Authweight

I like this interpretation a lot. Overall, the themes of a tension between life and death (when is it okay to kill? When you kill to protect), strength and weakness (only the broken can find true strength and power), and journey and destination (the best way to reach your destination is to focus on the journey) are built into these books on all levels. I'm not certain if this death rattle was meant to specifically address Szeth or not, but I think this interpretation is worthwhile one way or the other.

My guess is that the Dakhor monks would have trouble transforming themselves further away from Fjordell (IIRC their monastery is near the capital). The reason the Dakhor magic works in Elabtris and Teod is because the magic causes a transformation that remains even after they leave. Although you do see them teleport, and you see Dilaf disrupt AonDor, so there seems to be some active magic happening out there. But my hunch is still that location is important to making the transformation as powerful as possible, hence their locating the monastery near the capital.

I think new readers should start with Mistborn or Stormlight, mainly because I think those are his strongest works. The first Mistborn novel is good because it is relatively short, self-contained to a reasonable degree (it doesn't leave off with huge cliffhangers or anything like that if I recall correctly), and it shows off a lot of Brandon's signature style pretty early on. For readers who like long works and are perfectly happy to start a big one, WoK is the best place to start. It has the best world building, the most interesting characters, and is just overall the best thing so far as long as you don't mind the length. I think the stories are set up so that you don't really need cosmere stuff for them to make sense, and I don't think new readers need to care about the cosmere stuff at all. I just think they should hop in at the most compelling stories.

I think that in Shardic duels, Intent is more important than raw power. The key to beating a shard is to figure out a way to "trap" it in such a way that you can use your power in line with your Intent while they cannot use their power against you without going against their Intent. My guess is that Odium's kills have been achieved through these sorts of carefully planned traps. Harmony has much more raw power than Odium, but Odium's key advantage is that he is able to use his full power in line with his intent when he focuses on destroying that which he hates. The battle would be decided by circumstance and Intent, not by who has the most power.

I think the way we should see it is that the shards being separate makes each one incomplete and strange, even at times contradictory. Each shard represents a key part of Adonalsium's divine Intent, but separated from the others loses the context that allows it to function correctly. This is why Odium's hatred is not "evil" per se. Hatred is important when it is focused on the correct things. The problem with Odium is that the shard lacks the context to direct that hatred in a rational way. Instead he just hates indiscriminately. Something else to consider though is that hatred may not be the same as wanting to destroy. It could be that Odium's goal isn't to destroy life, but rather to make existence a meaningless torment for those living it. That seems to me to be more hateful than simple destruction, and is what distinguishes Odium from Ruin.