AVATAR, THE LAST AIRBENDER: THE SHADOW OF KYOSHI (THE KYOSHI NOVELS BOOK 2)
By F. C. Yee
The epic, can’t-miss follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi
Kyoshi’s place as the true Avatar has finally been cemented—but at a heavy cost. With her mentors gone, Kyoshi voyages across the Four Nations, struggling to keep the peace. But while her reputation grows, a mysterious threat emerges from the Spirit World. To stop it, Kyoshi, Rangi, and their reluctant allies must join forces before the Four Nations are destroyed irreparably. This thrilling follow-up continues Kyoshi’s journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice still feared and admired centuries after becoming the Avatar.
About The Author
Outside of writing, F. C. Yee practices capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts, and has a day job mostly involving spreadsheets. His debut YA novel, The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, released in August 2017 to critical acclaim. He lives and writes in Denver. The Shadow of Kyoshi was written in consultation with Michael Dante DiMartino, the co-creator, executive producer, and story editor of the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
Book Details
Publisher: Abrams Children's Books
Imprint: Amulet Books
Publication Date: July 21, 2020
Price: $18.99
Trim Size: 5 1⁄2 x 8 1⁄4
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3505-9
EAN: 9781419735059
Page Count: 368
Format: Hardcover
Rights: North America
Additional formats: Ebook
From Nerdist:
THE SHADOW OF KYOSHI Continues the Powerful Avatar’s Story
When Avatar: The Last Airbender introduced Avatar Kyoshi as a statue and then as a vision, fans stood up and took notice. She made an impression. The book The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee looked at the character’s origins and history. She was the longest-living Avatar and established the Kyoshi Warriors and founded the Dai Li. And now, we have the next chapter in her story with Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Shadow of Kyoshi—also by F.C. Yee. Her place as the Avatar is sturdy, but now Kyoshi is on her own. She has to protect the Four Nations from a threat emerging from the Spirit World.
Yee related to Nerdist how Kyoshi first came into his life and how he developed the character. He worked with Michael Dante DiMartino, the co-creator, executive producer, and story editor of the animated TV series on the book, too. Yee had the challenge of bringing the very visual language of bending the elements to the page, and he shared how he did so in the book. Read his thoughts below.
"Avatar quickly became one of my all-time favorite shows back when I first watched the series. Somewhere on an old lost hard drive, next to my expired Final Draft Pro license, lies my spec script for Avatar that I wrote while watching season two. While TV writing turned out not to be in the cards, the Avatar franchise stuck with me (as it’s done for so many people) even through the years where I was creatively fallow. My debut novel, The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, ended up being an action-adventure-comedy with Asian influences. That is no coincidence.
I wasn’t present for the origin of the Kyoshi novels. My publisher and Nickelodeon worked on a proposal for two books about Kyoshi before asking me if I was interested. I don’t know if Kyoshi came up because she was the next Avatar down the line that we knew very little about at the time, or because everyone involved with the proposal had exceptional taste, but there it was—a chance to write about my favorite “prequel” character for one of my favorite media franchises.
The show establishes characters and makes them iconic with such great economy. In a few short appearances, we learn Kyoshi is venerated, she is blunt and unbothered to a fault, and that she considers justice one of the highest goods. I worked on her character with those qualities as a destination and tried to figure out what changes to get there would be interesting to read about. That need for a character arc is very much the origin of her tragic backstory. Someone as hard as Kyoshi is as an adult probably went through some rough times when they were younger.
On panels I often talk about the difficulty of capturing the movement and energy of bending in prose but describing Kyoshi’s bending was a story challenge as well. In the show we see her perform some of the most spectacular in-universe feats. Someone that powerful is rarely going to be in personal narrative danger, plus we all know she lives the longest life in the entire setting. The way I approached her growth in power and tried to make it interesting is split out over the course of the two books. In Rise, she has to come to grips with her desire for strength. In Shadow, she has it in spades, but how is she going to end up using it?
The other factor I tried to apply to the books was the Avatar world being a living, breathing setting that will keep on going even when the protagonists are absent. The precedent is set in the opening credits of the show, and I think this is one of the things that has kept Avatar so relevant to its fans over time. In so many cases in fiction, it feels like the surroundings vanish when the main character isn’t there to observe them. The depth of Avatar’s world building and the structure of its plots renders that disappearing act impossible. If there’s anything I hope readers take away from the books, it’s that the same applies in our lives. Our world turns lack of action into a choice. It makes all of us relevant, whether we want it to or not."
Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Shadow of Kyoshi will be available on July 21. You can pre-order the book now.
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From ScreenRant:
Avatar: Kyoshi Did What Aang Refused To Do With Ozai
In the new Avatar prequel novel The Shadow of Kyoshi, the titular heroine is forced to do something that Aang would not on Avatar: The Last Airbender.
