Read a full free chapter of F.C. Yee’s The Legacy of Yangchen here, from the Chronicles of the Avatar series that fills in the history of Aang’s predecessors.
The world of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender continues to develop in a variety of media, with the gacha RPG game Avatar Generations, the tabletop RPG game Avatar Legends, and a series of three animated movies about the adult versions of Aang, Katara, and the rest of the TV show’s cast on the way. As the show’s story moves forward in time, the novels continue to look back at the conflicts and triumphs of people who served as Avatar long before Aang, trying to bring peace and balance to the Four Nations.
F.C. Yee’s latest book in the Chronicles of the Avatar series concludes the story of Avatar Yangchen, an inexperienced young woman trying to deal with a scheme that would send the Nations to war with each other. But it opens with a new perspective on a seeming villain, which you can read in the excerpt below.
Here’s Amulet Books’ description of the novel:
Read a full free chapter of The Legacy of Yangchen below, showing that power-hungry villain in a different light.Chapter 1: Depths
Chaisee understood from an early age that to be successful, you needed to be willing to go further than others thought possible.
To wit—the villagers of her little unnamed island dove for prized cucumber-sponges far below the glistening surface of the waters, where sunlight faded and ears threatened to burst. No one in the Mo Ce considered such a feat viable or worth the risk.
But Chaisee’s people ignored the prevailing wisdom. Without the aid of waterbending, they trained their bodies to accept the pressure, their minds to embrace the signals that they were dying. Dive after dive, they forced their way farther into the depths and scraped their hands raw against the slimy spikes of the reef to come up with little puffballs of a creature that, once carefully killed and dried, would fetch a generous string of coins on the open market.
She and her fellow villagers willingly took on the often-fatal endeavor again and again so they might eat for another season. And faraway nobles washed their faces with the cured exteriors of cucumber-sponges, the softest touch known in the Four Nations. A mutually beneficial agreement based on one party’s willingness to torture themselves and the other side’s complete distaste for the slightest physical discomfort.
As Chaisee grew older, she began to manage the village’s books. She took over from her father the negotiations with haulers who came to collect the sponges, pearls, dried shellfish meat—the secret was to spy on other suppliers while using uncharted islands as stashes to control market prices. She had no reason to suspect her future would contain any disturbances to this arrangement other than the occasional monsoon.
The ship that broke the cycle arrived with battened sails and swooping foredecks. Strangely, it bore flags of both the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. The party that came ashore in longboats was led by junior ambassadors from both countries. In front of Chaisee’s assembled village, they read a proclamation decreeing that the inhabitants of this island would no longer be allowed to produce certain goods of the sea. By a vanishingly rare agreement between Earth King and Fire Lord, the exclusive rights had been granted to some merchant they’d never heard of in a faraway city that was completely landlocked.
This can’t be, Chaisee’s father had said, hushing her with a raised hand. Suddenly the negotiator again. We protest this decision. You must at least give us the chance to formulate a response.
