Name: Untitled Abrams YA Fantasy
ISBN: 9781419756771

Abrams

Untitled Abrams YA Fantasy

britt

yangchan really said gaslight gatekeep girlboss and i’m not even mad. 

it was so refreshing to see a main character like this and even more refreshing to see an avatar like this. aang and korra were so focused externally as characters, so to see an overthinker like yangchan was fascinating. 

also i think this book did a very good job of balancing how atla was a children’s show, but still took on many dark topics. 

anyways, i cannot wait for the sequel!!!

listen I love my stupid earnest buff girls (kyoshi, korra) but i LOVE my perfectionist hypercompetents who take failures too personally. This was definitely almost more Kavik's story than Yangchen's; I do wish we'd gotten more of her, but I kind of liked seeing her from an outsider's perspective to some extent. 

i've also discovered i love when an IP borrows trappings of a different genre to explore another side of the world and this was definitely the most spy intrigue political thriller avatar has ever been. It's definitely a big departure from the tone of the established avatar world and you have to accept that it's not a solely yangchen story despite the title, but I was all in. I liked how we also got to explore more on immigration and diaspora within the four nations, and I loved getting the origin of one of the show's biggest bending mysteries AND more dabblings in some cool sects from the established world. Seems to be an unpopular opinion but I really enjoyed this. It helps that urban Asian fantasy aesthetics tend to resonate a lot with me.