WARNING: Spoilers for The Shadow of Kyoshi
In the climactic battle of The Shadow of Kyoshi, the title character makes a decision to do something that Aang pulled himself back from in the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The second of F.C. Yee's Avatar prequel novels, following 2019's The Rise of Kyoshi, The Shadow of Kyoshi sees its heroine placed into many challenging and even emotionally difficult situations. However, the book's ending pushes her to make a bitter choice to save the day.
In Avatar's series finale, Aang finds himself confronted with the possibility of having to kill Fire Lord Ozai in order to end the Fire Nation's conquest of the world once and for all. With Aang having been brought up as a peaceful Southern Air Temple monk, the great value he places on all life leaves him in a deep philosophical and spiritual crisis. Though he comes close to slaying Ozai when they finally face-off, with Aang's past lives ready for him to do so while he is in the Avatar State, Aang ultimately pulls back and instead uses Energybending, an ability earlier granted to him by a Lion Turtle, to render Ozai incapable of Firebending.
Kyoshi faces a similar and arguably far more emotional dilemma in her final confrontation with Yun. Having emerged from the Spirit World with the power of Father Glowworm, Yun had previously been mistakenly identified as the new Avatar before it was correctly determined to be Kyoshi. With Yun now intent on wreaking bloody vengeance on the world after the cruel rejection he was subject to, Kyoshi and Rangi do their best to hold their own against Yun, with Rangi being stabbed in the back by Yun during the battle. As Kyoshi holds her in her arms, she mournfully apologizes for Yun's life being ruined when Kyoshi "stole your Avatarhood". This causes Yun to lower his guard and approach her, with Kyoshi also apologizing for telling him that he needed to be able to live with his pain, "Because you won't." Kyoshi then finally uses icebending to freeze Yun's heart and lungs, ending his rampage, and with it, his life.
The Shadow of Kyoshi's ending is a clear inversion of Aang sparing Ozai in Avatar's finale, and shows that unlike Aang, Kyoshi, however reluctantly, was willing to use lethal force as the Avatar. Of course, this doesn't place Aang on a pedestal or make Kyoshi into a lesser Avatar. Aang had the benefit of being able to remove Ozai's Firebending from him, an ability that Kyoshi lacked, while it is also clear that Yun was not only now powerful enough to stand his ground against the Avatar, but too consumed with rage to be reasoned with. Under the circumstances, Kyoshi simply had no other option.
Fortunately, Rangi is healed from the near-mortal wound that Yun had inflicted upon her, while Kyoshi pays her respects to Yun at his grave, heartbroken that she could not save him from himself. Ultimately, the ending of Avatar: The Last Airbender is given a dark mirror in The Shadow of Kyoshi. Despite doing everything in her power to pull Yun back from the abyss he'd fallen into, Kyoshi was forced to make the one choice that Aang could not bring himself to.
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From ComicBook:
Avatar Reveals a Major Difference Between Aang and Kyoshi in New Book
Netflix has helped in bringing back the hype when it comes to the likes of Avatar The Last Airbender and its sequel, the Legend of Korra, placing both series onto the streaming service, but one story you won't find on the platform is the current prequel novel known as the Shadow of Kyoshi, which is a novel that shows us the main difference between Aang and his predecessor in Kyoshi. Kyoshi was one of the earlier Avatars, having grown up in the world of the Earth Kingdom but clearly having a much bigger "killer instinct" than either Aang or Korra.
In the novel of Shadow of Kyoshi, the second book that follows the story of the Earth Kingdom Avatar, Kyoshi is attempting to battle against the threat of Yun, a bender who believes that the current Avatar had stolen the power that was rightfully his. Throughout the story, Kyoshi is left wondering what she should do, placed into a very similar situation as Aang was battling against the lord of the Fire Nation, Ozai, but unlike the young protagonist of the Nickelodeon series, the Earth Bender wasn't afraid to unleash her power in a terrifying way.
With Kyoshi making up her mind as to how to end the battle, she uses water bending to freeze Yun's lungs and heart, putting an end to his threat to the world at large. Unlike Aang who had decided to take Ozai's ability to bend and place him into prison for the rest of his life, Kyoshi had not mastered that ability and had instead decided to put an end to Yun permanently in a terrible way.
Kyoshi and Aang have met a number of times throughout the animated series of Avatar The Last Airbender, with the young protagonist normally visiting her spirit and asking her for advice on some of the major issues that were facing both himself and the world at large. When Aang was debating what to do about the Fire Lord Ozai, Kyoshi informed him that the "right choice" was to kill the head of the Fire Nation in order to save the world and put a stop to his reign of terror.
What do you think of the major difference between Aang and Kyoshi in the world of Avatar The Last Airbender? Feel free to let us know in the comments [...]!
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Originally published: Sunday, January 26, 2020.
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