Completely fair, and if spren are what throw you out of the immersion of the books, no other worlds (each series within the whole cosmere universe takes place on different systems. Stormlight Archive = Roshar system, Mistborn = Scadrian system, so on) have them present.

None of his other books are as long as the Stormlight novels, so there is some umph missing when comparing them, but I'd highly recommend giving the Mistborn series a spin. The magic system is probably my favorite of all the books and while they are shorter, Sanderson still does a great job building the world and characters along with an engaging story