The Shadow of Kyoshi (2025)

This page contains unmarked spoilers for The Rise of Kyoshi. You have been warned.

We have no need of mercy. Only justice

The Shadow of Kyoshi is a 2020 novel set in the Avatar universe written by F.C. Yee (with consultation by series creator Michael Dante DiMartino) and is the sequel to The Rise of Kyoshi. The story picks up two years later with the more confident and skilled titular heroine having introduced herself to the world as the true Avatar.

When the novel starts, Kyoshi has used her newfound wealth to set up shop in Ba Sing Se with her Airbender assistant Jinpa to quash various bandit uprisings across the Earth Kingdom. Jinpa keeps trying to get her to focus more on the political/diplomatic side of being the Avatar but she's hesitant to because she's not very good at it. She gets to a point where she can't ignore it anymore when she gets personally invited to attend the festival honouring the previous Fire Nation Avatar, Szeto, by Fire Lord Zoryu himself.

From there she gets dragged into the internal conflict of the country, including drama with the Fire Lord's bastard half-brother, Chaejin while dealing with problems of her own, like tracking down her friend Yun who inexplicably came back from his presumed death to kill Jianzhu at the climax of the previous book.

While this is currently the planned conclusion of the Kyoshi duology, the novel series, now under the banner of The Chronicles of the Avatar, continued with the next novel, The Dawn of Yangchen.

The book provides examples of the following tropes:

• Actually, That's My Assistant: Kyoshi mistakes Chaejin for his half-brother, Fire Lord Zoryu. They do look very similar, and Chaejin was deliberately wearing very similar attire to Zoryu in order to set up the misunderstanding. Once the embarrassment's over it turns out that Kyoshi's gaffe is actually quite serious, as it could be interpreted as showing support for Chaejin's claim to the throne.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: The Fire Nation has very strict rules around hair that is intertwined with their notions of honor, making touching anybody else's head a very meaningful act. Politicians frequently use "friendly" head touches to insult and denigrate their opponents.
  • Chaejin ruffles Fire Lord Zoryu's hair under the guise of a friendly interaction between brothers. Given their respective status, this is a grossly insulting action and one method that Chaejin uses to undermine Zoryu's position.
  • When Lady Huazo first sees Hei-Ran after she had cut off her topknot in disgrace, Huazo claims that their friendship is too important to sunder over this matter of honor. Kyoshi at first thinks that this shows a heretofore unknown level of compassion, until Huazo proceeds to pat Hei-Ran on the head. This is so insulting that it nearly kicks off a riot.
• Alternative Calendar: The Avatar calendar counts the number of days from the birth of the current Avatar. It's unwieldy for day-to-day life, so is usually only used for religious purposes and important social functions. The one local business that uses it to schedule their employees has people keep missing their shifts due to how confusing it is.
• And Then What?: When Chaejin is trying to convince Kyoshi to support his claim to the throne by explaining the current political situation, Kyoshi asks him what he will do once he has gained the throne. If the problems that are plaguing the Fire Nation really do make his ascension to the throne inevitable, how will he fix them once he has the power? The fact that he doesn't have an answer for her — not even a meaningless rehearsed statement — convinces her that he only wants power for the sake of power, not because he actually cares about using power for the benefit of other people.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Hei-Ran tries to reassure Kyoshi that Kelsang had no idea she and Jianzhu were training Yun in clandestine assassination tactics, she says that he would have stopped them if he learned of it. In response Kyoshi says that maybe Jianzhu and Hei-Ran would have just killed him sooner in that case.
• Back for the Finale: When preparing for her final showdown with Yun, Kyoshi gets word to Kirima and Wong and they come to help their sworn sister. Lao Ge declines to show for the dust up, but he does return in the epilogue to threaten Fire Lord Zoryu on Kyoshi's behalf.
• Badass Boast: Kyoshi gives one to Fire Lord Zoryu when it becomes clear he's ready to kill a lot of innocent people.

  Kyoshi: Let me make myself perfectly clear. You live on top of what I control. Your islands are surrounded by my waves. You fill your very lungs at my discretion. So if I hear any news about "Yun" being executed, you will truly learn what it's like when the spirits forsake you in the face of the elements.

