Shallan - Like or Dislike?

[Guck]

My first read through, I hated her. Couldn't wait to get through the chapter and get back to Kaladin or Dalinar. Now that I'm reading it again, I'm finding I like her. She is relate able, she has good depth, a personality. I really don't know why I hated reading her before. Maybe it was because her story arch started slower the Kaladin's? Either way, can't wait to read more of her!

[AerionBFII]

HATED her the first book. The Jam, the awkward flirting,The poor attempts at humour, The Jam, the awkward flirting, The poor attempts at humour it was too much..Until the last 2-3 chapters id be grinding my teeth until i was back to Dalinar or Kaladin. Second book there was definitely massive character improvement and i came to enjoy her a lot more. The spacing out annoyed me a little but i hardly noticed it on my rereads. Im actually quite fond of her now but shes not in my top 5 SA Characters. 

[Chaos]

No Oathbringer content outside of its spoiler board at all.

[kari-no-sugata]

Looking at the tWoK annotations so far, it's clear that Brandon was willing to challenge readers big time. I wonder what he'll say about Shallan when the annotations reach her chapters. Of the main characters so far (those we've seen plenty of viewpoints from), I think Shallan is probably the biggest outlier - there's almost a sense of "what's she even doing here in the first place" and she often makes it hard for readers to sympathise with her, eg by struggling to justify her motivations for theft early on and in general calling attention to her deficiencies (something she continues doing into WoR). She's also an artist, which feels rather useless, even if she's a supernaturally good one.

So my impression is that many readers are not willing to give Shallan the benefit of the doubt. I've always found this to be a shame as I've been fascinated by her since the start. While her story in tWoK wasn't conventionally exciting I was intrigued by her and I found just as much satisfaction in re-reading her story as I did Kaladin's and Dalinar's - after the initial read I would often just re-read one particular character's thread rather than the whole book.

After WoR came out I spent a lot of time re-reading her chapters, trying to read between the lines and get deep into her character. Hopefully that'll pay off in OB.