Indigent is a powerful and engaging debut that blends dark fantasy, gritty worldbuilding, and deeply human emotion into something that lingers long after you finish it. Briana N. Cox creates a brutal, unforgiving world where survival isn’t just about strength but about the stories people carry and the choices they make when everything is stripped away. The prose is sharp and visceral, pulling you into the harshness of the setting while grounding the narrative deeply in character.
What stands out most is how well Cox balances the larger, mythic stakes with intimate emotional moments. The main characters feel lived-in and complex, their flaws and desires shaping the way the danger around them unfolds. This makes the tension feel earned rather than manufactured, and it kept me invested in both the plot’s twists and the emotional consequences of each turn.
If there’s a gentle note to offer, the pacing can feel dense at times as the world and its rules settle around you, which might slow momentum for readers craving nonstop action. But that richness also adds texture and depth that reward attentive reading.
Overall, Indigent is a compelling, atmospheric work that will appeal to fans of dark fantasy with emotional weight and inventive worldbuilding.

Welcome to Leigh Pierce Estates, a lower working-class housing estate with a parasite problem. Not that the authorities seem to care. The residents are disappearing, and young handyman Xavier has come into contact with the culprit, which begins to take hold on Xavier’s appetites. But how can the residents of Leigh Pierce survive in a world that has failed them?

Drawing the obvious parallel to Bong Joon Ho’s brilliant ‘Parasite’, Briana N Cox has a lot that she wants to say in this marvellous and claustrophobic horror thriller. It is foremost a scathing indictment of American healthcare and how communities are marginalised. There’s critique of the Opioid crisis and urban gentrification. It’s a book that you’ll be unpacking the symbolism long after you’ve put it down.

As a playwright myself, I often wonder of our relative advantage in writing truthful dialogue. It came as no surprise to find that Briana N Cox is a Fellow of the TN Playwrights Studio. Her dialogue is sharp, characters well developed and setting vividly drawn. I particularly enjoyed the change in styles from the more conversational residents of Leigh Pierce to chapters focused on the clinical doctors, complete with footnotes to their published research – a wry touch which helped accentuate their callousness to those affected.

The symbiosis that forms a central part of the horror does affect the narrative and dialogue. I felt sometimes disoriented as focus shifted between multiple characters. But this is clearly a conscious choice from a writer that is drawing you in and allowing you to experience events as the characters themselves experience them. It’s a unique stream of consciousness style of prose that is sometimes confounding but ultimately rewarding.

It’s not an easy read but, like the parasitic terror that hides within the novel, it lingers. And the injustices that it brings to light will burrow into your brain.

4.75 stars

Absolutely brilliant!!! And viscerally horrifying. It's been ages since I've read something that got under my skin (I don't even want to use that phrase now) this much. It took me about a quarter of the way through to understand what was going on, but the horror and dread start from the first chapter, even before the squidgy wormy elements really kick in.

I'm trying very hard to not give too much away, since even though it's not really a "plot twist" kind of book that you can spoil, I don't want to rob anyone of the experience of slowly realizing what's been happening the whole time.

Indigent hits every major anxiety: medical anxiety, financial anxiety, anxiety about being alone, anxiety about never being alone. While Xavier is firmly the main character, the book has a vast set of characters who are all fully realized, all motivated by personal and systemic fears.

If you like body horror and are infuriated by the American housing system and healthcare system, I can't recommend this book enough.

I would say Indigent is unputdownable if I didn't have to force myself to read it in small doses so as not to give myself worm nightmares again, but for those stronger than me: Block off your calendar!

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the ARC

Thank you to Netgalley and author Briana N. Cox for the ARC.

Never before have I given a 5 star review to a read so brutally unsettling and so horrifically sad.

Briana Cox pens a world only a hairsbreadth separated from our own, where the slow growing dread grabs at your ankles from the gutter.

Just remember—you get to stop reading this book when the story’s over, but hundreds of thousands of people live in a world shockingly similar to the one described here, until they also join the worms.

This is a call to action as well as a breathtaking debut literary horror novel.