Challenge 6- Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise Review

Title: The Promise
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Illustrator: Gurihiru
Pages: 240
Version:  Hardcover
Publisher: Dark Horse Books

This week, I read the series of graphic novels "Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise". It consists of three books and is a continuation of events after the television show. They also come as one volume with all three stories inside. The illustrations are absolutely fantastic and they stayed very true to the original show in my opinion. The style is extremely similar and the colors all add together to create the tone that the show originally established. The story was also really interesting; it made sense in relation to the end of the story the show told, but was unique. The dialogue between characters was quite good as well. The characters in the show were very established and unique by the end of the series and so it was a big task, but they pulled it off wonderfully. All the characters said things that were very true to their characters and it was really interesting to see them in a different sort of environment. The one problem that I had with the books was a couple of moments that almost lost that connection. There are some little phrases and things that characters say that don't seem to fit occasionally. It was subtle enough that it did not make the book any worse which is great. One other thing that bothered me was simply Zuko's character. This could be partially because he was one of my least favorite characters in the series, but I think he also changed slightly in the graphic novels. He seems even more unsure of himself than he was in the series if that's even possible. His indecisiveness is probably one of the most frustrating things about his character to me. Since he lacks so much faith in himself, he is easy to doubt, even if he is right. That was what I disliked most about the novels and it mainly is due to personal preference. I would really only recommend these books if you have knowledge of the original show even though they do partially recap at the beginning. It is only really effective if you know the story because its real purpose is to be a continuation. For anyone with knowledge of the show, I would definitely recommend it. Now I'd like to address the question of if I believe graphic novels should be held in the same literary regard as more typical books. I definitely think there is a difference between graphic novels and "normal" books. Reading both of them is a completely different experience considering that graphic novels are based on words and illustrations and books are usually just based on words. As far as quality of story, I would say that they are both really fantastic. Graphic novels have really amazing stories most of the time, they are just communicated in a different way than "normal" books. Essentially, I would say that they are very different to read, but I think that they are both of the same quality and should be held in the same regard. Neither is any lesser because of how it is told and they can both have incredible stories.