Obsidian (A Lux Novel Book 1)
by Jennifer L. Armentrout
published May 2012 by Entangled Publushing, LLC.
I purchased Obsidian after I received a review on Goodreads for The Zeuorian Awakening. The reviewer wrote “This book is a ripoff of Obsidian, but not a good one. *sigh*” I never read the book and Awakening was first published under Untamed Powers May 2012, but I was pushing it to agents starting 2009. So of course I was curious if it was actually a rip off of mine.
I had many work stolen in my lifetime and wouldn’t be surprised if it had happened. After I read the overview on Amazon, I decided to buy it since there were similarities between my book and Obsidian.
However after reading the book, I can safely say there is only a small similarity between our books.
Zeuorian Awakening is a fantasy mystery / thriller with a romantic subplot. The story is fast pace, thriller style writing about a teenage girl, Lexi. She was born with the abilities to read minds and sense premonitions. When she was 14 a man tried to kill her after he discovered she could read their mind. (see short story Monster). Her parents died in a car accident on her fifteenth birthday, she forgot the day they died and the summer prior to it.
She moved in with her single aunt, an emergency doctor. On her seventh birthday she glows and physically transforms into a major hottie. Boys are chasing her, because of her change. She starts developing powers (telekinesis and atomkinesis) that she’s unable to control and causes incidents. A mysterious boy is following her. He knows all about her powers and why others are after her. He could be one of the boys who likes her. She believes the reason why she’s changing and the identity of the mysterious boy is hidden in her forgotten memories the summer her parents had died.
Obsidian on the other hand is a romantic fantasy about Katy and Daemon. She moved to West Virginia with her mom three years after her dad died from brain cancer. Her mom works all the time as a nurse while Katy blogs and reads. She’s a loner and doesn’t have any friends from Florida where she grew up. So no emails or phone calls to friends. Her mom encourages Katy to make friends with her neighbors who are same age as her. She meets Daemon. He’s rude and they hate each other instantly, but of course, he’s really hot with black hair and green eyes. Katy lusts after him despite he’s a dick.
Then Dee, Daemon’s sister, befriends Katy. Daemon is overprotective of Dee and doesn’t want Katy to be friends with her. He thinks Katy isn’t good enough to be friends with his sister or the right kind of person. Dee doesn’t think the same as her brother. So Dee takes Daemon’s car keys and forces him to get to know Katy as a way to earn his keys back. From there Katy’s and Daemon’s attraction buds toward each other. Even though he continues to be a jerk to her, running hot and cold, he saves her life several times. None of which would’ve happened if she didn’t stupidly put herself in danger in the first place and listened to others warnings.
Spoiler Alert
Katy discovers Daemon and Dee are aliens from Lux. They are made of light and have powers to alter light, start fires, morph, move fast, super strength and heal. (I never caught whether or not they also control the weather, but it would change around them at times.) They came to earth with others like them after their planet was destroyed. Another group of aliens are now hunting them throughout the galaxy, because they are mortal enemies and want to steal their powers. Any time the Luxen use their powers around a human it leaves a trace making them glow, which Arum are able to see. They use it to track the Luxen. However special crystals in the mountains obscure the Luxen. So the Arum must torture their location out of the human. Since Katy is in constant need of Daemon’s help being the cliché pathetic helpless girl, she becomes a target of the Arum. She is attacked about three times in the book, because of it.
I wouldn’t category this book as thrilling. 80% of the book was the love story with two action sequences in act 2 and one final fight at the end. Even though this is a romance, Katy and Daemon don’t end up together. She won’t settle for a jerk. (finally one smart move on her part). Honestly, I never liked Daemon’s character that much either. The banter between them kept me reading, but there was no shedding of his hot and cold attitude like Twilight after Bella discovered Edward was a vampire. He remained a jerk until the end.
The only similarities I saw between both books is that:
Both Katy and Lexi are a little naive. However Lexi relies on her telepathy and premonitions too much for determining if others are being honest, which gets her in trouble. Katy lets her stubbornness allow her to make bad decisions on impulse and she questions if she’s crazy when she sees Dee or Daemon do not normal things since her dad’s brain cancer made him hallucinate.
Both Daemon and Lexi were aliens being hunted. But Lexi is being hunted by The Community, a group of half-breeds (half human and half-Zeuorian). The half-breeds were run off their planet Valos by an evil Zeuorian queen, supposedly the last of her kind until Lexi was brought to earth. Another mystery. The half-breeds believe she’ll turn evil like her ancestors, in particular the queen.
Both Lexi and Daemon are aliens and gorgeous with green eyes. That’s where the differences from them stop. Daemon uses a nasty personality to push humans away and he looks down on them. Lexi is nice. She tries to keep to herself and avoid hurting others with her powers. She struggles with the idea maybe she is turning into a monster and wants to hide. But the boys chasing Lexi over her new appearance and the mysterious boy (Watcher) following her stops her from finding a hole and hiding out. And she also wants to figure out who could be he Watcher, which requires her talking to the boys.
Both Lexi and Katy live in a small town with mountains and lakes where they can hike. They both live with a single parent who works in the medical industry for long hours. Except Lexi’s aunt is being intentionally pulled away to keep Lexi alone, while Katy’s mom chooses to work instead of spend time with her. Lexi and Katy use some of the same dialogue (freaking alien, ET, NASCAR, etc.)
Both Lexi and Daemon can change the weather when they are upset, but I didn’t catch why Daemon changes the weather. He has the power of light not atomkinesis.
The lead love interests Daemon and Tyler had black hair, beautiful eyes, muscular, hot, arrogant and overly confident. But Tyler was popular, well liked, put up a good front as a way to hide his true self. He is a good liar and does things that make Lexi question if he is her Watcher and knows the truth about her, which he claims he does. Another mystery that will be explained further in book 2.
That’s all the similarities.
Despite the reason I decided to read Osidian, it was still a good read. I would recommend others to read it. But I only gave it 3 stars since the story was a little slow and cliché to me. The female lead meets the hot moody boy who they instantly rub each other raw. Only to discover he is attracted to her, but he is trying to push her away to hide his secret. She is the first girl he really cares about. And since this was a romance, I expected the love interest to swoon me like Edward did in Twilight, but he never did. He remained a jerk. Maybe that will change in the next book, hopefully.
RATE 3 stars
About The Author
C. Zablockis is an Indie author of paranormal, dark fantasy and horror novels. She published Lexi Greene’s Dangerous Lesson, Lexi Greene’s Grim Awakening, Monster (The Zeuorian Series) and My Watcher (The Zeuorian Series) YA Dark Fantasy Thriller.
C. Zablockis 