Of the good things, I forgot how interesting having the three main characters was. Even though I found Shallan's plotline the most interesting, all three plotlines were interesting (although I wish they had weaved together a bit more).

My main frustration is this- STOP REJECTING/IGNORING SUPERPOWERS.

To a certain extent, all three main characters do this. And, amusingly enough, all three need their secondary characters to snap them out of it actually start thinking about stuff.

The first, of course, is Kaladin. The most annoying thing is that he REJECTS a freaking SHARDBLADE. Yes, I know it's supposed to be poignant, his squadmates were all dead, etc. But come ON. It looks like there's some kind of as-yet-to-be explained lore explanation for this- Syl (Kaladin's spren friend) later on expresses a profound, if unexplained, dislike for the blades. I'm not sure why she would- maybe, as an honorspren, she's reminded of when the Radiants abandoned their duty?

But it's a SHARDBLADE, and he basically spits on it. Ugh

Kaladin also goes through the Marvel Comics "boo hoo I have superpowers, does this make me a freak?" phase. Luckily, his squadmates and Syl snap him out of it, but it's still annoying. And of course it's not until the end of the book that someone actually says "Hm, maybe we should test out what you can do!"

Dalinar is next. He doesn't exactly REJECT his visions, but I still find it silly that he didn't do anything to try to confirm their authenticity until his girlfriend suggested it. Again, there are justifications (and these are fairly reasonable): He was keeping them a secret, he was accepting them as true already, he's an illiterate and thus didn't have much access to the scientific method.

(Sidenote: I find the whole male-female dichotomy of the Alethi interesting, but very strange, and not supremely realistic. It doesn't bother me that much, but I think that the realm should at least have had a Queen instead of the normal kingship. Sure it's cool that men do the fighting, but knowledge is power, and literacy is one of the cornerstones of knowledge)

Finally, Shallan. She has a shardblade, and it never comes up (Sidenote: Her big family dilemma is that the house is about to go bankrupt. A Shardblade is worth an insane amount of money. Why wouldn't she sell it?). She's haunted by symbol-headed spectres that only appear in her drawings, and does nothing about it (even doing a bit of research, or asking around, would have been something!) I think the reason why I like her story arc most of all is because, at the end of it, she DOES ask what the hell is going on, and actually receives some of an answer.

So, yeah. One of my fantasy pet peeves is when someone finds out something amazing, and then sticks their head in the sand.

That said, it was an enjoyable read, and I'm pretty excited for Book 2.