I thought the same when I read them. The world was very rich, but the characters could be a little flat. And there would be connections formed between certain characters that seemed like they kinda came out of nowhere, which confused me and made me wonder a bit why I should care. But it was his first book, so I think that kinda shows. It did improve a lot by the end of the book for me, and I noticed a pretty big improvement in his writing by the second book. As a whole, I really enjoyed it.
And yeah, the names and places were a lot for me to absorb, too. I would often have to skim back through chapters that I had already read, just to be reminded of context and stuff whenever something or someone was mentioned later on. There were even instances where I would have to go back and look through previous books. It's still probably my favorite fantasy series that I've read, though.