I think a lot of the plot points that were not finalized in this series was because this series was simply the middle volume in a trilogy a trilogies, I have said before that the Aspect-Emperor series is the proverbial cliffhanger volume of the series, where the heroes fall off the edge of a cliff and we hold our breath trying to see if they fell over to their deaths.

I agree about the trilogy of trilogies thing. RSB's statements seem to say he's largely starting from scratch, but he's clearly held a lot of threads over to pick up later. I guess I could end up eating my words, but there's a difference between punting something to the next series and just dropping it forever without explanation. Even red herrings require something to signal that they were in fact red herrings. Take Mimara's Chorae. Her leaving it behind tells us it was not intrinsically special since the chances of her seeing it again are nil. But we can still speculate on what the Eye actually did happen to make her mistakenly believe the thing was somehow unique.

I'll make my final interpretative decision once I get there in the canon artifact but as far as my reading goes so far I *still* attribute Kellhus' dialogue regarding "seeing himself" in the Inverse Fire and making "pacts with the Pit" to Ajokli.

I definitely think that what Kellhus saw was at least partially influenced by Ajokli's growing influence, but I couldn't really find any real clues that he'd been completely possessed earlier that the final moments in the Golden Room.

I first read the series late last year/early this year and did a reread in anticipation of TUC and i think I came away at least as satisfied with TUC as I was with TTT.

 I really haven't waded into any fan discussions in the lead up so I wasn't really aware of the points of emphasis or prediction. So from my point of view disappointment over things like the nature of the Inchoroi and what we saw of known members of the Consult doesn't really strike me as much of a big deal. What did we ever really get in the narrative of Sheonanra other than that one look of a fragile contrivance? What would Mekeritrig be but a barely competent Eratic? And Aurax and Aurang seem to be the least of their race. To me it seemed perfectly logical that the Dunyain made hash of them, especially since the Dunyain seem to have arrived at the status of the the Inchoroi progenitors independently. To the extent that readers hope for an as yet unrevealed explanation to the great mystery in any narrative, I get why it's disappointing. But I think it's just difficult to deliver on that and it's not really unheard of for an author to make his first mystery also be integral to his last.

Akka's arc continuing to dwell on the nature of the Dunyain read as a built in red herring prior to TUC- what did it matter if they're dead and Kellhus might have abandoned their ways? As it turns out fathoming the Dunyain remained extremely important and will likely remain so since now Bakker has tied any questions about the Inchoroi to their makers and those makers have an analogue in the Dunsult.