Kyoshi stood her ground. “Give me the Avatar,” she repeated. “Or I will put you down like the beast you are.”
— Kyoshi believes someone else is the Avatar in the first excerpt from The Rise of Kyoshi
We have our first excerpt from The Rise of Kyoshi, the upcoming original novel featuring, as the title suggests, the rise of the Earth Kingdom Avatar before Korra, Aang, and Roku, from a young girl to the fearsome legend we came to know.
We learn a LOT of really interesting new things here.
First of all, there’s this description from Mike (who is not the writer of the book, that would be F.C. Yee):
“In The Rise of Kyoshi, we meet a young woman so unlike the legend she is to become that we wonder how she could possibly transform into such a remarkable figure. She’s not a great Earthbender. People don’t even believe she’s the Avatar at the start of the book—a great conceit on Yee’s behalf, and one that provides the crux of the conflict for the entire novel. Entrusting another writer with a world and characters that I helped create is always fraught with anxiety for me. But when I read The Rise of Kyoshi for the first time, I was immediately drawn into the story and entranced by its intriguing new characters and backstory.”
The excerpt itself is also really really cool. It’s from Chapter Seven: The Iceberg. It’s very action-focused (lots of bending!) but there are lots of little things sprinkled throughout that immediately draw attention, for example:
Kyoshi keeps referring to a male character named Yun as the Avatar! Given this, and Mike saying she starts not even very good at earthbending, this would suggest it’s before she’s found to be the Avatar. But someone else has somehow already claimed the title…
It takes place in an icy sea, so probably near either the Northern or Southern Water Tribe.
The antagonists at this point of the book are the sword-wielding, waterbending pirate queen Tagaka and her multinational band of pirates called the Fifth Nation? I think??? We need context!!!
It feels notable that there’s some violence in this beyond what we’ve seen in the shows. Kyoshi breaks a guy’s face, and there’s a lot of mentions of blood throughout the battle. This is of course realistic, and something the shows, both technically rated Y7, could never have. Cool!
We also meet what might be Kyoshi’s Team Avatar! Sort of… I guess it depends on how this fake Avatar thing plays out.
Yun, their young leader who everyone thinks is the Avatar. In the excerpt, he only displays earthbending.
Kyoshi herself of course. At this point she’s only an earthbender, and is also young although we don’t know what age. (In ATLA and TLOK the members of Team Avatar’s ages ranged from 12 to 18 so it’s safe to assume it’s around this as well here for Kyoshi and her other young companions).
An airbender named Kelsang and his flying bison, Pengpeng. Remember, this is long before the Air Nomad genocide, so it’ll be really cool to see them at the height of their numbers!
Rangi and her mother Hei-Ran, both firebenders.
Jianzhu, an earthbender with a unique fighting style.
There’s also mentions of Kyoshi’s “Auntie Mui” and a “Master Amak”. This Mui and the fact that Kyoshi was impoverished at age 7 are the only things we learn about her origins in the excerpt. Master Amak, meanwhile, comes up in a VERY interesting moment… read for yourself to see!
The Rise of Kyoshi is 448 pages and hits shelves on July 16th!
(One last thing, the artwork above is just a quick mockup for fun. In the actual excerpt, she’s younger, probably not wearing that uniform and makeup yet, and not in a populated area. Ok moving on!)
And now, here’s the full excerpt:
The moments seemed to slowly stack up on each other like a tower of raw stones, each event in sequence piling higher and higher with no mortar to hold them together. A structure that was unstable, dreadful, headed toward a total and imminent collapse.
The sudden movement of Tagaka’s two escorts drew everyone’s attention. But the two men only grabbed the Earth Kingdom woman by the arms and jumped back down the slope the way they’d come, dodging the blast of fire that Rangi managed to get off. They were the distraction.
Pairs of hands burst from the surface of the ice, clutching at the ankles of everyone on Yun’s side. Waterbenders had been lying in wait below them the whole time. Rangi, Jianzhu, and Hei-Ran were dragged under the ice like they’d fallen through the crust of a frozen lake during the spring melt.
Kyoshi’s arms shot out, and she managed to arrest herself chest-high on the surface. Her would-be captor hadn’t made her tunnel large enough. Kelsang leaped into the air, avoiding the clutches of his underground assailant with an Airbender’s reflexes, and deployed the wings of his glider-staff.
Tagaka drew her jian and swung it on the downstroke at Yun’s neck. But the Avatar didn’t flinch. Almost too fast for Kyoshi to see, he slammed his fist into the only source of earth near them, the stone inkslab. It shattered into fragments and reformed as a glove around his hand. He caught Tagaka’s blade as it made contact with his skin.
Kyoshi stamped down hard with her boot and felt a sickening crunch. Her foot stuck there as the bender whose face she’d broken refroze the water, imprisoning her lower half. Above the ice, Kyoshi had the perfect view of the Avatar and the pirate queen locked together in mortal knot.
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