The Rise of Kyoshi Review

 

Calling all Avatar fans!

The Rise of Kyoshi by FC Yee and Michael DiMartino (Michael is one of the creators of the original Avatar TV show) is the story of Avatar Kyoshi (one of the avatars before Aang from the TV show), how she mastered all four elements, and her rise to fame. 

Kyoshi was abandoned by her parents at a young age and found by Kelsang, a high-ranking Air Nomad, who gave her work as a servant of Yun, the alleged new Avatar. She becomes good friends with Yun and the daughter of his firebending teacher, a girl around her age named Rangi. But one day when trying to deal with a couple of pirates and it gets intense, Kyoshi accidentally discovers she is the actually the next Avatar, not Yun. It puts a strain on their friendship, and Jianzhu, the Earth Sage in charge of Yun, commits the unthinkable. Kyoshi's life is no longer the same, and she and Rangi run away to try to find the the group of daofei (outlaws) that her birth parents used to be the leaders of. Kyoshi decides that they will be her new bending masters, and she will acquire enough skills to get revenge on Jianzhu. 

Well, from there the story develops more into more threads and takes more twists and turns. As we have learned from the original Avatar TV series, being the Avatar is not an easy task. While being considered the bridge between the two worlds, the Avatar is ultimately a human with their own problems. They are not perfect, but they always save the world at the end of the day. 

I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this! If you liked the original Avatar show and want to see more, check this out! I can't want to read the sequel, The Shadow of Kyoshi, and about the other Avatars. And if you've been here for a while you'd know I'd been reading the comics that take place right after the original show.

But I did give this book 4 stars. That was because it took me a while to figure out who was each character, as it was a completely different cast. The book for some reason doesn't always explain right away who each character is when they first appear, so I constantly had to consult the official Avatar wiki. That was an odd writing choice. But other than that, great story!