The Reckoning of Roku by Randy RibayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Randy Ribay hasn't published any new novels since at least pre-Covid, but this year, he's got two of them - including this start to a new Chronicles of the Avatar duology, taking over from F.C. Yee after his work on duologies for Kyoshi and Yangchen. Here, Ribay gives Roku a slightly similar storyline of self-doubt to Kyoshi, whose having been mistaken for a false Avatar has become the stuff of legend by the time he's been identified as the Avatar as a teenager.
Naturally, Roku's main issue is that he has a lot of trouble just learning to bend a second element, as he struggles greatly with airbending not unlike how Korra would later on. But also, he's got his friendship with Prince Sozin, the future Fire Lord, to balance with his slowly building new friendship with Gyatso, even though Roku and Gyatso don't get along as well as they would later. Interestingly, Gyatso hasn't developed his fondness for pai sho at this point in the timeline, and Sozin rather openly insults Gyatso for being a vegetarian like the other Air Nomads.
But for this book, the main conflict centers on an island which is disputed territory between the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom. While there's a consistent theme (consistent with the established TV series as well as the Kyoshi and Yangchen books) of Earth Kingdom royals being not the best people, here it's definitely seen more through the view of the Fire Nation looking like they're trying to plant the seeds for their future war of conquest and genocide. Additionally, once we see the island itself, a pretty tropical paradise kind of place, it's not hard to see it as Ribay taking inspiration from his ancestral land of the Philippines, which so many colonial powers (Western and Eastern alike) have had their eye on over the years.
Thankfully, Ribay is already set to publish his second Roku novel next year, and hopefully they give him the chance to write a second duology just like Yee did.
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