Avatar Roku is back in The Awakening of Roku. It is the latter half of his respective duology, as part of the Chronicles of the Avatar series — the young adult fiction series set within the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Set three years following the events of The Reckoning of Roku, Roku finds himself halfway through mastering the elements, yet not as trusting of himself, because of the events that happened previously. He is off to the Northern Water Tribe to begin his waterbending training when he encounters a mysterious illness that’s threatening to become an outbreak. He puts everything on hold, and is in a race against time to prevent it from getting to that point.

Author Randy Ribay returns to finish off Roku’s story in this latest installment. Over email, he explains the ease of slipping back into the world, what inspired the conflict presented in the story, why it feels really bittersweet to say goodbye to the characters he has spent the past few years writing for, and also what other characters in the Avatar universe he’d like to write for.

What did you make of the reception to The Reckoning of Roku?

To be honest, I’m not that attuned to how the book has been received outside of the responses people have shared with me face-to-face. Once I knew I’d be creating in the universe, I stepped away from fandom spaces. Also, I generally don’t read online comments or reviews about any of my books. Part of the reason is for my mental health, and part of it is to help me stay focused on the story. 

In what ways was it easier and also difficult than writing the predecessor?

Since Avatar: The Last Airbender established the highlights of Roku’s and Sozin’s lives, a lot of the work with the first book was fleshing out the characters’ backstories. Since I’d done much of that in Reckoning, it was easy to jump back into the world and feel like I already knew the main characters well enough to anticipate how they would react in any given situation. One of the most difficult things—as always—was trying to stay true to the spirit of the original series while bringing something new.

We find Roku halfway done with mastering the elements. In what ways did you have to adjust your approach to writing him?

Throughout Reckoning, Roku struggles to accept his role as the Avatar. He overcompensates for his lack of confidence by making some bold — but unwise — decisions. By the end of the book, he’s humbler and ready to begin his training. Awakening is set three years later, after he’s mastered airbending. While he has more confidence in his potential to be an effective Avatar, he struggles to trust himself to do the right thing because of the events of the first book.

Given the synopsis, I have to ask… To what extent did the COVID-19 pandemic have an influence on the story? 

Not much, explicitly. The initial inspiration came from a short-lived TV series on Syfy called Helix. I always loved the first season’s vibes of this outbreak-style mystery set deep in the Arctic, so I wanted to try to do something like that with Awakening.

Something you did in the previous book is incorporate Filipino cultural elements into the world of Avatar, specifically into the Fire Nation. To what extent can readers expect for that to continue in this installment?

There’s some, but definitely not as many. Most of the story takes place in the Northern Water Tribe, so it’s much more based in Inuit culture.

What would you say is the message for readers to take away from reading The Awakening of Roku?

I used to be an English teacher, so I’ll leave that for readers to discuss.

The Awakening of Roku caps off this duology for Chronicles of the Avatar. What will you miss about writing for Roku?

The characters. I spent so much time with them in my mind over the last couple of years, that it really does feel like saying goodbye to friends…except, I already know what’s going to happen to most of them over the course of the rest of their lives, which makes it an especially bittersweet goodbye.

What other characters in this franchise — Avatar or otherwise — would you be interested in writing for and why?

I’d love to delve into some animal sidequests in the style of Momo’s section of “Tales of Ba Sing Se,” Appa’s journey in “Appa’s Lost Days,” or even the Samurai Appa/Ronin Momo story from Free Comic Book Day. Maybe with Naga or Malaya’s gorilla-tarsier from Reckoning.

The Awakening of Roku is now available wherever books are sold.