are not great for Grimya who has far less to do in this book which may be why it is the weakest in the series: Indigo is a wimp throughout this story until near the end and has the wool pulled right over her eyes. As I'd guessed the "twist" before very long into the story, it made the character seem rather stupid into the bargain. The writing itself isn't weak but the plotline and characterisation are, and there is also some very graphic violence which seems unnecessary, so all in all this can only scrape up 2 stars from me. ( )

The third book in the Indigo series will find her facing the second demon she released from the Tower of Regret. Unfortunately, the situation is not so clear as in Inferno and much time is lost to false paths. An interesting read and fine addition to the series. ( )

In Infanta, the "protagonist" Indigo continues her pattern of sitting on her ass while others figure out the mystery of the story and defeat the demon. A novel that spans years of time, mostly because Indigo can't bother herself to ask a few questions here and there, with another unsatisfying conclusion as she watches someone else fight the fight she was supposedly supposed to take on.

When I got to Infanta, it was only inertia that kept me reading. Indigo continues to be one of the most inactive central characters I have read, she is certainly the most inactive character supposedly on a quest to save the world that I have read. Indigo, for poorly explained reasons, travels to the "Eastern Continent" to the city of her mother's birth, just in time for a brutal dictator to take control of the city and kill or capture the royal house, capturing Indigo along with them. Indigo stumbles around as the infant royal princess's nurse, not bothering to do any real investigating until someone else solves the mystery for her. Indigo then watches as the demon is defeated without her having to really do much of anything.

The main problem with the Indigo series is that Indigo isn't necessary to the stories at all. In each of the first four books, if you excised her from them the other characters would locate and defeat the demons just as easily, and might have done a better job without having to deal with Indigo's childish and obnoxious behavior and clueless "investigating".

After a limp beginning to the series, Infanta is more of the same: so bland and uninteresting that it isn't even worth the effort to write a truly a scathing review. ( )