Avatar Volume 1

The first installment in a two-book series, the novel is set in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, where certain people called "benders" can manipulate one of four elements: earth, water, fire, or air. The Avatar, a single person reincarnated across generations, is the only being capable of bending all four elements and is charged with maintaining balance among the Four Nations: the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Water Tribes, and Air Nomads.

Seven years after the death of Avatar Kuruk at thirty-three, the search for his Earth Kingdom successor has stalled. Jianzhu, a powerful earthbending sage and one of Kuruk's former companions, teams with Kelsang, an Airbender monk, to try the Air Nomad method of identification in the isolated village of Yokoya Port. Children are presented with an array of toys, four of which are ancient Avatar relics; the child who selects all four is the Avatar reborn. The test yields no results, but a malnourished orphan girl named Kyoshi snatches one true relic, a clay turtle, and flees. Kelsang, moved by her poverty, lets her keep it.

Nine years later, Kyoshi works as a servant in the mansion Jianzhu built in Yokoya to house the Avatar, a charismatic boy named Yun. Jianzhu identified Yun through an unconventional method: Yun had been found hustling tourists at Pai Sho, a strategy game, randomly drawing tiles yet executing secret strategies known only to Kuruk. Kyoshi's life revolves around Yun and two close companions: Rangi, a fierce Firebender who serves as Yun's bodyguard, and Kelsang, who has looked after Kyoshi since she was young.

During a lighthearted poetry game, Kyoshi improvises a song that precisely matches a secret love poem Kuruk once wrote. Kelsang, recognizing the impossible coincidence, confides a troubling possibility: Kyoshi, not Yun, may be the Avatar. He reveals that Yun's identification had no historical precedent and that Yun has been unable to firebend, raising further doubts about his identity. Kyoshi begs Kelsang to keep silent while they gather evidence.

Yun asks Kyoshi to accompany him on a diplomatic mission to sign a treaty with Tagaka, the pirate queen of the Fifth Nation, a seaborne outlaw fleet. The delegation travels by flying bison to an iceberg near the South Pole. During a tense dinner, Tagaka reveals the violent pasts of Yun's mentors, including Jianzhu's burial of thousands of rebels alive, Kelsang's destruction of a pirate fleet with a summoned storm, and the lethal dueling record of Hei-Ran, Rangi's mother and Yun's firebending master. The treaty signing becomes an ambush. Tagaka's hidden Waterbenders drag Jianzhu, Hei-Ran, and Rangi beneath the ice and freeze Yun solid. In desperation, Kyoshi earthbends massive columns of stone from the ocean floor, destroying Tagaka's hidden warships, a feat far beyond any normal Earthbender. Jianzhu uses the stone to demolish the remaining ships, and together the group defeats Tagaka. Kyoshi collapses and remains unconscious for three days.

When she wakes, Rangi and Yun have learned from Kelsang about the secret and feel betrayed. To settle the question of identity, Jianzhu takes both Kyoshi and Yun to an abandoned mining settlement, where he summons Father Glowworm, a malevolent spirit. The spirit demands blood and, after tasting both children, declares Kyoshi the Avatar. Jianzhu pulls Kyoshi to safety but abandons Yun to the enraged spirit, sealing the tunnel with stone. Kyoshi screams fire from her mouth, confirming her identity, and attacks Jianzhu. He overpowers her completely.

Kelsang arrives on his glider, wounds reopened from the pirate battle, and positions himself between Kyoshi and Jianzhu. When Kelsang attacks, Jianzhu launches a razor of flint that slices the Airbender's neck. Kelsang dies. Kyoshi enters an uncontrolled Avatar State, an overwhelming power-trance that channels the energy of all past Avatars, devastating the mountainside. She regains consciousness to find Kelsang's body obliterated by her uncontrolled power and flees on Pengpeng, her flying bison.

Back in Yokoya, Kyoshi breaks open a trunk inherited from her parents and finds two ornate metal war fans, a headdress, and a makeup kit belonging to her mother, a disgraced Air Nomad turned outlaw. Rangi refuses to let Kyoshi leave alone and joins her.

As they flee, Kyoshi reveals a lifelong secret: Her parents, Jesa and Hark, were daofei, outlaws who follow their own codes outside the law, and they abandoned her in Yokoya as a small child. Using coded phrases from her mother's journal, Kyoshi gains entry to a hideout and meets the remnants of her parents' gang, the Flying Opera Company: Lek, a young Earthbender; Kirima, a Waterbender; Wong, a massive Earthbender; and Lao Ge, an eccentric old man. Kyoshi learns her parents died of fever three years ago. The gang agrees to teach Kyoshi bending in exchange for use of the bison.

Kyoshi swears daofei oaths, trading her legal standing for instruction. Wong teaches fan combat, which allows her to earthbend with precision for the first time. Rangi teaches firebending, and Kirima offers waterbending lessons. Privately, Kyoshi identifies Lao Ge as Tieguai the Immortal, a legendary assassin rumored to be centuries old, and asks him to teach her to kill.

The gang travels to Hujiang, a hidden daofei settlement controlled by the Autumn Bloom Society. Its leader, Mok, assigns them to raid Governor Te's palace to free a prisoner. By a lake outside Hujiang, Rangi tells Kyoshi she deserves happiness as herself, not just as the Avatar. Kyoshi kisses her. After revealing her Avatar identity to the gang, Kyoshi leads the raid. She plows a trench around the compound to prevent Mok's forces from slaughtering the household, then floods the fortifications to disarm guards without killing them. When Lao Ge leads her to Te's vault, she discovers Te is a fifteen-year-old boy and refuses to kill him, blasting Lao Ge away with airbending, her first conscious use of that element.

The freed prisoner reveals himself as Xu Ping An, leader of the Yellow Necks, the same rebellion Jianzhu crushed years ago. Kyoshi challenges Xu to single combat to protect the nearby village of Zigan. Xu strikes her with lightning, but her chainmail absorbs enough to keep her alive. She enters a controlled Avatar State, rises on a vortex of wind and fire, and when Xu refuses to yield, lets him fall to his death.

While Kyoshi recovers, Jianzhu's agents poison Kyoshi, Rangi, and Lek with darts. Rangi is abducted, and Lek dies from an allergic reaction. Jianzhu summons Kyoshi to Qinchao Village, sending Rangi's severed topknot, an act of profound dishonor in Fire Nation culture, as a threat.

In a Qinchao teahouse, Kyoshi and Jianzhu lock in a bending deadlock. Yun appears, alive but deeply changed, radiating an unsettling wrongness. He drives a stone through Jianzhu's chest, killing him, then destabilizes the building and vanishes. Kyoshi holds the structure together until every civilian escapes. The rest of the Flying Opera Company rescues Rangi and the comatose Hei-Ran from Jianzhu's mansion. Hei-Ran fell into a coma after Jianzhu poisoned a gathering of rival sages at his own estate.

Kyoshi travels to the Southern Air Temple, where she proves her identity by summoning a dual-element vortex of fire and air. Jianzhu's sealed will names Kyoshi as his sole heir and confesses his misidentification of the Avatar, lending her posthumous legitimacy while casting suspicion that she killed him for his wealth. Kyoshi requests that Kelsang's name be restored to full honor at the temple. While meditating by a reflective pool, she is visited by the spirit of Avatar Kuruk, who pleads for her help. The story continues in the sequel.