Indigo Voss is about the gun-toting, knife-waving, throat-tearing, a-moral moments of violence and betrayal in the curated memories of Alex Voss in pursuit of a life worth living.
It is also about the spaces between despair, where we can find things worth living for; sometimes another person, sometimes a moment of passion, and sometimes a particularly colorful sky.

This story is as heavy with metaphorical rebirth as it is with literal death,
Rebirth is something I feel is pivotal to the queer experience and central to the immigrant and diaspora experience, aspects I felt I could relate to (myself being those things).
Killing yourself in all the ways just shy of in the literal sense to learn who (and what) you are.
Returning yourself from the fringes and dark spaces you were forced in to, realized and unashamed.

Indigo Voss goes hard from the start and the underlying feeling is told in a way that speaks loudly from a familiarity with the subject; something I think many authors try for but don’t have the experience to draw on (or the self awareness to recognize stories they have no business telling). In this case I felt the story brought a secluding and visceral reminder to the reader of where they’ve been (or are); and simultaneously an endearing (and I pray with every piece of myself, achievable) promise that things could be better.

I heartily recommend Indigo Voss and look forward to the prospect of seeing future works by K. Leigh.

Indigo Voss asks the question: who is Alex Voss?
If you read the author's preceding books the Constellis Voss trilogy, you probably have a good idea. But for newcomers, he is complete mystery.

In this novel, Kira Leigh takes us through a hellish beginning where a genre is battled and the embers of hope are crushed beneath the foot of a persistent pervading threat.
The second act introduces (technically reintroduces) Alex's chosen family of flawed misfits and how they band together with a touch of manipulation in 1990s New York City.
And finally, the third act bends and distorts everything with an ending that struggles against the predestination chosen for the protagonist.

This is about the life of Alex Voss, but it is also about his death. The specter of his death looms over the whole story. And yet the protagonist resists fate. The chosen family resists fate.
It is a struggle that yields immeasurable hope in a world of obscene darkness.

This story lacks the trappings of a scifi world centuries beyond our world, but it does not need it. The author presents a dogged determination to break the pattern to create a second chance. Indeed, it shows how "something awesome" can change everything.
It's very much the same message as Constellis Voss with a different package and wrapping, but it's the same message which cannot be said enough: If we band together, we can overcome those who exploit the exploitable and seize happiness from those who hoard it.

Both Indigo Voss and Constellis Voss go together like peanut butter and chocolate - they complement each other profoundly and yet can exist apart as equally delicious pieces of art.
I greatly recommend you read both to really get the optimum experience from this world, this character, and this pathos and ethos presented by the author.

The content itself can be harsh and unflinching so it is very much not for everyone. Depictions of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse run throughout the story - but for a very good purpose. This is not a pulp novel but a real shot at creating art that represents a tortured individual in a bittersweet world. But, again, not for everyone so just be careful if it's not to your taste. (not everyone likes peanut butter and chocolate, but that's okay!)

Indigo Voss is breathtakingly poetic; with each sentence the darkest parts of Sofia and New York come alive in vivid color. Simultaneously a 90s crime thriller with a focus on the Russian Mafia and a mind-bending sci-fi experience of fate being braided and rewoven right before our eyes, it’s an exploration of despair, madness, and self hatred crashing against love and the constantly-reaching hands of friends and lovers.
Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, neither Alex nor his author pull a single punch in relating the story of his painful life. IV fully embraces the darkness, and the healing is all the sweeter in contrast. This prequel is an absolute knockout followup to the Sci-Fi masterpiece of Constelis Voss.

This book meant a lot to me. Its themes of feeling disconnected from society, of identity and being lost, of being transactional because that’s what was tortured into you resonated strongly with me. I also absolutely should mention how important it is to the story that Alex is trans.
I just can't see myself in the innocent farmer's son who goes with the bearded wise man to find a sword and become king. Honestly, I don't trust them, I don’t like them, and I was never, ever innocent enough to do either. But a first-person narrator who constantly tells me how much they hate being manipulative, while being manipulative toward me; who tells me how vile they are while also being kind of proud of it; who so desperately wants me to love or at least understand them while also not giving a fuck? I’ll happily let them live rent-free in my head forever. That’s what Indigo Voss delivers, and then some.
I have a comparison for you, not about the kind of book this is (or reminds me of), but about the style it is written in. It's been a while since I watched Angel Heart, and my long-term memory is one of the victims of too many depression-related ECTs. But I do remember the impression the movie made in my brain. The feelings of a feverish, manic, fractured narrative that was less told and more inserted - under great pressure - into my skull. That’s how Indigo Voss read to me.
While reading Indigo Voss, it sometimes felt like a different kind of performance I invented in my head. An actor, standing alone on a small stage, in a small club, screaming, crying, laughing, winking the whole text as a monologue directly at me.

There’s something about the way this book opens that punches you in the gut right away. The care and attention given to each scene in visceral detail reaches out and refuses to let you go, which isn’t something most books can accomplish.

If this book is anything, it’s dripping with intent. Don’t be afraid of the heady messages and themes that are buried in here about trauma, love, self-worth and how people who are different are forced to navigate a world that often makes no sense to them.

If you know Alex from the Constellis Voss books, it helps, but you don’t need to have read the previous books to be immersed. Alex is a complicated character who just wants the surrounding people to be happy after growing up a subject of abuse, neglect and forced into a life of sex trafficking and crime. Alex’s struggle with identity is never internal, it’s almost always external. While Alex understands he’s a boy, it’s everyone else insisting on treating him differently, be it like a girl or placating him by calling him a boy, but treating him differently.

When Alex can finally make friends is when things get complicated. At that point, Alex has already morphed into an assassin, hell bent on destroying his captor and boss, Boris, and is convinced not just that he’s a bad person, but an irredeemable villain that doesn’t deserve love and affection. While love is a central theme, don’t confuse it with romance. There is some romantic love at parts of Alex’s life, but it all gets jumbled up in his head while he’s fighting his fracture psyche and trying to literally push Boris’s deadly bullet leveled at him out of his head and prevent his own death.

Most of the book is Alex experiencing and fighting for these memories. The ones he doesn’t want seem to be the strongest, while the ones he wants to hold on to and cherish are the ones being wiped out by the bullet that’s coursing through his mind. Because there are always those people in life that want to control, to take all the accumulated good and block it out to maintain that control. Whether Alex realizes it or not, Alex isn’t the villain, nor is he only the summation of the things he was forced to do (mainly fuck and kill), but is a person with a lot to give and built up a community of people initially to help reach his end goal of destroying Boris, only for that to become something much more.

The book’s climax was masterfully built to, and not at all expected. Because this isn’t a story about revenge, fucking and killing. It’s a book about finding the people who love you, accept you for who you are and will accept all the messy bits that come with these relationships.

Getting to know, and I mean really know, some of these characters is also a treat, and helps add more context to the other books. Getting to see prime Alex interacting with all of them and forging these bonds that will carry forth into the future is really something.