I enjoyed my time with the Mistborn trilogy, but reading Elantris actually killed any desire to read more of his stuff.
Elantris, being his first published novel, is just alright. Same with Mistborn trilogy being his next books. He improved A TON as a writer post-Mistborn up until about 4 years ago when he's started to go downhill in quality (probably because he's juggling too much at once, or doesn't get edited as much idk).
I tell people who are willing to give Sanderson a shot to read two things and then decide whether they are in or out of the Cosmere storyline:
-The Emperor's Soul novella - short and great
-Warbreaker - standalone novel and a lot of fun (and also pretty interesting magic system)
If someone likes those two, then I typically say to just start with Elantris and read forward in release order.
Right now I think Sanderson peaked in 2016/2017 with Wax & Wayne #3 and Stormlight #3 back to back. Both fantastic books doing very different things. Hell I'll even include Skyward #1 (2018) in that group when he was riding high. Skyward #1 is YA sci-fi but a lot of fun in an anime way.
But then after writing hit after hit after hit the last few years have been:
2019 - Skyward 2 - Alright-ish.
2020 - Stormlight #4 - Alright-ish but needed more editing and worst book in the series.
2021 - Skyward 3 - Apparently people really dislike this like Madrun. I haven't read it yet.
2022 - Wax & Wayne #4 - Alright-ish but kind of a weaker let down finale to the series and worst maybe book in the series.
Going from his best years to a bunch of alright-ish/weak stuff year after year is pretty concerning. 2019 is around when his popularity blew up and he started hosting his own convention and doing a million things and being involved in film/tv adaptation work, etc...
The big concern about his writing quality lately is that 2024 is Stormlight #5 which is the big FINALE to 5,000 page+ epic journey. Everyone wants it to be awesome like book #2/#3, but if it's more like book #4 in quality...gonna really be a bummer for the series. He needs to get his writing quality back to where it used to be.
2023 is also Skyward #4 which is the finale to that series and I think people won't be happy if it's the quality of Skyward #2/#3.
That being said he also wrote 4 standalone novels which are releasing this year, with the first one being out, and it'll be interesting to see how the quality of them compare.
He also seems like a giant douche.
Though this I can't agree with. Dude's always come across as pretty humble and probably the most open minded Mormon I've seen as a celebrity figurehead. He believes in his god and all the mormon stuff but he'll write anti-religion god-killing LGBT stuff so I appreciate that he keeps his personal beliefs separate from his fiction storywriting. It's like I have a friend whose basically a pastor and he loves Shin Megami Tensei about hanging with Lucifer and killing god. Some people can separate fiction storytelling from their personal beliefs and Sanderson comes across as that.
Also he's a huge weaboo gamer nerd in his 40s and his tastes line up a lot with mine. Dude loves FFX, Bloodborne, etc... and all of that shows in his writing which has a weaboo anime/game feel. Like Xenogears is my favorite game of all time and I love that religious imagery x mecha x anime x millenia spanning story stuff and Cosmere is...pretty damn close to that, so it hits all the right buttons for me.
Finally I like Sanderson because I think he's a very good humor writer. Some of his books and characters are very funny to me, which makes them entertaining reads when they keep me laughing.