• Badass Bureaucrat: After a childhood of plague and natural disasters, Avatar Szeto rescued the Fire Nation from the verge of collapse. He settled clan wars through diplomatic solutions and rose in the ranks of government rather than using his Avatarhood for unfair advantages. He gave government relief to the lower class in times of famine. Eventually, he was appointed Grand Advisor to Fire Lord Yosor. All the while, he kept meticulous records of his work.
• Badass Teacher: Hei-Ran has more of a role in this book than she did in the previous one, and the former headmistress gets to show why she got that role. She taught bending to Fire Lord Zoryu and she's so badass that she scares him, a head of state. She shows no fear when Yun tries to kill her by slashing her throat and gets the better of him when she gets an opening, despite being seconds from death.
• Body Double: The Fire Nation has an established body double program, where they search out people who can pass for important political figures and train them to masquerade as them in dangerous or sensitive situations. The false Yun that Fire Lord Zoryu reveals at the end of the story was recruited for this program.
• Boring, but Practical: Kyoshi notes that with the daofei scrambling to occupy the crowded city slums after being driven out of the countryside, they are abandoning all of the extravagant and cumbersome weapons they used to use. Now the majority are armed with simple hand axes and swords.
• Call-Forward:
  • At the Fire Nation party in the palace, Lu Beifong complains that all his current descendants are Inadequate Inheritors and that he would settle for a "half-decent earthbender" at this point in order to mold a successor that will preserve the family's prestige. His line will eventually spawn Toph, the creator of Metalbending and the greatest non-Avatar Earthbender to have ever lived.
  • In his flashback, Kuruk hopes that someone will invent a way to pacify corrupted spirits, because he's otherwise forced to kill them before they harm humans (which also has a damaging effect on his own spirit). His own countryman, Unalaq, develops the spiritbending technique and teaches it to his niece and Kuruk's eventual reincarnation, Korra.
• Cavalry Betrayal: A quick one. Mok calls for Wai to help him against an enemy. But when Wai jumps out of hiding and discovers he's facing the Avatar, he immediately puts down his weapon and prostrates himself.

  Mok: Oh, come on!

