-I apologize for the vague and patchy synopsis. However, given the contents of the story I had little to work with. Here's an interview with Sanderson that might clarify things a bit.
Overall Merit: First off, the cover is gorgeous, but that's through no merit of the author. I think this book disappointed me more than it would someone else because the Mistborn Trilogy was just fantastic. For some reason, Sanderson was able to capture all of his literary prowess in those books, but fell far from the mark in this standalone novel. I do have to give credit where it's due and say that Sanderson is a genius at creating new worlds. The world in Warbreaker was intrinsically fascinating and thrilling, but the rest of the story, plot, characters, etc fell flat. Score- 7
Characters: Often times when there are a lot of perspectives going on at the same time, a reader will favor one perspective over the other perspectives. In fact, I've yet to find a multi-perspective book where this hasn't been the case for me. Then again, this is all relative because I found nearly all the characters to be annoying. Vivenna was bratty and spoiled and Sanderson kept talking about how she was 'so well controlled', but I never really saw it. Okay, I sort of did, but only through a really annoying plot device that he exploited far more than he should have. Vivenna and Siri, as royal princesses of Idris have the ability to change their hair color based on mood. Sanderson used this as a copout because instead of giving us other indicators as to how the girls were feeling it would just be like "her hair flared red", "her hair bleached", etc. Siri was also annoying because for such a 'rebellious' girl, she really didn't do anything all that rebellious. I don't know, Vin and Elend (Mistborn) were more real for me and I actually liked them as people. Score- 5
Blush Factor: This was a presence in the book, somewhat. I mean it's weird, Mistborn was uber chaste and then Sanderson spends a good deal of time talking about just how big Mercystar and Blushweaver's (two of the Returned) breasts are. Then there's the whole weird thing going on with Susebron and Siri (horrible name choice by the way). I don't know, I mean the Siri x Susebron thing wasn't bad, it was kind of sweet actually so kudos for that, but then he tried to do something with Vivenna and Vasher. The whole book was all over the place. This wasn't a terrible aspect, but neither was it that important. Solid, I guess. Score- 7
Structure: There were too many perspectives and I didn't enjoy reading most of them, in fact I kind of skimmed all the chapters that didn't involve Siri and Susebron--the only side story I found moderately entertaining. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I didn't really care about most of the characters, but Susebron, the God King intrigued me and I actually somewhat wanted to find out what happened with him, even though I could care less about the rest of the story. Score- 6
Plot: Ok, this was really, really contrived. There were way too many things going on and I even though the book was very long, it wasn't nearly long enough to flesh out all the details Sanderson was trying to cram into 600 pages. To be honest, all I got was there was some kind of conspiracy with the God King and a war was on the horizon. There were about 20 different rebel factions and it was nigh impossible to keep track of. Things were going on with Vivenna and some other things with Lightsong. Like I said, the only chapters I actually liked reading were the ones with Siri and Susebron. Score- 5
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