The second prequel novel to Avatar: The Last Airbender further explores the life of Avatar Kyoshi, as the master of all four elements grows into her own to become the titanic legend known in the original series. Its predecessor The Rise of Kyoshi took the franchise in refreshing and unexplored directions, but the more details that come out about The Shadow of Kyoshi, the clearer it is this is an Avatar fans have never seen before.
The advance chapter already available to readers picks up around two years after the previous novel finished. The Rise of Kyoshi showed the 16 year old earthbender discover her destiny as the Avatar and undergoing a journey toward her future mastery of the elements. Its sequel hits the ground running with a confident Kyoshi ready to kick keister. The Avatar undertakes a mission to hunt down the bandit hordes known as daofei harrassing the Earth Kingdom, and at the close of the advance chapter prepared to take on a small army of them single-handed.
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The fans that Kyoshi wields were revealed in the previous novel to be the weapons of her mother, an airbender who saw her powers decrease over time as the moral conflicts of her career as a bandit interfered with the spirituality of the bending art. Kyoshi's mother used the fans to enhance her airbending, but since Kyoshi's original problem as an earthbender was not a lack of power but a lack of precision, Kyoshi learned to use the fans to focus on the smallest cracks and pebbles. By The Shadow of Kyoshi, she has apparently mastered them so well she needs only a single fan to take on an army, and thinks using the second would be overkill.
In general, the Avatar shows far more confidence in her role at the sequel novel's start, far closer to her depiction in the original TV series. Kyoshi's reputation was one of firm and self-assured justice, with her legacy involving her killing Chin the Conquerer for the good of the Earth Kingdom. Kyoshi learned such brutal tactics from her former mentor-turned-foe Jianzhu, the earthbending master from The Rise of Kyoshi whose tactical manuals Kyoshi has apparently been studying. She uses these tactics to plow through several floors of a building and funnel the army into a single tactically-advisable position.
The end result here seems to be a trend toward violence and mature context that the televised Avatar franchise always needed to tiptoe around. While Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra grappled with mature themes in ways critically lauded even today, censors and network executives placed confines for them to work within. Moments like Jet's death or Korra and Asami's final moments before entering the Spirit World together were all perfectly understated, but they didn't need to be as understated as they were.
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For the novels, the restraints are off. This was already clear in The Rise of Kyoshi, when the villain Jianzhu firmly establishes the threat he poses by violently killing those who oppose him. The earthbender launches shards of stone through bodies like bullets, and even took out an entire band of archers by sprouting spikes from the earth around them. In addition, the same-sex relationship between Kyoshi and her companion Rangi is more explicitly portrayed than Korra and Asami's was ever allowed to be on screen.
Everything known about the sequel novel seems to crank those mature themes up even higher all while respecting the taste and aesthetic of its franchise. With the novel focusing on Kyoshi's quest for vengeance and justice, there's no doubt she will mete out both violently. For as beautiful and meaningful as much of that will be, there's a raw coolness to it that can't be denied. This is an Avatar completely unrestrained, offering fans a chance to really see what the most powerful bender in the world can do. There's a reason Kyoshi casts such a long shadow, and fans are about to see it.
The Shadow of Kyoshi, by author F. C. Yee, is the sequel to Yee's previous novel The Rise of Kyoshi. It will be released on July 21 and is currently available for pre-order.