Lost Princesses and Atheistic Gods

Warbreaker was my first foray into Brandon Sander's adult work, and even though I enjoyed his YA fiction, I approached his high fantasy novel with low expectations. In my very limited experience, when it comes to medieval style world-building, Tolkien did it first, best, and everything that's followed has been a poor imitation. Even the contemporary fantasy writers who do their research (i.e.: George R.R. Martin) lose me with their nihilism. The real world, which is bad enough, isn't as bad as Westeros. Sanderson himself sounds like something of a one-man book factory, so I alreayd had some trouble respecting him. But since he is so popular, I figured that I should give him a shot.