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Sorry for resurrecting a dead thread, but I'm 20% into the book, and it being my first delve into Sanderson, I find the question interesting. It hints at why his fans find him complex, but many critics feel exactly opposite.
In the book, Sanderson goes to great lengths to explain the details of his world. If he doesn't instantly explain a "thing," rest assured that in another few chapters he will. At first I didn't notice or mind, but it's gotten a little tiring, since he's constantly doing this the way a parent explains things to a child. And for me, his ratio of this world detail vs. who are the chars, and why do they do what they do, skews too much toward the former.
It doesn't bother me that the high level "what's happening" isn't explicit yet. If one has read books like Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22, you get very good at worrying less about the existence of an explicit plot goal for the chars, and instead concentrate on the subtext. Way of Kings isn't literature the way those books are, but in this way it pretends to be, and hints at why some find it "complex."
We'll see what I conclude when I finish it.
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