I think the simplest answer is the best.

 

Nakomi is Harriet. Nakomi helped Rand do the body swap. Harriet helped Brandon take over for RJ. Body swap = Author change.

 

RJ knew that there was a possibility that he couldn't finish the series, and gave his approval to have the series finished by another author. Maybe it was during this time that he conceived of the body swap ending and altered the original ending. This might also explain the viewing of Rand's 3 girls and the boat. It got lost in the shuffle.

 

The reason that Brandon isn't commenting on this is that it's a bit personal, being between RJ and Harriet.

This was also my initial understanding of the Nakomi character.

Additionally, this sort of makes sense when you consider the scene with Aviendha when they share a meal & a cuppa together and discuss the future of the Aiel. Perhaps a RL conversation between Harriet and Sanderson inserted into the narative.

Been reading these since the late 90s, had A Memory of Light on my shelf for a while now as was reluctant to close out the series for good but picked it up a few days ago.

I thought it was okay, the whole thing plays out well but it lacked any resolution. Several elements annoyed me.

- Firstly, I liked how the story wasn't afraid to kill characters off like Egwene, Gawyn, Birgette Siuan etc. but found it disappointing that characters I'd warmed to over the years like Bashere and Byrne weren't even given a few lines of narrative to show their deaths. Killing some of these guys "off screen" just seemed cheap.

- Demandred suffering from a terrible dose "silly bad guy" syndrome. Firstly, although he had to dispatch Logain, fighting the 3 sword fights was incredibly pointless and stopped him from commanding his armies, not to mention the destruction he was channeling down. This guy fights 4 duels, mortally wounding 3 opponents yet he is the only one who dies where the duels occur. I would have expected less mercy from one of the most evil men remaining alive ;) He lets Gawyn leave and have his final few dying words, Galad is pointlessly allowed to continue living in the story, and as for the Lan moment - this was the single worst part of the entire series. It served no purpose to keep him alive, just let the man die already. Gah. And finally, this is one of the greatest general masterminds ever, yet he manages to lose a battle in which he had overwhelming numbers even before the Sharans arrived. Hmmm!

- Perrin and bloody Slayer. This has to be the most boring drawn out duel i've ever read, occuring throughout several books. I groaned each time I saw Perrin's name at the beginning of a new POV. Let's be honest, we all knew Perrin wins so why did it have so many chapters both in this book and others dedicated to it. Just kill Slayer already so we can get back to the less predictable action already! It was tedious.

- Faile survives.

- The Seanchan arc is left unresolved. The rest of the world is depleted and exhausted while these natural conquerors are still relatively fresh. It is only "dealt" with insofar as the agreement Tuon made with Rand in the space of 2 minutes. Hardly convincing, not to mention the implications of Aviendha's vision.

- Aginor / Osang'ar... where is he? Come to think of it, why hasn't Asmodean been reincarnated either? And Mesana, her mind was broken but any darkfriend could have slit her throat and let Mr Dark Lord stick her in a brand spanking new body. Three Forsaken who would surely have come in handy what with, you know, the last battle happening 'n all

- Shaidar Haran goes out with a whimper, I almost missed it entirely.

- And finally back to the resolution, or lack thereof. To me it seemed that you're reading hundreds of pages of non-stop action and commotion, carefully following each characters fate page by page through chaos... and then it's all over in a blink with Rand riding into the sunset on a horse. There was no consolidation at the end, counting the dead, reuniting characters in victory and seeing the human side of their stories and getting some type of closure or dealing with their losses. One simple chapter showing characters in the aftermath when everyone is picking up the pieces after the dead have been laid to rest wouldnt have gone amiss, if BS was running out of pages he could borrow from that damn Perrin / Slayer duel. I would've very much liked to see what the characters do afterwards, such as Gaul, Pevara, Logain, Flinn, Talmanes etc or how they view the previous few days now that they have had time to rest and properly absorb everything that has occured.