Avatar Kyoshi messes up gangsters in excerpt from new Last Airbender novel

Everything’s coming up Avatar: The Last Airbender recently. The beloved Nickelodeon epic just turned 15 and will soon be available to watch in full on Netflix. (M. Night Shyamalan’s terrible live-action movie adaptation is already on the service and is apparently very popular; go figure.) And soon enough, Netflix will bring us a full-on live-action remake of the series, with original creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko at the head.

In the meantime, we’re getting series of novels about Avatar Kyoshi, who was Avatar a couple of cycles before Aang, our hero. Kyoshi was a popular figure from the show on account of her no-nonsense approach to keeping the peace. If you have to kill a tyrant every once in a while, well, them’s the breaks.

But before that she was just an ordinary girl living in the Earth Kingdom. Amulet Books already explored her early years in The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee, which came out last year. Now there’s a new novel on the way: The Shadow of Kyoshi, also be Yee, with input from DiMartino. Entertainment Weekly got its hands on an excerpt where Kyoshi takes on a crime ring in Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom capitol. Here, she’s investigating the city’s impoverished Lower Ring looking for her quarry, and splits open the earth beneath to storm their hideout. Check it out:

"Her little platform of earth, held together by her bending, turned as hard as the point of an auger. It burst through the clay tiles and rotting struts of wood, dropping her fast enough to make her guts lurch. She plunged through the floor and into the next level down, before doing it again, and again.Jianzhu’s tactical manuals noted that in enclosed fights most casualties happened at doorways and stairs. Kyoshi had decided to skip over those parts of the building and bore her own passage. She counted fourteen stories—more than she’d estimated—until she came crashing through the ceiling of a room that was solid earth underneath. The bottom of Loongkau.Kyoshi stepped off her platform, dust and crumbs of masonry cascading off her arms, and looked around. There were no walls in here, only supporting columns that propped up the great weight of the levels above. So the City Block has a ballroom, she thought wryly. The empty expanse was similar to the entertaining halls of wealthy nobles like Lu Beifong. There was a space like this in the Avatar’s mansion in Yokoya.She could see all the way to the far end since the walls held lumps of glowing crystal, as if the light for the entire building had been hoarded for this room. There was a desk, a wooden island in the emptiness. And behind the desk was a man who hadn’t given up his pretensions since Kyoshi had last seen him.“Hello, Uncle Mok,” Kyoshi said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”Mok, the former second-in-command of the Yellow Neck daofei, goggled his eyes in surprise. Kyoshi was like a curse he couldn’t shake. “You!” he fumed, shrinking slightly behind the furniture as if it could protect him. “What are you doing here!?”“I heard rumors about a new boss settling into Loongkau and thought he sounded very familiar. So I came to investigate. I heard this group is calling itself a Triangle now? Do I have that right? Something with three sides.” Kyoshi found it hard to keep track. The daofei who were funneling into the cities brought their grandiose customs of secrecy and tradition into the realm of urban petty crimes.“The Triad of the Golden Wing!” he yelled, infuriated by her disinterest in his rituals. But Kyoshi was long past caring about the feelings of men like Mok. He could throw whatever tantrum he desired.The drumming of feet grew louder. The men Kyoshi had bypassed on the middle floors came filing into the room, surrounding her. They brandished axes and cleavers and daggers. Mok’s men had preferred outlandish weapons when they still roamed the countryside, but here in the city they’d abandoned the nine-ring swords and meteor hammers for simpler arms that could be hidden in a crowd.Bolstered by more than two dozen men, Mok turned calmer. “Well, girl, what is it you want? Besides checking in on your elders?”“I want you all to surrender your weapons, vacate the premises, and march yourselves to a magistrate’s courthouse for judgment. The nearest one is seven blocks from here.”Several of the hatchet men burst out laughing. The corner of Mok’s mouth turned upward. Kyoshi might be the Avatar, but she was vastly outnumbered and trapped in an enclosed space.“We refuse,” he said with an exaggerated roll of his hand.“All right then. In that case, I only have one question.” Kyoshi cast her gaze around the room. “Are you sure this is all of you?”The Triad members glanced at each other. Mok’s face swelled with rage, reddening like a berry in the sun. It wasn’t insolence so much as pragmatism, her instinct for tidiness and efficiency rising to the surface.“If not, I can wait until everyone arrives,” Kyoshi said. “I don’t want to have to go back and check each floor.”“Tear her apart!” Mok screamed.The hatchet men charged from all directions. Kyoshi drew one of her fans. Two would have been a bit much."

The Shadow of Kyoshi will be out on July 21, and is available for preorder now. As for when the live-action Last Airbender show will be out, I have no idea, but the sooner the better.

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