• Chekhov's Gun: When Atuat first introduces Kyoshi to the concept of using waterbending to lower a person's body temperature, she warns against the danger of lowering it too much and accidentally freezing their organs. Kyoshi ultimately kills Yun by using the same technique to instantly freeze him internally.
• The City Narrows: Loongkau in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se is a cramped, nasty, dangerous neighborhood absolutely infested with criminals. Lawmen won't enter its boundaries. Kyoshi embarks on a one-woman clearing of its criminals in the hope that the civilian residents will be able to live a better life afterwards.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Smoke and Shadow established a warlord named Toz, who ended several messy clan battles by unifying the Fire Islands under his aegis. This is brought up several times in Shadow, as the clans are still jostling for control and Fire Lord Zoryu looks to Toz's journals for ideas.
  • Yangchen cites her fight with General Old Iron, the subject of an extended flashback in The Rift and her first mission as the Avatar, as an example of her favoring the humans over the spirits, which led to their eventual corruptions and forced Kuruk to fight them off.
  • Rangi's daofei makeup is described as being based on a river spirit worshiped near Jang Hui—in other words, the Painted Lady.
  • The Rift also established that Avatars must go to the Spirit World in order to contact their past lives, and that refusing a connection with their immediate predecessor means refusing a connection to all predecessors. Ironically, both Aang and Kyoshi were trying to speak with Yangchen.
  • Near the end of the book, Kyoshi encounters a "fox...fox." She's just as weirded out by the regular fox not being a Mix-and-Match Critter (though it turns out to be a spirit) as Aang and his friends are by the Earth King's "just...bear."
• Crazy-Prepared: Hei-Ran lambasts Rangi for not treating selecting the landing point for their flying bison as though they are expecting an attack, or will need to remain hidden for a long time. She reminds her that the motto of the Royal Fire Academy is "Preparedness carries the day".
• Death by Childbirth: Fire Lord Zoryu's mother, Sulan, died while giving birth. He regrets never getting to know her, since the stories say she was a very lovely woman.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Hei-Ran accepts Yun's stab to her throat so she can hold him there and strike him in turn. This is the first time in their confrontation that Yun is off balance, and completely unprepared for her to take this tactic.
• Dirty Business: Discussed between Hei-Ran and Kyoshi. Hei-Ran notes that despite Rangi's fierce visage, she is actually a kind-hearted and gentle person who will never stoop to the morally-ambiguous levels that Hei-Ran believes are necessary. So, Hei-Ran states that it falls to Kyoshi to take those actions herself for the sake of the greater good. Kyoshi does ultimately cross several ethical lines with her kidnapping and torture of Ladu Huazo and Chaejin, and is tormented when it turns out to have been for nothing.
• Disease Bleach: Hei-Ran returns from the north pole with streaks of grey in her hair. This ages her appearance enough that she finally looks like Rangi's mother, instead of her sister.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Hei-Ran's removal of her topknot, with a recitation of fault and a second, is reminiscent of a ritual suicide, where the second would have the duty of finishing off the principal so that their death throes don't become too indecorous.
• Due to the Dead: Kyoshi buries Yun in the mountains surrounding Yokoya, with a view of the village and the sea. Unable to bear to put her own name on his gravestone to track his birth and death dates, the marker is depressingly sparse: Yun, from Makapu.
• Dying Town: North Chung-Ling is suffering bad harvests like the rest of the Fire Nation, and the whole town is dying as a result. The money from entertaining visitors with gambling, drinking, and sham sages is extending the life of the town, but is also recognized as only delaying the inevitable.
• Empathic Environment: Literal example. The Spirit World reacts to one's emotions. Notably shown when huge chasms are formed from Yun's grief and Kyoshi's anger. Seeing that the damage Yun's emotions caused have not healed is what lets Kyoshi and Kuruk know that Yun has not let go of his pain.
• End of an Age:
  • With Kyoshi's public reveal as the Avatar and her actions to root out and destroy the bandits ravaging the countryside, the underground daofei society is crumbling as they seek refuge in the crowded city slums they once scorned. Their extravagant weapons are being abandoned for mundane tools, and they're even changing their names. Most of the Earth Kingdom is happy to see the age of lawlessness come to an end, but Kyoshi is struggling to keep it from just transforming into a different type of lawlessness.
  • In the epilogue, Fire Lord Zoryu plans to end the age of Clan power in the Fire Nation. If clan loyalties and influence can be eliminated, then all of the people will be loyal to the throne itself instead of being split into innumerable conflicting factions.
• Family Theme Naming: Lady Huazo, the mother of Zoryu's half-brother Chaejin, points out that her family has a tradition of using the character "Zo" (Also pronounced "So") in names. Zoryu's mother Sulan "thought it sounded pretty," and she did not think at all about the political weirdness of naming her child the way her husband's mistress would have. This seems to start a new tradition within the Fire Nation royal family, since Zoryu is the first of many members of the Fire Nation royal family to have a prominent "Z" sound in his name.
• The Famine: The Fire Nation isn't starving — yet — but the harvests and fishing bounties have been low for several seasons. The low yields are blamed on disfavor from the spirits, and the Saowon clan is claiming that the disfavor is because Zoryu is Fire Lord instead of Chaejin. The closer the people get to starving, the more dissatisfaction there is towards Zoryu.
• Fee Fi Faux Pas:
  • Governor Shing of Gintong Province in the Earth Kingdom gets too agitated when arguing with Kyoshi at the Fire Lord's palace, and winds up drawing the attention of the Fire Nation nobility with his histrionics. Lu Beifong notices that he's making a spectatcle and immediately withdraws to hush things up. As they leave, Kyoshi realizes that this one outburst may have just ended Shing's entire career.
  • Kyoshi makes an absolute hash out of her first meeting with Fire Lord due to the intricate courtesy rituals. First she mistakes his half-brother Chaejin for the Fire Lord, then makes a public show of offering to solve the Fire Lord's problems for him, then dismisses Chaejin from their conversation. This all serves to undermine Zoryu's authority and public image, while simultaneously bolstering Chaejin's claim to the throne.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • Early on in the book when Kyoshi passes by an island important to Yangchen she gets hit by a violent vision and almost drowns and, as the narration notes, it takes her an embarrassingly long time before she remembers she can just waterbend to safety. Likewise towards the end of the book, when Kyoshi decides to visit said island again, she gets off the boat and swims there the old-fashioned way for a while before thinking of waterbending herself there.
  • When Yun attacks the Fire Lord's party, Kyoshi attempts to subdue him by grabbing at him and swinging her fans. Afterwards, Rangi points out that she should have tried bending instead of flailing about. Kyoshi eventually admits it was because she couldn't bring herself to actually try to hurt him.
• Framing the Guilty Party: The Saowon clan were undermining Fire Lord Zoryu's position in the hopes of usurping the throne, and were willing to instigate a civil war to accomplish their goal. To stop them, Zoryu frames them for conspiring with Yun to enable his attack on the palace. This perceived violation of the unwritten rules of Fire Nation politics by involving an outsider immediately destroys the support that the Saowon had from the other clans.
• Fumbling the Gauntlet: Nyahitha laments that the Fire Nation's obsession with honor requires Agni Kai duels over the slightest of offenses.
• God-Eating: After defeating him, Yun ate Father Glowworm and gained his power.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Father Glowworm turns out to be the underlying cause to almost all the evil that occurs in both Rise and Shadow. During Kuruk's time, he had been trying to burrow into the human world to feed on people, resulting in dark spirits infesting the tunnels he dug between the realms. Kuruk then had to kill these spirits to protect the world, leading him to die young and leave behind a chaotic power vacuum, which was made worse by the Earth Sages' inability to find his reincarnation. This, in turn, is a major factor contributing to both Jianzhu's and Yun's Face-Heel Turns. However, in the present, he turns out to be a far lesser threat than Yun, who defeats him after he had been severely weakened by his battle with Kuruk years earlier.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Near the end of the book it's revealed that, rather than just being the carefree Avatar he was interpreted as being from the original show Kuruk spent most of his life secretly battling and killing various Dark Spirits that were created by Yangchen's favoritism towards humans. Kuruk's actions likely saved the world from being consumed by Dark Spirits but because of his shame over murdering spirits he deliberately kept the truth hidden from even his closest friends and became a hedonist as a form of self-medication. This ends up being deconstructed as this leads to the world believing that Kuruk was an unfit Avatar, unintentionally causing the major problems that plague the books, and leaving Kyoshi with a lot of resentment towards her predecessor, at least before she realizes the truth about him.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: Lady Huazo points out that clan politics meant that she was forced away from both the court and the man she loved years ago despite being very much a capable leader, and she argues that every Fire Nation noble family has dreamed of getting close to the Fire Lord's throne at some point in history. Zoryu wants to keep the peace and prevent a civil war...and is willing to kill a 'false Yun' and wipe out the Saowon clan to do it, even though he knows they didn't actually collaborate with the real Yun.
• Half-Sibling Angst: Chaejin is Zoryu's older brother, but the latter became Fire Lord because the former is an illegitimate child.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Between the fact that she's fighting corrupt officials and the truth that she honestly is pretty scary, Kyoshi has to deal with most of the Earth Kingdom, including the people she is helping with her every action, being absolutely terrified of her. See also the truth about Kuruk in "The Greatest Story Never Told" above.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: This is revealed to be the secret behind the "spirituality" of North Chung-Ling. The village is built above large reservoirs of natural gas, and when people breathe the fumes they have hallucinations and believe they are having a spiritual journey.
• Holy Ground: Holy Time, rather. It is forbidden to burn anybody during the Festival of Szeto, so there are no Agni Kai duels during the festival. This doesn't prevent people from fighting with fists and mundane weapons, and Nyahitha points out that bottling up the anger instead of having an Agni Kai can lead to larger confrontations later.
• Howl of Sorrow: When Kyoshi realizes that Zoryu has an innocent peasant posing as Yun to frame the Saowon, and that the peasant is complicit and determined to die to maintain the charade, she lets loose a scream of such despair and self-loathing that everybody cowers as though she was cursing them.
