Avatar: The Last Airbender. Promises, promises.

4.5 stars
This is the conclusion to the first in what will probably be several graphic novels that bridge the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender to Avatar: The Legend of Korra.  While I enjoyed "Korra" for the most part I had some problems with the series in pacing and also some of the sloppy writing of new characters.  I was immensely pleased to see Aang and company captured so very well in Gene Leung's adaptation.

In the last two books (which I had not reviewed here) we found team Avatar in the midst of a few dilemmas.  First off, after the end of the war, Aang, the Earth King Kuei and now Fire Lord Zuko agreed to the Harmony Restoration project which would require the Fire Nation Colonies to evacuate "occupied territory".  The problem with this is that over a period of a century, the lines between the FIre Nation and Earth Nation have blurred in places where citizens have begun to intermarry.  For instance, Kori, a young earth bender identifies herself as Fire Nation.  Her father, a Fire Nation politician married a woman from the colony.

People like Kori and her family feel that it is unfair to move them since this is their ancestral home for over a century.  After Kori makes an assassination attempt on Zuko's life (during the first issue), Zuko realizes as Fire Lord he needs to consider the well being of his own citizens.  This puts him at odds with the treaty he has agreed to when the war ended.  He begins to make poor choices, the worst being consulting his father, the deposed Fire Lord Ozai, for advice.  For those who recall the animated series, Ozai was a tyrant who had taken his rage out on Zuko physically and emotionally in the past and conceals the fate of Ursa, the mother of Zuko and his sister Azula.  To complicate matters, Zuko had made Avatar Aang swear to kill him if Zuko himself began to exhibit Ozai like behavior.  Also, Mai, Zuko's consort leaves him when she discovers he has been keeping secrets from her.  This leaves the new Fire Lord very lonely and vulnerable at the start of this issue.

Further fleshed out in this issue are the very ideas behind what will ultimately found the Republic City, seen in the Legend of Korra series.  Katara, now comfortable in the role as Aang's girlfriend sees the mixed race culture emerging from the colonies (particularly Yu Dao, Kori's home) and foresees her own future as the wife of the last Air Nomad.  Aang is introduced and initially infuriated by a group of "fans" who wish to emulate the culture of his lost people.  These will eventually become the Air Acolytes.  This is really fascinating stuff as several of the characters refer to the world as "changing" from what existed prior to the great Fire Nation invasion which took place under Zuko's Great Grandfather Sozin.  This is very timely stuff in our own world where staunch ideals are flipping and bending to recognize the rights and needs of groups long ignored.

This is not to say that the series is without the signature humor that delighted audiences of the television series.  There is some real gold here.  The best being when characters recognize that Sneers, the portly and awkward former member of Jet's Freedom Fighter gang is dating the athletic and confident, Kori.  Everyone has the same reaction and while Sneers and Kori are confused by them, the audience should be delighted.  Aang and Katara's relationship feels least genuine when they refer to one another as "sweetie", a problem I have had in the past two issues.  In spite of this, you really see the emergence of a more mature romance between the two of them.  Aang appears to have grown taller and is a bit less childlike.  He and Katara discuss important issues and make mature choices in how to deal with them.  This is, of course all within a PG setting since this is based on a Nickelodeon series.  In fact, the only other problem I had with this series as a whole was the choice to swap out the word "kill" with "end" when referring to Aang's promise to Zuko.  I get that there were probably guidelines that Nickelodeon imposed in order keep this series within its original target audience, but it just felt inauthentic being that the book dealt with some really adult moral quandaries.

As a whole, this was fantastic.  As a series and more so as an issue.  Fans will be happy to see Sokka and Suki reunited and even Toph gets some lip service, even though she is not used to her fullest.  Furthermore we finally get to check in on Iroh at his tea shop, where he pays lip service to a current trend in sweet drinks, with a hilarious outcome.  I am very excited to see where this series takes us in the next arc, "The Search" which will deal with the long awaited answer on most fan's minds:  Where is Ursa?

