Eejit

Um, why?

The whole Nightmother boon and curse 'thing' is massively fairytale, no just that one story.

You need to watch more sitcoms I think you are all infected with Alethi snobbery! A powerful, intelligent and plot-important character? Well he's got to be at least semi-Lighteyes secretly, right?! You all make me sick!

The story gets worse. Some characters, worldbuilding and events are inconsistent to an almost retcon-like degree. Jesus-style plot armor is prevalent. The big finale was a rather cheesy anti-climax. It wasn't all bad by any means and Malazan certainly still outclasses Sword of Truth, but I'd never list the books as top-tier. The Deathgate series is another one I found disappointingly overrated. Approach with caution and be warned that if you didn't like the first book it doesn't improve that significantly.

And my point was that even that is an unwarranted assumption.

Well,

Odium is not entire, parts of his power are invested in the Unmade, the Parshendi gods. So Broken One fits.

The pacing was naturally increasing from it's nadir even before BS took over as the series built towards to climax and threads started to come together again.

Except possibly when we have the viewpoint of a Shard such as Harmony

Not really, since those aspects of Williams' books were themselves "inspired" by Tolkien with minor tweaks...

Different strokes. I'd forgotten all of their names until I read your post.

GRRM's work is excellent (apart from the "erotic" scenes) as are his anti-heroes like Tyrion or Arya. It's just Abercrombie's writing that is gratuitously dark and unrealistic. How do his characters deal with a hard knock life? They become sociopaths. Yawn. People say that this is realistic, but if you want to read about someone suffering from PTS-like issues in high fantasy look at Rand al'Thor - that's real, it was based on RJ's own experience of 'Nam.

I'd definitely agree with rating Sanderson's stuff above Abercrombie's dreary and gratuitously grim-dark depressionfest. Just when you start to think one single character is not an cremhole he suddenly beats a female relative for no good reason. Malazan didn't do much for me either, characters are killed off even more quickly than in GRRM but it's never permanent - everyone returns from the dead, sometimes repeatedly. Very tabletop-RPG derived. Oh and just avoid Sword of Truth like the plague. Ayn Rand with dragons. And evil chickens. Just no. I'm loving the Kingkiller series though, and Jim Butcher's work. I'd also recommend you all check out The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham, an excellent character-driven series in a really unique fantasy setting.

Thinking "what would Jasnah do in response to these events/circumstances" is not the same as seeking her approval at every turn. One can emulate a person's actions without copying all of their personal attitudes.

WoB is that if Odium were to leave Roshar now he'd leave a large portion of his power behind. Which implies that he is not whole. Also there's this: