What I'm seeing with my friends is that now 100% of us have been "taken out" by Book 3, 4 or 5 (Wind and Truth is 5) of Stormlight. No-one I know is continuing to read Stormlight. Whereas like, almost everyone I know who reads fantasy novels (which is surprisingly large number of people) read the books 1 & 2, and most of them made it to 3. 3 was where it really got obvious how much was just waffling on about nothing, and I genuinely felt like Sanderson was wasting my time, which is something I'm almost never experienced with an author.
It's sad because whilst his earlier books have some digressions, some repetition and some oddities, they're not just blather or waffle or meta-wank. It's a little horrifying to compare it to say Gene Wolfe's Book of The New Sun, which is also 1200-ish pages. I'm sure Sanderson would strongly agree that Wolfe is far better writer (he's weirdly humble for a man who can't be edited, which makes me think "Yes men" is the problem more than him), but even ignoring stuff like the quality of prose (incomparably higher with Wolfe), the sheer density of ideas, thoughts, and meaning in The Book of The New Sun is probably 50x (no joke) that of Stormlight 3.
