No Spoilers for the first half. Major spoiler sections clearly marked in subtitles.
The Dawn of Yangchen was published in 2022, with its sequel, The Legacy of Yangchen, set to appear in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, my country won’t see the sequel hitting the shelves until August! What a travesty!
Sadly, I didn’t find The Dawn of Yangchen to be on par with F.C. Yee’s previous additions to the Avatar franchise—namely the Avatar Kyoshi Duology—and I’m really hoping that Yangchen book 2 will turn things around.
Key Elements of ‘The Dawn of Yangchen’
Yangchen is more about intrigue and spies than her predecessor in publishing, Kyoshi. It’s a book filled with disguises, lies, and subsequently a lot of trust issues. Its characters thieve around each other, never knowing when their partners will turn around to reveal their true intentions.
Unlike Kyoshi, Yangchen is a fully fledged avatar at the start of the main plot. She might be a sweet seventeen years old, but Yangchen grew up with full avatar training and is more deadly than she is beautiful. This book skips the clumsiness of an underdog coming to power through magical means, and instead jumps straight into the complexities of the Avatar universe’s magic system.
Essentially, while I would say that the Kyoshi duology makes a fine entry point into the Avatar universe, Yangchen requires its readers to have a bit more knowledge of how its society and magic works.
The Cast of ‘The Dawn of Yangchen’
Where Kyoshi studied the tricky difficulties of managing intimate friendships between three people, Yangchen is very reclusive. Like Kyoshi, Yangchen finds trust and connection difficult, but unlike Kyoshi, Yangchen doesn’t crave companionship. Where Kyoshi looks forwards into the future of her relationships, Yangchen looks backwards with longing and fear.
Almost begrudgingly, Yangchen chooses a companion whose story shapes the book at least as much as her own, if not more… which was a problem for me.
These books are sold as being about the mysterious avatars that govern their worlds, but Yangchen book 1 seems more concerned with the tale of Kavik, a lowly waterbender spy. Yangchen through Kavik’s eyes is a sight to behold, but by the end of the book, I was definitely more concerned with Kavik’s character arc than Yangchen’s, and in this way, I feel like the book was missold a little.
At least Kavik appears on the cover of book 2.
Yangchen is extremely interesting, and there simply isn’t enough of her in this book. I’m really hoping this will be rectified in the sequel.
Aside from these two, we have a few other side characters, but none shine as brightly as Kyoshi’s team avatar.
Talk About the Book – MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Aside from there being simply not enough Yangchen in this book, there were two other aspects that let this one down for me. The first is an awkward ending, and the second regards Yangchen’s unique mental struggles.
Yangchen doesn’t always choose to see into the lives of previous avatars. She’s haunted by their ghosts and works hard to maintain her sense of self amongst them.
This aspect of her character came up in the plot a couple of times, but never at a crucial moment. We were shown that she struggles, but we weren’t shown the consequences of a true breakdown, or how others from her world would perceive that. Instead, the bulk of this narrative is presumably going to be held until the sequel.
Which is fine, it’s just unfortunate that it was dangled in front of me for a whole book and very little happened with it.
Lastly, the ending. It just wasn’t very satisfying. Yangchen harshly judges Kavik for putting faith in his brother instead of her, but she also considers abandoning her avatarhood (and thus the rest of the world) to search for her sister’s soul in the spirit world. It’s a contradiction that goes unannounced.
Subsequently, the ending wrenches Kavik’s narrative away from Yangchen’s. These are the only two that made any real connection across the story, and to have it broken by the end was really very unsatisfying. Considering that Kavik was more of a main character than she was, I can only assume that ‘The Legacy of Yangchen’ is going to awkwardly finagle them back together at the start.
So, in some ways, their final separation feels a little meaningless.
Oh dear.
The best part of the book for me was easily the beginning, which showed us Yangchen’s struggles with her past lives and had a great bending showpiece as Kavik breaks into the Blue Manse. The rest of the book had no particular stand-out moments, although I did enjoy Yangchen’s various disguises and the brief hints that she was trying to stop herself from fancying Kavik. I hope there are more parts like this in the sequel!
Summary
This wasn’t a bad book, but it didn’t live up to the extremely high expectations I had from reading the Kyoshi duology. I’m still very excited for The Legacy of Yangchen, and this time I hope we actually get to see some more of the titular avatar!
See you in autumn 2023 with more F.C. Yee content!
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