3.5 ⭐️
At first I didn’t care for this book, but it really grew on me. Or rather the characters grew on me. The plot was only there to move the characters along but I was okay with that. I really liked the characters I thought they were fun and heartwarming. I especially liked Gyatso and Malaya. It is super fun to see a young Gyatso be a goofy pacifistic kid like Aang used to be. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree there. Even Gyatso and Malaya together reminded me a lot of early Kataang.

It is ballsy to kill off a major POV character in a YA novel. I felt some genuine shock and sadness at Malaya’s death. I knew Sozin was already a shitty person but I was not expecting that from him so soon! Sozin is written to be a real douchebag and I like that. At first by describing the Fire Lord to be a controlling and demanding father (like every Fire Lord apparently), I thought they were going to try and make Sozin relatable or sympathetic but I’m glad that Ribay went the route that they did. Sozin is a genocidal maniac who only cares about gaining power for himself and they demonstrated that very well. However, I did like that Sozin still hesitated when killing innocent people—or at least felt guilty afterword (He’s only 16 after all). I am really impressed with how well rounded Sozin was written. I feel that is probably one of the hardest characters in Avatar to make a main POV character in a story and Ribay managed to pull it off.

I think Roku is probably the weakest character out of all of the cast which is unfortunate. The Yangchen novels suffered from the same problem. It is hard to write established characters in prequel novels and still make the story impactful and show meaningful character growth. I was hoping Roku would be easier since we know almost nothing about him, however he falls into the same boat of being a weak, boring, protagonist. Give me a hundred books about characters like Malaya in Avatar. Non-world-saving people who get caught up in interesting situations. It gives so much more wiggle room when writing a prequel story because the ramifications of the story are infinitesimally small when compared to the effect the Avatar has on the future. Roku’s mistake allowed the genocide of almost an entire race of people, no mistake Malaya could ever make would cause a problem that large.

I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and I am excited to see what the next Roku book has in store. Hopefully a better written Roku and a wider scope. I enjoyed that the story was small, but I want to see more cold war tensions between nations. That is what the Roku era is all about.

I'm torn. I really enjoyed this overall, but at the end of it I find myself asking- why? My biggest issue with any of this is that it all happens on a secluded island we have never heard about before, and it introduces this also never heard before spirit that gives benders incredible strength. It's like they feel like they always have to introduce something new bending-wise in these stories instead of focusing on a well-crafted plot.