Has Naomi's narrative been abandoned?
Prior to this book Naomi seemed to be tied to a bunch of concepts that had previously been brought up.
First, Great Soul racism against humans. It’s so internalized in how they behave that we regularly get lines where they refer to themselves as something completely different and separate from humans, even to the point of describing themselves as being a different species. And not just from villainous characters, but essentially every Great Soul expresses this to some extent. Except Naomi. And yet they also position themselves as the only ones who can “save” such weak creatures. Previously, when Naomi was a naturally occurring Great Soul, she was an inherent threat to this entire conceptual structure. If normal humans, given enough investment, could become Great Souls then the claim of sovereignty over their society that the continuously reincarnating Great Soul have made is false.
Second, the Nightmare Lady was previously and repeatedly presented as an expression of trauma. The narrative showed us, via Scorio’s perspective, how transformation powers and burning mana can influence your perception, making you feel powerful and in control. Thus, it made perfect sense that Naomi, abandoned and persecuted, would lean into that strength as a coping mechanism for the loneliness, injustice, painful memories, and self loathing.
Third, Naomi is/was our first insight into how “the first Great Souls” worked and experienced the process of “becoming a great soul” for the very first time, or at least the closest we will get until someone becomes an Imperator. That she would gain abilities without a “vision” was very intriguing, and potentially suggested that the rigid process of Great Soul progression we have seen might actually be much more artificial than how it has previously been presented. At a minimum she was a vital window of insight into what the very earliest Great Souls may have been going through during the earliest years of the invasion.
Even the concept of the Nightmare Lady as being the result of a portion of a “Queen” being inserted into her, even if it was introduced very late narratively, could have worked well within the above framework. If the Queen wasn’t actually a different entity but a non-human set of instincts that were an inherent part of Naomi due to the essence, then it wouldn't have shifted her narrative concept very much while tying her into the "Fiends aren't evil" sub-narrative. If the Queen were separate but lacked any memories it would make her more like a child that has been shaped by Naomi as much as Naomi has been shaped by her (with the narrative either heading towards them working together or towards using that place of dark power to finish fusing them perfectly so their individual instincts would stop fighting against each other). That would have been a natural direction to go if Phil had committed to both of them being genuinely diminished by their separation. Any of these would also powerfully follow the narrative’s continual theme of “the fiends aren’t actually the bad guys” by having a character with a symbiotic relationship with a fiend, someone with “a foot in both worlds”, be the secondary protagonist as we begin to move purposefully towards the series resolution.
Instead, not only is Naomi immediately as powerful as the narrative needs her to be to not be invalidated in the short term for participation in their current mana region, but she has apparently secretly been a bog-standard reincarnated Great Soul this entire time. And not only that, she just so happens to be Scorio’s doomed lover from their original world and to have light-based powers after getting darkness powers forced on her.
So:
Her role as the lone “normal human” and inherent challenge to the racism/speciesism of the Great Souls? Dead.
The story about struggling with and overcoming negative internalized thought patterns that were borne out and reinforced by circumstances that are no longer relevant? Magically solved by making it all the fault of a completely different entity.
Her direct challenge to the singular authority of the Great Soul system over humans proven simply by her existing? Gone.
Her outside perspective as a Great Soul that must learn and engage with their power system without the crutch of getting free instincts and understanding from sealed memories? Annihilated.
Her potential role as a bridge between humans and fiends? Killed in the cradle.
Even the sub-narrative about Fiends being more complicated and less Black-and-White is undermined by it turning out that her specific fiend is from an evil mind-control faction, actually.
And it all happened so suddenly. Right up to the very last second, where the Queen was expressing confusion and battling with how she actually kinda likes Naomi and Nox, it seemed like the narrative would continue to follow the above pattern. And then it is completely abandoned. She suddenly gains a full suite of light powers with no training or effort, suffering no diminishment by losing the being who enabled her to become a full Great Soul in the first place, implies she has half remembered / dream-like memories of a past where those were her powers (no set up), and is no longer a regular human, all in one fell swoop.
So I find myself wondering, did Phil Tucker make a last-minute narrative pivot, abandoning all the setup that has previously gone into Naomi?
I hope not, but at this point the only alternative explanation I can think of would be if the system of Great Souls itself is some kind of manipulation, and the memories and powers she so easily gained was due to the system trying to rapidly fill in the Gaps left by the loss of the Nightmare Lady in the easiest way it could. That would also explain why this series of events is so overwhelmingly cliché (Naomi being the Septer and thus having a past romantic connection with Scorio, rapidly starting to act like a different person, getting light powers after previously having darkness powers, etc) as the intelligence behind the system is just choosing the components that fit the best with whatever it happens to have on hand.
Otherwise, this seems like a heavy departure from the story Naomi was traveling up to this point.
.........
Edit: Also, it's weird that we are abandoning the only truly unique being introduced in the series. In the very same book the reinforced how dwelling/relying on the past is bad (Dameon and the harm his past memories have done to his ability to progress, the implied gradual fall of the Herdmen, and various comments about how the supposed "right way to grow as a Great Soul" may actually be wrong) we seem to have eliminated the first truly unique being in the setting. The Nightmare Lady, as a fiend hybrid Great Soul, was a completely unprecedented existence as far as we have been shown, the first genuinely "new path to power", one that bases it's abilities on the world in which they live and the creatures that live there instead of the concepts of the old world.