Book Review: The Shadow of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee

Published: July 21, 2020
Publisher: Amulet Books
Received: purchased
Read from February 11 to June 4, 2022

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

Review:

The Shadow of Kyoshi is the sequel to The Rise of Kyoshi, the second novel about Avatar Kyoshi. Unless something changes, I also think it's the last. Interestingly, even though the books are a duology, the story itself feels more like its own thing than a direct continuation of the story from the first book.

It's definitely not a standalone. There are a lot of aspects of the plot that would be incredibly confusing if you hadn't read The Rise of Kyoshi, but while the plot is connected to what happened in the last book, the villain and a lot of Kyoshi's biggest challenges have changed.

In this book, Yun becomes the villain of the story after unexpectedly appearing at the end of the last novel. I have complicated feelings about Yun as a character. It feels like we didn't get to know him all that much in the first novel, so I didn't feel the sense of former fondness for him that Kyoshi did. I really just found him annoying in the last novel, so his switch to being a villain didn't bother me all that much.

Another way this book felt quite different from the last one is that Kyoshi has different companions except for Rangi. We don't see much of the Flying Opera Company this time around, which was a huge shame. While I enjoyed many of the new characters we got to meet, especially Jinpa, I have to admit that I missed the characters from the last book quite a bit and would have appreciated seeing more of them.

I'm not sure if Zoryu counts as an Avatar companion exactly, but he's another new character in this book who Kyoshi tries to work with, so it feels like he counts at least a little bit. And he's by far the character that I have the most complicated feelings about.

At first, I liked him, and I was excited about the possibility of him and Kyoshi becoming friends. So it was disappointing that my feelings towards him had soured towards the end of the book. I won't get into all the details of why in order to avoid big spoilers, but I was disappointed in his decisions. Honestly, I found the way his story went hard to believe. I feel like such a character change could have been explained, but it wasn't really in the story we got.

With that being said, I liked how the change in Kyoshi's companions was paralleled with Kuruk as we learn about more of his former companions in this book. We also learn some interesting tidbits about Yangchen.

Overall, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed the first one, though there were certain parts I liked, particularly Kyoshi and Rangi's relationship. If there was going to be a third Kyoshi book,  I would still happily read it. While it doesn't seem like there's going to be, there is going to be a Yangchen book released this year, and after the things we learn about Yangchen in The Shadow of Kyoshi, I am looking forward to that at least.