• Hotter and Sexier: The first book had some more overt references to sex than the shows but this one takes it a bit further. Kuruk explicitly slept with his maid in one of the flashbacks, although nothing about the act itself is shown. Another point is while there are other half-siblings in the franchise, notably Lin and Su, the implications about multiple extramarital sexual partners are mostly glossed over. All Lin says is that she and Su have different dads and Toph says Lin's dad was a nice guy with whom things didn't work out. Here, Chaejin is explicitly called the bastard child of Fire Lord Chaeryu and his mistress Huazo. Huazo regales Kyoshi about their passionate youthful relationship. Zoryu also tells Kyoshi that he's probably got other half-siblings out there that he doesn't know about.
• How They Treat the Help: After Yun's attack on the Fire Lord's palace, Kyoshi notes the different reactions from Zoryu and Chaejin. Zoryu bemoans the loss of life, particularly Chancellor Darin, but even the lowly guards as well. Chaejin however focuses on the insult to the Fire Nation and the disgrace of losing parts of their cultural heritage. He doesn't even mention the dead guards.
• Identical Stranger: Downplayed. As part of a Body Double program, Fire Lord Zoryu has found a Fire Nation citizen who looks very similar to Yun. With his eyes covered (which are a gold color typical of the Fire Nation) he convinces a gathering of Fire Nation nobles that he really is Yun. However, to somebody who actually knows Yun the effect is greatly diminished, and Kyoshi can tell that it's not him almost immediately.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: When Kyoshi and Hei-Ran reunite at the Fire Lord's party, Rangi assumes that this is how their conversation went when Hei-Ran sent her away so she could speak to Kyoshi privately. That wasn't quite the topic of their talk, but Kyoshi figures it was close enough.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: After escaping the Spirit World, Yun is dying of thirst and exhaustion in the alley outside the teahouse. His teeth start chattering and he realizes how cold he is.
• Important Haircut: Hei-Ran, accompanied by a second, recited a litany of offenses before Avatar Kyoshi, Fire Lord Zoryu, and Lieutenant Rangi before ceremonially sawing off her topknot and reducing her social standing among the noble classes of her birth to somewhere below a common beggar.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Kyoshi makes sure to always call Mok "Uncle", because under the daofei rules he is her elder. She keeps this up even while dismantling his operation.
  • Kyoshi vehemently corrects Jinpa when he refers to Yun as the "false Avatar", and instructs him to never use that term again.
• Internal Reveal: With Jianzhu's death so soon after he poisoned himself and all of the Sages that came to his house to accost him, nobody in the Earth Kingdom is quite sure what the meeting was about and the poisoning is blamed on unknown daofei criminals. Kyoshi is still investigating the event at the start of this book. When she reunites with Hei-Ran, Hei-Ran lays out that it was Jianzhu himself that was behind everything.
• Irony: Fire Lord Zoryu resolves to break down the clans' power structures and have all power and fealty invested in the Fire Lord, thereby ensuring his descendants will one day sit the throne in peace. His descendants were not satisfied with complete control of the Fire Nation, and perpetuated 100 years of war to gain control of the other three nations, including almost total genocide of the Air Nomads.
• It's All My Fault: Both Hei-Ran and Kyoshi blame themselves for Jianzhu going off the deep end and killing Kelsang, and letting Father Glowworm drag Yun off to the Spirit World with the intent of killing him.
• It's Personal: In their last conversation, Zoryu explains to Kyoshi that Yun's entire rampage has been about personally hurting his former friends. Even though Yun claims it's about getting back at the powerful figures that betrayed him, Zoryu says that he may be in denial about his own feelings since even he can't bear to face how much he now hates the people he used to love.
• Japanese Politeness: Well, more like fantastical Japanese equivalent politeness. Kyoshi learns through her time in the Fire Nation that they value politeness and decorum in a way the other three nations don't. She manages to offend several different people, even with Rangi trying to help her.
• Kids Are Cruel:
  • Rangi's time at the Royal Fire Academy For Girls was miserable as she was tormented and bullied by the other students. Her mother's position as the Headmistress and her own talents prevented her from fighting back, since it would reflect poorly on her to be seen as a bully. This was what motivated Rangi to excel and graduate early, so she could get out of there.
  • Kyoshi gets stares from the village children when she returns to Yokoya, and since she isn't wearing her makeup she dismisses it as just the normal cruelty of children staring at somebody new and different.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: During Yun and Hei-Ran's game of Pai Sho, Yun declares that his victory will come in 18 moves and there is no need to finish the match. Hei Ran concedes the game, but instead of just accepting her death she holds Yun in place so that she can try to strike him in turn.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Several Earth Kingdom bureaucrats and sages, including Lu Beifong, refuse to help Kyoshi find Yun, as they prefer to sweep the whole embarrassing 'false Avatar' affair under the rug.
• Like a Daughter to Me: Because of how much Rangi loves Kyoshi, Hei-Ran decrees that she also loves her as a daughter and Kyoshi is a part of their family.
• Master-Apprentice Chain: The chain is referenced when Yun kills Lu Beifong, since Lu had been Jianzhu's previous master. As Jianzhu's master, Yun holds him responsible for his misidentification as the Avatar and the subsequent problems.
• Mercy Rewarded: In The Rise of Kyoshi, Kyoshi spared Governor Te Sihung's life on the condition that he improve himself as a governor. Here, it's shown he took her warning to heart and has improved living conditions in Zigan.
• Mook Horror Show: The opening chapter is from the POV of a teenage boy serving as low-level muscle for a Triad that had taken over Loongkau, a cramped and impoverished neighborhood in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se. Someone is coming to root them out, there is a feared assassin on the level above, he is part of a group guarding a chokepoint, and things end up going poorly.

