“The Promise” by Gene Luen Yang

I am pretty sure that I read this previously, but in the wait for my next book I decided to revisit it since it was available at my library. The story follows the events of the animated show.

The main story has to do with the fire nation colonies in the earth nation. The leaders start a Harmony Restoration Movement to pull the fire nation citizens out. However they run into trouble, one of the colonies is about 100 years old and the fire nation citizens there have started families and turned the city into a mix of both fire and earth nations. Zuko separately gets Aang to promise that Aang will kill Zuko if Zuko starts to act like his father. After spending time at the colony, Zuko pulls out of the Harmony Restoration Movement and the others get worried about him. The earth king moves to send his army against the fire nations. (Meanwhile Toph has started a metal bending school.) In the end, Aang comes around to Zuko and does not want to keep the elements separate. Next though, Zuko wants to focus on finding his mother.

This is a really cool story because it deals with the really real issues with resolving the conflict from the tv show. Yeah they got rid of the bad guy, but there’s still a lot of ordinary people that have to deal with the consequences. You get to see how people in the earth kingdom want the fire nation out and the people in the fire nation colony want to defend their way of life.

It also leads pretty smoothly into the events of Korra. You see Aang start up his acolytes and the start of the city that incorporates all of the elements together. It’s a nice way to bridge the two together because making a tv show is just so darn expensive. But it shows that the writers had a place in mind for where to take the story and what they wanted to accomplish along the way to make it all make sense. It definitely flows naturally too, you see Aang struggle with his fan clubs and how they treat his culture before he turns them into acolytes.

I should really read the rest of the graphic novels, and I probably will eventually, but this was a nice revisit!