Not EXACTLY a love story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

3 stars

One thing that has always bothered me about a majority of romantic comedy films is stalking.  I don't mean to be totally rude. The protagonist of this story is not a bad person.  He is actually pretty like-able.  Like-able for a stalker.  As much as I wanted to root for him, I just found his methods unsettling. It also kept me from loving this book.  Allow me to elaborate a bit.

Vinny (Vincenzo) Gold, a 15 year-old living in 1977, is surprised and disheartened to find out that his parents are getting a divorce. They assure him that they still care about one another (in fact it appears that dad is still in love with mom, adding insult to injury), but their relation has lost whatever spark brought them together.  Vinny's mom then marries his high school gym teacher, who is obsessed with football, as per the stereotype.  Vinny is not the football type.  Then, after a mugging in the subway, Vinny's mom and new stepdad decide to move to Long Island, where the stepfather has just accepted a job!

It is hard not to feel for Vinny.  He is pushed from one place or another due to things that affect him, yet are out of his control. We also discover that Vinny has "a girl" in his NYC school. Sadly for Vinny, she moved away. Sad for only Vinny, because this girl was unaware that she was "Vinny's".  He had been pining for her and done nothing about it.  So, pretty early on we know that Vinny is pretty shy, especially when it comes to girls.  In fact, we can assume that Vinny is just shy in general, because after arriving at this Long Island high school, he doesn't seem to be interested in making male friends.  He goes right from mourning the one sided relationship in his old school to lusting after his pretty female neighborm Patsy, in his new home.

After watching Patsy dress through his window to hers, Vinny becomes fixated on Patsy and begins a campaign of late night calls to her.  After eavesdropping on a conversation from a high school jock/classmate of his, Vinny gains access to Patsy's unlisted phone number.  His first few calls, which always seem to happen after midnight, are a disaster when Vinny makes an obscene comment to her.  Let me just explain, that I am not so much disturbed by Vinny's voyeur activities as I am by what happens with Patsy's phone number.  Vinny is a teenage boy and I am sure that a majority of teenagers his age would have succumbed to watching an attractive classmate dress if given the opportunity.  What bothered me was the relationship Vinny and Patsy forge through what is definitely phone stalking. 

Vinny feels badly about his racy comments to Patsy and continues to call trying to apologize.  On the same level though, he appears to be empowered by his status as "obscene caller".  He even uses this term to gleefully refer to himself several times.  I get that he is trying to be funny, but it came off as creepy.  Sure, Patsy calls him out on being creepy but plays this game with him hanging up whenever she feels the conversation has gone too far and continues to pick up every night when he calls back.  Since this is the late 70's Patsy can ask an operator if the call is local, but there are no other methods of discovering her caller's identity. 

Still, it is Vinny who has all the power in this relationship.  He only tells her that his name is "Italian" when she finally asks.  He begins to see himself as suave "Vincenzo" and acts like kind of a jerk to Patsy.  She knows he is a student in her school but that is it.  So basically she is being watched by someone who knows everything about her school social life (friends, boyfriends, etc) but does not know who it is.  For all she knows it could be a teacher?  She also at one point opens her heart to Vincenzo and asks for his number so she can call him back but he refuses.  We are expected to believe that this is due to Vinny's under confidence that he believes she would not want to date him if she "met" him, but really it keeps him in a position of power over her.  Again, creepy.

So when Vinny starts spending time with Patsy herself he struggles to merge his two personalities.  He clearly is not a bad guy, he defends Patsy's honor when the aforementioned jock disrespects her, but just does not say terribly kind things to her himself during their phone calls.  This is supposed to be romantic?  It really bothered me. 

Again, what kept me reading way that I did feel that Vinny was a good person.  Like I said, he is like-able, but the choices he makes just made my stomach churn.  The fact that he was empowered by these calls did not sit well with me.  I wish that we could have seen Vinny pursue regular friendships at school other than listening in on Patsy's friends conversations.  I appreciated the view of Vinny's ever changing relationship with his parents and their new lives.  I did enjoy reading his story, I just had too much trouble with what felt like the glorification of a habit that would become less charming as Vinny grew older.  Let us hope he learned his lesson.