What Sanderson does best, I think, is worldbuilding. There are many different kingdoms and species and a whole world of stone and intense storms with a rich ecosystem that's different than our own in several important ways. He actually reveals this massive and complex world in such a gradual way that for a while I was a little bit miffed because it was giving me a sensation of feeling that it was all disjointed, random, that none of this fit into a cohesive system, but towards the end of the book connections started to be made. Now I think I see what he's doing, and I'm really looking forward to reading more of his books and making more connections.
For instance, he has a whole system of "spren"...there are these little bright lights, kind of like will-o-wisps or something like that, but there are many different kinds that show up for many different events...windspren, firespren, painspren, gloryspren, anticipationspren...yes some of these are kind of silly and unwieldy. And for the most part these spren are for show only; they can't interact with the material world in any meaningful ways at first glance...but there are two major exceptions to this.
First there's one windspren in particular who forms a relationship with Kaladin and who forms an actual personality and memories, something unique is happening here. Second, towards the end of the book you start to find out what scientists have discovered while studying spren and there are hints that understanding them actually is linked to technological innovations. So, this becomes a very interesting rich area in Roshar, the world of these books.
Ok, the book as a whole. Strengths, worldbuilding, and pacing. There's always something to look forward to. So even though the book is massive, there are mostly lots of really short chapters that nicely segue into the next one, plenty of surprises, plenty of satisfying things.
Prose is fine, rarely elegant or quite beautiful, but not bad or annoying. Description is sparser than my taste, but I imagine is preferable for most readers. Characters are moderately deep, but this isn't Flannery O'Connor or anything. On the spectrum of character-heavy to plot-heavy, I would put this in the middle, a little more on the plot end, but honestly, it's more like he decided that he wanted to do heavy plot and character and worldbuilding and just let the book be massive. He then compensates for the insane length by being a master of pacing, where every chapter works pretty well and makes you want to keep reading. It's kind of addicting reading stuff. Which is good and bad. It's very fun, but what it doesn't give me is the deep, contemplative, comforting sense that I get when I read Tolkien. His style is absolutely nothing like that. And he doesn't have a voice that I fall in love with, so those things are probably why this doesn't hit my heart in the same way that certain other fantasy works do. So while this is amazing stuff in many ways, but doesn't reach five stars heights for me personally.
Besides that, main complaints: too long, and Dalinar is annoying. With that being said, even those complaints are mitigated. There's a big pay-off at the end for all the long slogging out through the sufferings of Bridge 4. And honestly, the sloggings of Bridge 4 were kind of fun to read...it's the sloggins of Dalinar continuing to not change for 900 pages that's not so fun. But, Dalinar has a major important change towards the end that helps redeem his character for me. Took him a long time to grow but he did eventually do it in a satisfying way.
Kaladin is easily the most likable character. I think it's unique to have a warrior leader type who is also a skilled medic. His back story is pretty gnarly too. I love the way his story is told. Nonlinear, doing flashbacks artfully as needed to gradually reveal his backstory, but starting you off close to the action of his main plot as possible with this line: "It appeared that he'd been wrong. There had been something more they could do to him. One final torment the world had reserved just for Kaladin. And it was called Bridge Four." Right from this line you know it's going to be good, and it is: the story of Bridge 4 is easily the best story in this whole thing. It starts with a group of men completely devoid of hope, completely in despair; their lives are over. They are defined by isolation, hopelessness, lack of humanity. That's where you start, and by the end...extremely satisfying.
Kaladin's character is relatable, likeable, not an idiot like most protagonists but actually quite smart. Overall a great, great character, and many of the side characters in Bridge 4 are entertaining as well.
The main POVs, in order of screentime, are Kaladin (awesome), Dalinar (annoying), and Shallan (interesting). She's a character who is simultaneously ditzy/naive on people skills, and yet also very smart and skilled in the scholarly world, blossoming into the world of intellectual learning. A lot of her feelings remind me of the feelings I had when going to college, only she has one brilliant but enslaving person as her teacher rather than a host of different teachers. She is plunged into a world of reading and study and reporting that's all consuming, but she finds that she actually kind of loves it. She's also a skilled artist which is used in a rather unique way as the story progresses and she discovers she has a hidden power which is quite frightening in some of its forms.
The twist to Shallan's story (which is revealed very early in the story so this really isn't a spoiler so much as a premise) is that she's actually studying from this person (Jasnah) in order to steal something of great magical value from her so that Shallan can save her family from ruin. While this plot is unfolding, Jasnah is teaching her about morality and ethics and philosophy that directly impacts Shallan's decisions.
Shallan's story also provides a place for us, the readers, to get to understand a little more of how magic works in this world, which is nice, since the other POV characters are basically clueless about both of those, as well as a great deal of other things.
They start to delve into the history of this world, which is only very gradually revealed even by the end of the book, but it's shown that the next book is likely going to delve into that a lot more. When I say history though, I mean exciting stuff, like where these extremely powerful shardblades and shardplate comes from, who the Radiants were, why the abandoned mankind, the origin of the voidbringers, their relevance to today's wars, etc. I think the next book is going to be pretty exciting stuff both from a worldbuilding-revealing perspective as well as an action perspective, although what exactly the sides of the coming conflict will be is yet to be seen.
