This is a review from a reader who watched the original series and read some of the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics.
I first want to congratulate the author for writing the best Avatar novel I have seen in my last five years of reading fanfics.
What can I write about this work that hasn't already been written on other platforms? This story to me is perfect in every aspect, like grammar, protagonists, heroines, story, perspectives, and the context of the world. When I first came across this story, I couldn't stop reading, even if it meant spending sleepless nights until I got to the current chapter.
Let's start with the characters from the original work. When reading fanfics multiple times, characters feel different or out of place, and this is not the case in this novel. Every character and interaction feels taken from the same series, each one makes decisions or performs actions that their original counterparts would do, feeling natural, which makes the reading flow, and you don't have to stop reading. It's time to move on to the three main heroines: Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee.
The three heroines who have won the hearts of readers, Azula the Fire Nation princess, Mai the best sniper, and Ty Lee the circus acrobat, are, besides grammar, the strongest point of this story. God, if you didn't like them before, after reading this, you're going to love them, each one different from the other, and their relationships with the protagonist leave you asking for more. It's thanks to this that they evolved to go beyond what they were. Each one changes throughout the story, and they become better than their canonical counterparts. This is because the author delves into their lives and experiences, something that wasn't seen much in the series or in the later comics. Not to show favoritism, but I think that with respect to the evolution of the characters, Azula takes first place, her conflicts, her ideology, the traumas with her parents and how these can be altered by the arrival of Xisheng.
Now we talk about Xisheng, the protagonist, who is a soldier of the Fire Nation. Many authors in the past have tried to write protagonists who belong to the Fire Nation and show us their points of view, but none have done it as well compared to Xisheng, who for us readers is completely exposed, his way of thinking, his opinions on this war, his observations, his beliefs, how he sees the world, etc. The only bad thing that some of us can see in this protagonist is that he overthinks things, which sometimes makes him despise himself when he is the one who puts the most effort into his training, his duty, and his personal relationships.
I feel like I could write more but I wouldn't be able to express everything I think about this novel. I will continue to support this author until the day his works end.
