The story was very well written, but it had nothing to do with the Avatar world! Literally in 64 chapters not a single bender was included in the story. All of the MC's friends disappear in one way or another from the novel, so this doesn't even contribute anything to the future volumes. Basically, this entire volume 1 could be summed up in a single sentence as a prologue in volume 2: "Luke grew up in the slums and enlisted in the Fire Nation army." There, that's it. The entirety of this story in a single sentence, without missing any crucial information. I feel bad to put this so bluntly since the author obviously put a lot of effort into this, but this first volume is pointless to read