Nightmare Fuel / Words of Radiance

• Szeth in this book shifts from kind of awesome, as we saw from his point of view in The Way of Kings (2010) previously, to utterly terrifying as we shift to the point of view of his targets, specifically Dalinar Kholin. In particular, his progressive Villainous Breakdown is extremely disturbing. Furthermore, he himself is an in-universe example for the aforementioned target and his family.
• We finally get a good look at the Voidbringers- and they are far worse than anyone anticipated. They are actually parshmen/Parshendi who have bonded to a Voidspren, much the same way as the Knights Radiant bond their spren. Except that bonding a Voidspren is flat-out Demonic Possession, turning normal, sane parshmen/Parshendi into horrible, violent lightning monsters- and the person they were pre-bond is entirely aware of this. Their true selves spend the entire time they're possessed screaming in fear and agony as their bodies go about their business. And the Everstorm is going to do this to every single one of them.
• One of the most dangerous fighters in the whole Cosmere, a man who has managed to destabilize much of the world single-handed, has now been handed one of the most dangerous weapons in all the Cosmere, a thing that's half-One Ring half-Frostmourne, and is now answering to a dangerously unhinged Knight Templar.
  • The mere fact that Nightblood is not kept in check by Vasher anymore would be terrifying.
• There's a man whose cleverness is inversely proportional to his compassion. When he's very clever, he thinks it's perfectly acceptable to force citizens with below-average intelligence to commit suicide. He's now following a plan he developed on a day when he was at least hundreds of times that clever, which involves spreading civil wars all around the world to slowly conquer it, and killing whoever could make it difficult. Oh, and this man is a king, perfectly capable of pulling off such a plan, and by now it's actually succeeding.
• The state of Shardblades, which are spren trapped on the edge of life and death, and in constant agony when summoned because they are essentially continuously reliving the moment of their deaths. Also, those bonded to living spren can hear the blade screaming when they touch it. And so can anyone else touching it at the time. When Kaladin catches Relis's blade in his hands, Relis panics and runs away screaming in terror. Kaladin himself is temporarily incapacitated.