  Mook: The Avatar protect me, Yangchen protect me!
  Kyoshi: Yangchen isn't here right now, I am.

• Mugging the Monster: When Yun returns from the Spirit World, the first people he encounters think he's just a wandering beggar and refuse to give him any water, then mock him once he tries to reveal his identity. This display of such pointless cruelty is what sets Yun on his path of revenge against the world.
• My Greatest Failure: Hei-Ran hates what she allowed Jianzhu to do to Yun and Kyoshi, and what she herself did to Yun as well. She blames herself for the entire fallout that everybody is now dealing with.
• Named by the Adaptation: Yangchen’s predecessor had never been named despite appearing twice throughout both shows. He’d been called “Avatar Jafar” due to his resemblance to the villain of Aladdin, but this book gives him the name Szeto.
• Narnia Time: Time seems to work differently in the Spirit World. Yun has no idea how long his fight with Father Glowworm lasts and is shocked to learn he was in the Spirit World for a week. Kyoshi is also able to see Kuruk's whole backstory and travel to Glowworm's swamp, while no more than a few minutes could have passed in the physical world before she drowned.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kyoshi mistaking Chaejin for Zoryu, and her attempts to make up for it afterwards, makes it appear to the Fire Nation that Zoryu doesn't have her blessing as the Avatar and also can't fight his own battles. Her later attempt to wring a confession out of Lady Huazo and Chaejin grants the Saowon clan the justification they need to launch their war immediately, and gather more support from the other clans as well.
• No Hero to His Valet: In the Fire Nation, the hierarchy of the teacher/student relationship trumps any other. Since Hei-Ran taught bending to Fire Lord Zoryu, that gives her the right to tell her reigning monarch that he’s being an idiot. She treats him like she does Rangi and Kyoshi, very strict but coming from a place of love.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Huazo claims that every other clan leader in the Fire Nation is just as ambitious as she is, arguing that they're all willing to compete with each other for the sake of their fortunes or the chance to put one of their progeny on the throne. She even suggests that Rangi and Hei-Ran would do the same, were they in any position to do so.
• Out of Sight, Out of Mind: This is the position many of the Earth Sages take in regards to Yun. As the whole mess with Yun being a 'false Avatar' reflected badly on just about the entire Earth Kingdom, they refuse to search for him and bring the entire scandal back into the public consciousness — something only made easier with Jianzhu, the one who perpetrated the whole farce, dead. Naturally, it backfires when Yun shows up and starts wreaking havoc in the Fire Nation; even killing Lu Beifong, one of these aforementioned sages who refused to search for Yun.
• Poor Communication Kills: Fire Lord Zoryu's ministers persuaded him to change his welcome party for Kyoshi from a small intimate affair to a larger event in order to bolster his support. But none of Kyoshi's staff were informed of this, so they did not inform her of the proper code of conduct for such a party, or the unique political situation regarding his half-brother Chaejin. Since her escorts could only offer quick whispered instructions after arriving at the party, Kyoshi's actions inadvertantly insult the Fire Lord and lends support to Chaejin in his bid for the throne.
• Physical Fitness Punishment: Rangi, as Kyoshi's firebending teacher, often punishes her by making her hold Horse Stance for several minutes.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Kyoshi gives a hell of a one-liner right before she kills Yun.

