In the Shadow of the Obsidian Empire

In the Shadow of the Obsidian Empire by Katie-Maude

Entering her final year of high school, Kaitlyn Anderson has everything going for her, but it isn't easy being perfect. As her life starts to fall apart, she turns to the least likely person, Ash Stevens.

Banner Credit: Majordly Fantastic

Ali Thinks: The first time I read this story, I was thirteen, awful, and strange. When this appeared in my inbox a few weeks ago, I recognized the story, and I remembered really liking it. I was a bit nervous though, as there seemed to be a commonality between my thirteen year old self, the stories I wrote as my thirteen year old self, and the stories I read as my thirteen year old self: awfulness and strangeness. Not the case with In the Shadow of Obsidian Empire, I'm proud to report. In fact, liking this story may have been the one good thing I did in my "Dark Age."

At first, I wasn't really sure how I felt about Kaitlyn; she seemed kind of mean. At cheerleading tryouts, she was pretty callous, and no matter her justification for humiliating one of the girls, it wasn't cool, and it kind of pissed me off. I thought she'd be this horrid cheerleader creature, whose father just so happened to have been in a famous band. Then, she grew more complex, and I grew more interested. She kind of lives her life in the role everyone has assigned her: she's a delinquent at home, a great girlfriend to Chris, an upstanding student/cheerleader/class president to everyone else, and a self-centered (w)itch to Ash Stevens and company. I kind of felt bad that she had to live in this little preconceived notion box, and I was intrigued to see how she would try to break out of it.

My criticism for this story would be that there were quite a bit of typos, which could have probably been fixed by a quick look through or two. Other than that, I really liked how everything came together. It's always fun to have musicians (let's be honest, once a guy picks up a musical instrument he's automatically 34% more attractive), and it's even more fun to have someone related to a famous musician said guy is obsessed with. The bad boy musician type story may be cliché, and Katie-Maude makes it clear as to why guys like Ash appear so often in stories: they're really freaking cool.

In three years time, my taste in books may change, and I may label my sixteen year old self as the "Dark Ages pt.2," but I have a pretty good feeling that if I stumble across In the Shadow of Obsidian Empire again, I'll love it just as much I did at thirteen and sixteen. Now, I know you all have those moments of "How did my parents let me walk outside when I was young and stupid," but I promise that if you read this story, something good will come out of those times, just like it did for me.