Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Dawn of Yangchen
(The Yangchen Novels #1)
by
F.C. Yee
Though it was 3rd in the release order, this is the first of the Avatar Yangchen novels in the Avatar: TLA franchise, as part of their extension of the world through different mediums. But the first two were a pair and this one is the first of a pair of its own, so I was fine starting here.
This first novel follows a preceding Air-bending Avatar named Yangchen . She is, like Aang, an air nomad and monk, but a very different kind of person in many ways – something that has been a strength of the franchise such that each Avatar is essentially meant to be the same spiritual being being reincarnated over and over, but each incarnation is a distinctive personality and nature, even the ones who come from the same nation.
To be clear at the outset, there are no crazy bending-battles or such throughout the novel. This story does contain its fair share of elemental manipulation, and some genuinely creative ones in fact that I think will come back in some place or the other in the various Avatar Studios projects – BUT the focus here is more on an Avatar who is dealing with courtly intrigues, political power-games and espionage and spy-craft.
We see brief flashes of the youth of Yangchen and her joys but also her struggles with being the Avatar, more so because she seems to struggle in a way her predecessors did not (as far as we know) with the voices and presences of her past lives within her. She is also a relatively young Avatar at this stage, just about coming into her own and trying to make her way as a simple monk who is also the spiritual leader of the whole world BUT also has to learn to navigate amidst the Kings and other powers-that-be who actually run the world and not getting caught in the games, politics and dirtiness that usually exists below the surface.
Her journey to the independant city of Bin-Er brings her into contact with the very same aforementioned game-playing under the surface, as well as a young water-bender named Kavik. Her new acquaintance is a “runner” in Bin-Er, a city that is one of a series of neutral ones created after a minor war called The Platinum Affair that erupted between the 4 nations – places where trade and the like can take place despite closed off borders. These cities of course, are run by their own respective cabals and warlord-like individuals and are notoriously corrupt and chaotic places to live – places of refuge for those with no other avenue and also places of great opportunity for those with the will to take it; not unlike places in our own world in the past and even now, they are akin to socio-economic gristmills. It is into this world that the youthful Yangchen finds herself thrust and she must not only learn to keep mastery over herself, but do so while navigating the vast webs and pitfalls of this ecosystem of powers and pawns.
We follow the characters of Kavik and Yangchen as our main eyes into the goings-on and to the credit of writer F.C. Yee, both of them as well as much of the varied supporting cast members, all feel distinct and with some measure of interesting contained within. One of the strenghts of this franchise has in my view, always been their strong character work and varied personalities at every level of character and that is definitely a strength of this book. We get to see this young Avatar struggle to find her feet and her place not just in the world, but in the pantheon of her illustrious predecessors. Most interesting in this book for me was the journey she was as a person here and the way it pays off as she evolves with the events of the story.
As regards the narrative, I found it surprisingly layered and complex, while never entering any over-complicated territory. The author does a commendable job keeping up an engaging and interesting air of mystery and intrigue, while not falling into the pit-fall of needing to forcibly keep me on the edge of my seat with constantly shoving mystery boxes and needless twists into my face – story-telling tools that I see far too often these days and if I’m honest, it bothers me. The mystery here serves a purpose and the reveals come gradually and even unexpected ones pop up, all making for an interestingly unfolding adventure.
Yangchen started off as an amusing character who I wasn’t totally on-board with as my lead, but she very easily grew on me and by the end I could see her grow more and more into her role as Avatar. Kavik was a decent character who had a decent enough arc, though he wasn’t the most interesting character, in fact many supporting characters seemed more potentially interesting than him – I hope his return in the second book evolves him a bit. Chaisee however, deserves special mention – as the leader of another independant city (Jonduri being its name) is probably the most interesting new character introduced through this story and she epitomises even in her brief appearance that a story is in many ways only as good as the villains; her I want more of in future book(s)!
The weaknesses in the book came out more in terms of it being perhaps a bit rushed.
It is a tricky balance because on the one hand, the book had a brisk clip to it when I sat down to read it in chunks; but on the other hand, there was many things that could have benefited from a little more breathing room – some relationships, some characters, some sequences of events – because in their current form there felt like a bit of leap-frogging that doesn’t spoil the story, but made me wish it could have been done a bit differently. Now whether this was the authors choice, editorials choice or just a limitation of page-count or something, I don’t know – but it was the one main weakness here.
Minor Spoiler In This Next Para!!
The other part was the choice of what the big danger/challenge was at the end – the threat called Unanimity. The concept of the explosive, artillery like fire-bending was very cool and was reminiscent (kind of) of Sparky Sparky Boom Man from the original series. It was like a version of what he did, but not the same and who knows, maybe it will be better explained and/or end up with an interesting part to play in further installments, but honestly it was something that felt cool but not all that interesting; it was too huge a thing to have existed generations before the animates series’s and yet nothing like it exists in the world in them.
Maybe they’ll write it out, but it seemed MacGuffin-esque and a bit of an easy way out. THAT SAID: The way Yangchen deals with Unanimity is pretty damn awesome!
Overall, the strong outweighed the weak by a solid margin in this book and it felt like a deserving entry into this world that is beloved by many (myself among them) and it did a solid job of being both something that fit the world and did it justice but embraced the generational aspect of the franchise and tried to do its own thing.
I have a feeling that the second book will be better now that a lot of stuff will be in place with this book.
One Happy Monk 
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