  Kyoshi: I'm sorry for saying you had to live with your pain. Because you won't.

• Pretext for War: Zoryu tells Kyoshi that the Saowon clan has been subtly provoking the Keohso clan in the hopes that the Keohso will eventually retaliate at an extreme level, allowing the Saowon to begin their war for the throne by claiming self defense. When Kyoshi witnesses Lady Huazo and her retainers insulting the Keohso in North Chung-Ling, she recognizes that it's the same as when a daofei group wants to create an incident so they have an excuse to attack a rival group.
• Put on a Bus: Kelsang's Sky Bison Pengpeng is stated to have retired after her adventure with Kyoshi in the last book and is now taking care of some calves of her own. Now Kyoshi is using Jinpa's bison Yingyong as her mode of transportation.
• Railroad Plot: Wealthy merchants want to buy and demolish Loongkau, a Wretched Hive in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se that happens to be located on an advantageous real estate spot. Since they can't clear out the criminals on their own, they take steps to increase the criminal presence so Kyoshi will take notice and come in and remove them entirely. Afterwards, they plan for their normal cadre of corrupt lawmen to remove the civilian residents unopposed, but Kyoshi stops them and exposes the scheme.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Kyoshi Lampshades the bizarre group she ends up with nearing the end of the book: A disgraced firebending master (Hei-Ran), a healer who's fine with people dying (Atuat), a Fire Sage who became a confidence trickster (Nyahitha), an Air Nomad who's fine with Machiavellian scheming (Jinpa), and an Avatar with a body count.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Governor Te has improved in leaps and bounds since the last book, building schools and hospitals for his people that are free for the poorest citizens.
  • Fire Lord Zoryu is a bit weak, and overshadowed by his illegitimate half-brother Chaejin, but he wants what is best for his country and his people. Kyoshi sides with him over Chaejin when she notes that Chaejin barely notices when lower-class people are killed, and he has no plan for what to do after he gains the throne. Played with a bit when Zoryu ultimately decides to frame Chaejin for crimes he didn't commit to bring a swift end to the conflict; while that was a stroke of genius, it's also the tipping point where he has a choice to be a Reasonable Authority Figure or an Evil Overlord, starting with if he'll execute an entire clan for a crime he knows they didn't commit. He almost does it, but Lao Ge bluntly reminds him that Kyoshi is watching—and she's not going to bother with diplomacy next time.
• Recognition Failure: Kyoshi mistakes Chaejin for Fire Lord Zoryu without knowing the family drama involved. Chaejin was invoking this (dressing as close to the Fire Lord as he could get away with and making sure to meet Kyoshi first) in order to discredit Zoryu as part of a long campaign of such insults.
• Reincarnation-Identifying Trait: Nyahitha says that he would have identified Kyoshi as Kuruk's reincarnation in an instant if anybody had sought his help, since her personality is exactly like his. Kyoshi feels insulted by the characterization, and refuses to listen as he explains what Kuruk was actually like instead of what Kyoshi thinks he was like.
• Revenge Before Reason: Yun has already taken revenge on Jianzhu, but he is so embittered by what happened to him that he plans to take revenge on everybody who he feels failed or betrayed him by mistaking him for the Avatar. Considering the high political level Jianzhu operated at, this essentially means everybody in the Earth Kingdom.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Yun aims to brutally kill everyone who 'lied' to him about his being the Avatar. Kyoshi slowly realizes that this means basically everyone he ever met.
• Shout-Out: The ship captain Joonho is probably named in reference to Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho.
• Sigil Spam:
  • Once she knows to look for it, Kyoshi realizes that everybody in attendance at the Fire Lord's welcome party is wearing their clan crest on their clothing to proclaim their allegiance. It seeems to be the standard procedure for all of the clans. When she encounters the Saowon delegation in North Chung-Ling, their clothing and equipment are covered in so many stone camellia patterns that the literal banner seems redundant.
  • Shuhon Island is traditionally Keohso territory, so the Trashy Tourist Trap city of North Chung-Ling is covered in winged peony banners. However, Rangi says that most of the residents aren't actually in the Keohso clan, but are just trying to attract business. They probably have banners for every other clan crest that they bring out at different times.
• Smart People Play Chess: People are frequently asking Kyoshi if she plays Pai Sho, and she is incredibly frustrated at the way they all seem to associate intelligence with the game and judge her based on how she handles the question. Fire Lord Zoryu is the first person to explain that he's not trying to judge her based on the game, but is trying to explain how he and Yun first got to know each other while playing Pai Sho together.
• Spiteful Spit: One of Lady Huazo's attendants makes deliberate eye contact with the Keohso before spitting on the ground. Kyoshi briefly hopes that this might not be as big of an insult in the Fire Nation as it is in the Earth Kingdom, but Rangi and Hei-Ran's reaction quickly disabuses of the notion and the Keohso present immediate try to assault the Saowon.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Most of the levity in the story comes from The Comically Serious Hei-Ran playing off of her Deadpan Snarker healer, Atuat.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • Continuing from the first novel, it is repeatedly remarked that Hei-Ran and Rangi look very similar to one another. When Hei-Ran gains grey hairs during her recovery from Jianzhu's posion the change to her appearance finally makes her look like Rangi's mother instead of her sister.
