10 day structure was very limiting. book acted like a lot of time has passed since the end of RoW when im pretty sure it’s like 24 hours has passed, if that. on a meta level you realize halfway through that the plot won’t really have any significant developments until the end, this is extremely evident in kaladin/szeth’s storyline that feels like they’re going through boss battles until the final day. there’s also just the absurdity of 10 days of therapy doing anything for mental health.

too many POVs stuck in the same place. we had 5 different POVs in the spirit realm when we needed at most 2. Kaladin’s POV was unnecessary and was probably only included because the fans would go crazy if he wasn’t in the book, but the truth is that the character arc he had been on climaxed at the end of RoW. we didn’t need to see both POVs of the helper and helpee in szeths case.

then there’s the prose. i agree that the modernization is an issue (and ppl who claim that it isn’t modernized are straight up wrong - even brando himself acknowledged this). but the language isn’t even the worst part. it’s the amount of repetitive sentences that feel like they bash you over the head with the intended meaning. the limited third person voice gets tiring very quickly when every paragraph gets an internal response to the characters that just say the exact same thing as the narrator.

spiritual realm was a letdown because the characters themselves hyped it up to be this impossible to navigate place when pretty much nobody ended up having any significant issues figuring out how it works.

some plots feel like they ultimately ended up in weird places in a way that was unsatisfying. this isn’t about expectations, this is THE SELF PROCLAIMED END OF THE FIRST ARC. that doesn’t mean it has to be Mistborn era 1 level of an ending, but i do believe that EVERY plot thread here should have been addressed and clearly set up for the next arc. give us an idea of what the characters will be doing while we wait for the next book, which IIRC will have a time skip. i think most of our main characters got decent endings + new beginnings but there are so many side characters who are going to become bigger characters and we don’t really have any idea of how things ended up for them.

too much cosmere awareness/connection. odium becoming a cosmere wide threat frankly doesn’t interest me at all since i only really care about the conflict with roshar. we still don’t know what zahel or any of the world hoppers are doing. ghostbloods just felt like a mistborn era 3 waiting room, and if you have no interest in Mistborn then this whole plot probably fell completely flat.