From what I saw in his WoT books, Sanderson forces a lot of stuff. I would probably never in a million years have predicted the outcome in the Hall of the Tower meeting in ToM, whereas I was one of the winners in the contest on wotmania to predict a plot point in KoD. That's not because Sanderson is a more original writer who breaks the mold, though. It was because familiarity with Jordan's work, or the details & consistency Jordan had provided over 10.5 books, made me sufficiently comfortable in the setting to extrapolate a natural progression. Sanderson's plots happened without anything to back them up, there is nothing previously told about the Sitters that suggest why they would vote as they did or say what they said. It just happened because that's what he wrote down. There was no rhyme or reason, just his needing to get from point A to point D (or thinking he needed to get there), and being unable to do it in an organic or coherent manner. It's one thing to write a book that has the readers going "Whoa, the good guys lost?" but a whole other thing to achieve a satisfactory resolution that works from that point. Ned Stark's death fits, as the subsequent elaboration of aSoI&F shows. It's a natural outgrowth of in-character choices various people made that make sense in their world and from their perspective. The main reason we did not expect it, is from our expectations of narrative structure blinding us to what is likely to happen in that story. There was nothing unexpected or shocking about the Red Wedding, and that's not a slur on Martin, because it was not supposed to be a surprise, and by that point, it makes sense in the context of the story. The horror and loss experienced, on the other hand, is also earned, not through copious descriptions of death and gore, but because Martin made the characters real and the stakes understood. So does Kelsier's rebellion fall into that category? Does his defeat feel earned in the context of the story, or is it just something that happens because Sanderson wanted to do something different? Is the loss of his defeat earned, in that you think there's a chance they will succeed for reasons other than narrative structure, or is it just Sanderson moving the goalposts. Does the eventual destruction of the bad guy happen in a plausible way after the good guys lose, with no last minute save, or is it as arbitrary as various people randomly offering Egwene support or approval for no reason you can extrapolate from their portrayals up to that point?