  • Half-brothers Chaejin and Fire Lord Zoryu look incredibly similar to one another, both taking after their father Fire Lord Chaeryu. When they are dressed similarly Kyoshi at first mistakes Chaejin for Zoryu, and Chaejin says that people have said he could pass as Zoryu's Body Double.
• Taking You with Me: When Yun slashes Hei-Ran's throat, she grabs him and throws a fireball at him to attempt to kill him back. It's the first time in their confrontation that he is off balance, and he is completely unprepared for her strike.
• Terror Hero: Kyoshi is a giant thug with both immense bending and physical power who does not do either subtle or diplomatic. Even when she does not consciously make use of intimidation she is frightening, and she consciously makes use of intimidation rather often.
• Tragic Dream: Both Kyoshi and Rangi want Yun to come back and recapture the simpler moments of their earlier years. At one point Rangi mentions that she wants the three of them to return to the mansion in Yokoya and enjoy some of Auntie Mui's cooking again. By the end of the book it becomes clear that Yun is too far gone and his desire for revenge has made him too different from the boy they once knew, forcing Kyoshi and Rangi to fight him to the death. After he dies they can only cry at the loss of their friend and what could have been.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Captain Li is an aging law officer in Ba Sing Se whose large gambling debts have forced him to continue working past the point he would have otherwise retired. The need to pay off these debts leads him to accept a bribe from Minister Wo to evict all the residents from Loongkau so that the neighborhood can be purchased and demolished.
• Trash the Set: Jianzhu's mansion, which had been a major setting throughout the first book, is almost completely demolished in the Final Battle with Yun, symbolically closing the book on the days of Kyoshi's youth before she became the Avatar.
• Trashy Tourist Trap: North Chung-Ling is a village that has a reputation as a highly spiritual place where even laymen can have visions. Rather than respect the spiritual nature of the site, the residents created an economy based on entertaining visitors with gambling, drinking, and sham sages.
• Triage: Atuat has to explain the concept of triage to Kyoshi after Yun's attack on the Fire Lord's part, when Kyoshi expects her to try and save everybody who has been injured. Atuat first goes from person to person checking to see who can be saved.
• Turn in Your Badge: An aggressive version. When Kyoshi realizes that the lawmen she recruited in Ba Sing Se are corrupt and driving out innocents in order for their boss to gain control of the area, she collects their numbered headbands. Not only is this symbolic of revoking their authority, but she can use the headbands to look up their names and pursue further punishment if they try to make an issue of it.
• Unable to Cry: After escaping the Spirit World, Yun has intense grief when he senses Kyoshi's Avatar spirit. He also happens to be dying of dehydration at the time, so he can't cry and is forced to bottle up his feelings. Unfortunately, this results in him expressing those feelings a little later in a much more devastating way.
• Unperson: This is revealed to be the reason why Kyoshi's search for Yun has been fruitless during the Time Skip. Having been paraded around the world as the Avatar for years, The Reveal that he actually wasn't the Avatar, and that Kyoshi was, became a national embarrassment for the Earth Kingdom. Those that aren't trying to deny Kyoshi's Avatarhood in hopes of taking advantage of her are doing everything that they can to forget Yun ever existed in hopes of sweeping the entire mess under the rug.
• Upsetting the Balance: Yun senses that he has done something deeply wrong by consuming a spirit.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Kyoshi explains to Yun that killing Jianzhu didn't bring her peace, and neither will his continuing path of revenge.
• Villain Team-Up: By the midway point of the book Kyoshi believes that Yun and the Saowon clan are working together, with the Saowon sheltering Yun and providing him with the resources necessary for his revenge while Yun helps undermine Zoryu's rule and prop up Chaejin as a superior Fire Lord. It turns out that Yun is acting entirely on his own to hurt Zoryu because of his resentment towards his friend not needing him anymore, and the Saowon are just using Yun's actions to push their own agenda forward. Kyoshi realizes this after she interrogates Chaejin and Huazo and finds out that they genuinely don't know where Yun is.
• Vision Quest:
  • Kyoshi travels to North Chung-Ling in the hopes of making contact with her past lives. She manages to contact Kuruk, but she's so angry at Kuruk that she doesn't pursue the connection.
  • Kyoshi submerges herself in water at the location of the destroyed island where Yangchen first performed waterbending, and Kuruk first entered the Avatar State. She finally allows herself to speak to Kuruk instead of rejecting him.
• We Need a Distraction: Kyoshi realizes to her horror that the riot in North Chung-Ling is the perfect cover for Yun to try and assassinate Hei-Ran.
• What You Are in the Dark: Rangi informs Kyoshi that "What you do when no one is guiding you determines who you are". Hei-Ran had given Yun the same admonition in the first book.
• Where It All Began: The Final Battle in the series between Kyoshi, Rangi, and Yun, takes place in Jianzhu's mansion in Yokoya where the three became friends and the books truly began.
• You Remind Me of X: Kyoshi goes easy on the young Triad thug in the opening chapter because he reminds her of Lek, her deceased sworn-brother from the Flying Opera Company.