There was an introduction to the version of Elantris I listened to where an early member of a writing group (or a teacher or something) was really confused about all his premises for stories just being characters in a setting. They had to "make him" get to the point where the world is at stake, because he was so focused just on the interactions between people. Then, in his notes at the end (of the later edition, with knowledge of its success), he wrote about how much he valued that it worked so well in a world of magic where most of the book minimally interacts with it. You can see that in every scene he writes. They're all just so natural, independent of the stakes of the story.

But Stormlight feels like his real masterpiece. There are so many characters that matter, and on top of that he blends in elements of his other works so seamlessly