I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I was actually really impressed with how the divine descriptions were applicable to all characters, they even explain why a perfectly good hero might get drawn to an evil deity.
It's coherent (though I've always kind of loathed the Wall of Souls, always seemed like a bit of a "screw you" to characters who just didn't want to bother learning about the fantasy pantheon), but it's not exactly practical to use in play. Unless you have a very thorough knowledge of each of the gods and what they control, any character you play is only really going to worry about their particular patron, and even then it's lip-service and curse-words. Or to maybe put it another way: if I'm a cleric of Tempus, I care a lot about Tempus, but I'm not going to mention how my cleric also prays to Kossuth when he starts a campfire. If I just play a Fighter, maybe he honors Tempus (because he doesn't fancy being mortar in the afterlife), but it doesn't influence my gameplay at all, and you'd be lucky if I even knew there WAS a god of fire as a player, even though my character ostensibly utters a curse to Kossuth when his torch goes out.
Also, I haven't finished the book yet, I'm only on page 50, but so far the greater world perspective helps me better understand how my character fits or wouldn't fit in sword coast. As in, "Oh, if I wanted to make an Elf focused on herding animals, I know where to set their home town."
That's part of this kind of random assortment - I wouldn't know by reading the section on Elves that animal herding was even something they did much of. There's the magicy elves (who probably use cantrips), there's the hunty elves (which probably don't do much herding), there's the dark elves (who maybe herd lizards?). If herding animals is a thing they wanted elf players to hook onto, why isn't that theme reinforced? That could totally be something that sets FR elves a bit apart from Generic Fantasy Elves, something where I can say this elf who herds Animal X is an archetype that FR allows for that no other setting does, something special to FR and D&D. But I couldn't tell you that from the bit about elves in the book.