Kyoshi Book 2 Review – The Shadow of Kyoshi

No spoilers for the first half. Major spoiler sections clearly marked.

Well, author F. C. Yee, you’ve done it again—thanks for another great book! In my Kyoshi Book 1 Review, I stated that ‘it was everything I didn’t know I wanted from a written version of the avatar series’, and that remained true for this gorgeous sequel.

Beautiful Bindings

I’m a collector of books, so the physical state of a book is often very important to me. Never as important as the text it contains, but I’m often on the search for limited editions, signatures, and boxsets.

With the release of The Shadow of Kyoshi, we now have a beautiful boxset. It’s uncommon for a box to be made for only two books, which to me suggests a great love for this particular series by the Avatar franchise.

Unfortunately, it also suggests that this is the end of the Kyoshi series. I don’t know whether this is true, but I seriously hope not. The box itself is gorgeous, with the prevailing colour palette being black, white, and red. Underneath the dustcovers, the first book sports a black cover with red binding, whilst its sequel switches those colours. Both are inlaid with a gorgeous metallic gold text.

These two books complement each other perfectly and its hard to imagine how a third book could worm its way into this completed design. It would have to sit outside the box. Or perhaps, if we’re lucky, Yee has at least enough ideas for Kyoshi to stretch to a second boxset with another duo of complementary books.

Of course, there’s also The Dawn of Yangchen, but I’ll save how beautifully wrapped that book is for when I review it later this year!

The Shadow of Kyoshi – An Alternate Blurb

As the title suggests, this is going to be a darker, grittier version of Kyoshi. We had the glorious rise of our protagonist into avatarhood, but this sequel seeks to bring her back down. In this book, Kyoshi will be forced to deal with the troubles from her past that follow her as closely as her own shadow, and just as dark and twisted.

Yun in The Shadow of Kyoshi – MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

So, let’s have a little walk-in sentence for those readers whose eyes can’t help but skim read, even though they know there are spoilers up ahead. OK, so Yun’s back and out for revenge. We all knew this would be coming from the end of The Rise of Kyoshi, but whether or not he would become a problem for Kyoshi was a looming question that book two avoids for a long time.

In the beginning of book two, Yun eludes Kyoshi’s best efforts. His persistent disappearance is a dagger through Kyoshi’s heart—he lives, but he hasn’t visited his closest friends. This is the first sign that something is deeply wrong. 

Unfortunately, we’re never returning to the awesome bisexual love triangle that Kyoshi, Rangi and Yun had going on. By book two, Yun is so utterly changed that any hope of rekindling that fire is extinguished. We see some explanation for his descent into madness, but I would argue that there wasn’t nearly enough of it, and that’s a running theme with this book.

Perhaps Yun’s attacks wouldn’t have been quite so terrifying had we learnt more about his journey into villainy. Perhaps we’d have been filled with pity, instead of confusion like Kyoshi. In this way, we get to feel a slice of our protagonist’s internal struggle.

However, unlike Kyoshi, the reader can see more, and we do see a little. The flashback to Yun’s victory over Father Glowworm is awfully well-written, as is his distress when parched and dying, a bunch of snooty villagers deny him a sip of water.

However, this final flashback is one short story pitted against book one’s many examples of Yun’s bravery, courage, and desire to do good. As such, I find his new villainy difficult to believe. I understand what Yee is going for—the reader is supposed to see that Yun has been pushed beyond his limits, that something about his most recent fight in the spirit world broke him irreparably, perhaps broke him spiritually, and left him vulnerable to despair when the lowly villagers denied him.

I can only imagine that the narrative with the villagers repeated itself multiple times during Yun’s disappearance to keep him trapped in his depression, but it’s a shame that I have to imagine that. Yun is fabulous character and his effect on Kyoshi, Rangi and Hei-ran is electric, so I find it quite disappointing that we didn’t get more time with him. I could easily have read more.

Delving into the Past of Avatar Kuruk

Unlike Yun, we see and hear a lot about Avatar Kuruk to help us reverse our opinions of him as instigated by book one. In The Rise of Kyoshi, Kuruk is painted as lazy, epicurean, and utterly ill-fitted to avatarhood.

The sequel unravels these assumptions, vision by vision. I think it’s successful, but it makes me wish that a similar level of attention had been paid to the reverse. Yee is great at building greatness from nothing, but pays less attention to turning brilliant characters into believable villains.

Zoryu’s Turn

Kyoshi and Rangi, usually so reserved in their friendships, easily take to Zoryu during their meetings. For most of the book, Zoryu appears as a shy and struggling emperor—which makes it incredibly hard to understand what changed in him to sentence an innocent man to death to protect the rulership he claimed not to crave.

If there were clues that he was lying to Kyoshi and Rangi, I missed them. His situation was dire from the start, so I’m shocked that he waited until the final moment to show his ‘true colours’. For a long time after his switch to villainy, I believed that Chaejin had actually shaved his moustache and was impersonating his brother, switching their positions and condemning Zoryu to death. I considered that maybe Chaejin believed his only path to survival with Kyoshi around, was by becoming his brother.

Eventually, I realised that had never been the case, but I think that my willingness to favour this farfetched idea shows how poorly Zoryu’s character flip was orchestrated. Worse than Yun who has suffered unspeakable evils at the hands of Jianzhu and poverty, Zoryu’s betrayal is simply unbelievable.

What I Liked Best About The Shadow of Kyoshi

Despite all my complaints, I did of course still love the book. I got anxious over Hei-ran’s survival and loved every moment of Rangi and Kyoshi’s relationship. Rangi had so many death flags, but I’m so glad that she survived. I love these two together.

I feel like Zoryu’s epilogue isn’t hinting towards another Kyoshi book, but rather a solemn nod towards the chain of events that lead to the tragedy of Aang’s era, which was a bittersweet reference.

Lastly, I was so happy to see that Kyoshi finally reached Yangchen, and I desperately want more adventures from Kyoshi and Rangi.

To Summarise… END OF MAJOR SPOILERS

The Shadow of Kyoshi had more problems than its predecessor. I enjoyed it less, but only marginally so. I think that it is easier to write a book about beginnings, and harder to keep the pace going once the character has come into their powers and found confidence from it.

That said, I think that this book met most of my rather high expectations. I’d definitely recommend these books to anyone hungry for more from the Avatar universe, and I’m certainly looking forward to reading The Dawn of Yangchen.