Absolute agreement about Kaladin's apparent fickleness. I think Sanderson's biggest weakness as a writer is his characters. They are mostly static and flat. Kaladin was a dramatic triumph for him. He was complex, evolving in a significant way. Usually Sanderson's characters only change in ways that seem contrived and superficial. This progress was unfortunately undermined by Kaladin's easy reversion back to his initial state. I wonder how many times we are going to have to witness him retread this ground.

Despite these shortcomings, the book is great. The world is richly imagined and Sanderson doesn't get lost in his own world the way that Jordan does in his later books.

Sanderson tries to consider and tease out real issues in his books and characters like the true nature of good leadership.

Sanderson does a fantastic job of creating difficult ethical situations for his characters, which often redeems the sometimes weaker character development. Again, Kaladin's character development (aside from his relapse) is an extraordinary exception (nearly brilliant).

Of course there is Sanderson's magic system which is great, but also he has created more in this book in terms of the purposes and intents. I love the way he seems to seriously be engaging the debate about ends justifying means (think of the King). Most authors who raise this conundrum make it nothing but a weak straw man where there is always a clear way of achieving any end without ever really having to worry about the means. I think Sanderson intends to simply create a character who is convinced (justifiably) that the end result is so critical that there are very apparently means that might be compromised and then letting the reader judge in the end.

The other weakness of Sanderson is that he is not witty at all. Or at least he is embarrassingly terrible at creating a witty character. Why he thinks Shallan pretending to be stupid and obtusely taking literal everything anyone says and then running away with the deliberate misinterpretation is witty is beyond me. Can you imagine if someone in real life said something like Shallan's response about being called a flower? You wouldn't just think they were weird. You would think they were stupid while obnoxiously trying to appear clever. It is nearly unbearable. He does a somewhat better job with Wit, but not significantly better. I catch myself groaning aloud whenever Shallan is supposed to be portrayed as clever.