Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-27713488-20161204112754/@comment-31113156-20170123192629

I really don't like the idea of bringing Wendis back from the dead.

She's been dead for decades, not only does that make for an extremely awkward, out-of-touch character, her practical knowledge is all but useless. Not only that, but reanimating the dead greatly undermines ANY narrative that involves consequences, the ability to overturn one of the greatest risks of your endeavors is inherently cheap and takes away from the consequences of any action. "Sure, I'll send Aka to go fight 500 orcs, if she dies I'll just bring her back to life" etc.

It can be handled well, but not without dedicating a lot of time to it and that takes away from the focus of the story. Wendis' death is also a major part of Simon's character, taking that away from him just greatly undermines who he is and why he does what he does in the way that he does it.

Wendis being a major component of the soul shard also seems awkward to implement, not only was the situation described as having a huge number of humans and succubi dying (so it'd have to be justified how she's somehow so special among them) it also seems odd to have a single soul be so prevalent in a soul shard, especially given Simon's own struggles with maintaining a balance between it and himself.

That said, we still know fairly little about soul shards and their origins, for all we know soul shards aren't some magical relic or fragment of a greater entity, but instead an accumulation or mix of a great number of other souls, the volatile mix of souls lending their host power at the cost of corrupting them (the souls' residual worldly desires gripping their host)

Also the godess of magic doesn't seem all that close to Simon to me, just aware of the world and the part he plays in it, she is after all the second godess (we know of) that reached out to Simon in some manner. The conversation between the two divine figures in the epilogue of chapter 2 is very relevant here, as it makes some reference to what is presumably Simon being a major factor in the machinations of the divine figure, which is speculated to be Ivala but might as well be this godess of magic (Ivala being something different, or the godess of magic just being Ivala)

It's going to be interested how that works out, but I doubt Wendis is going to end playing a direct role in TLS (at least I hope not)