Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Legacy of Yangchen by F.C. Yee

2 reviews

kappafrog's review against another edition

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3.75

Like the first book, Yangchen was great in this. I love what Yee has done with her character. This book felt more balanced between Kavik and Yangchen - I wasn't as annoyed when the POV switched to him. I also enjoyed the greater variety in settings in this book. Bin-Er never gave me a lot of rich visuals, but Taku and the other settings in this book did. I do think this book struggled a bit more with the plot than the previous one though. There were more plot holes and contrivances. People were constantly sharing only partial truths, and the timeline kept jumping around, so between those two I ended up having a hard time keeping up with the reality of the situation. By the end of the book, I felt there were a few parts where I'd never quite understood who knew what and when. Yee tried to pack a LOT into this book, and some things felt pretty rushed. For example,
Kavik discovering Yangchen's abuse of the the Spirit Oasis drug was never brought up again, and not a lot of time was spent on Nujian's death.
Overall though, this was a rich episode in the Avatar world that I'm glad I spent some time in.
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twistedflower2357's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I really really loved this book and couldn't put it down. I'll try not to rehash things I said in my previous review for The Dawn of Yangchen, because I think The Legacy of Yangchen shares or exceeds everything I had to praise about its predecessor. Both Yangchen and Kavik are increased in their complexity, their characterization now even more intrinsically tied to the plot. The way FC Yee poises Chaisee and Kalyaan as Yangchen and Kavik's dark foils, respectively, allows us to really dig into the heart of our protagonists and what drives them. More than ever, Yangchen has to grapple with her humanity and the eternal psychological horror of being the Avatar, condemned to regret mistake after mistake after mistake. Her and Kavik have beautiful arcs and their relationship with each other is even more compelling than it was in the first book.

The worldbuilding is rich, the prose filled with clever in-universe koans, and the limits of bending possibilities are explored with clever, horrifying detail without feeling too permissive (it's easy to get caught up in questions like "can earthbenders bend glass" and "can airbenders bend the air from someone's lungs" without regarding the actual implications these abilities would have on the world). This time, I felt much more favorably towards FC Yee's apparent habit of withholding information from the audience until a later point and layering flashbacks during the finale to reveal information non-chronologically. The pacing flowed better and I enjoyed the feeling of having the rug pulled from under me.

The greatest issue I had with the book is perhaps the most spoiler-ific one.
It hurts my heart to say, but I didn't feel like we had enough time to sit with Nujian's death. The pace was so breakneck that it almost felt like a plotpoint left by the wayside, happening for no real reason other than to pile onto the cosmic horrors Yangchen must face as the Avatar. I just wish we could have explored Yangchen's grief across a longer timeframe; there are a few pages of the simply gut-wrenching immediate aftermath from her perspective, a single flashback later on, and little beyond that. Another small issue I had was with "Team Avatar"'s acceptance of Kavik in the end. The huddling scene itself was lovely, but I was disappointed that Jujinta, Tayagum, and Akuudan's forgiveness was given like a joke. I think this conflict was deserving of a serious resolution.
But these are, however, relatively minor problems I have. I think the strengths of this book, and this series as a whole, far outshine these issues for me. This is definitely a book I recommend diving into.
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