I gotta go with STeven, though maybe not quite so bluntly.
What he said about the various elements not clicking together coalesced my reaction to it. I'd taken a look when you posted, but not commented.
The strongest part of this design is the blade. It's bold and workmanlike, while the guard adds a bit of moustache-twirling dash. The forging on the guard could use some refinement, but that will come with time.
The handle takes attention away from the rest of it. My sense of aesthetics looks to the overall flow of lines on a knife. A good-looking blade profile and elegant handle is of utmost importance, with blade finish and handle material supplying flavor to a solid overall design. Anything that is there for "flavor" that takes away from the foundation of a good silhouette is detrimental to the knife. It's one reason that mosaic and other forms of Damascus is often not my cup of tea; the pattern frequently ignores the flow of lines of the profile and jars the eye away from the overall shape.
The checkered wood of the handle jars on my eye and takes away from me looking at the lines to see if they're graceful or angular, how bold or subtle they are. I just see the odd checkering. And the color of the poured epoxy bolster adds another, unrelated jarring element.
I love how you experiment with your knives, but there are times where it comes off as the knife being a vehicle for the concept, and the concept not being an integral part of the knife design, if that makes sense. You're kind of the opposite of me in some approaches. I make slow changes to how I make things and make tweaks as I go. I use a small selection of materials because I want to focus on getting the shape of the blade and handle as good as I can without worrying about how I need to work some new material. You try a new material and/or process on each knife, sometimes several on one knife.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you gotta integrate the concepts into the whole in such a way that it compliments it, not takes away from it.
If you had a poured pewter bolster in the same shape, with a solid walnut or bone/antler handle on it, it would look so much more coherent. "That's been done before, a lot!" Yes, for a reason: it looks good.
Within the framework of a particular style is a lot of room for individuality and innovation. Look at what folks like Daniel Winkler and John Cohea have done with their sub-genre of knifemaking.
Most of my favorite makers are those who march to their own bagpipe, use oddball concepts in their designs, and use unusual materials. Tai Goo, Mardi Meshejian, and Virgil England spring to mind, as well as some of Larry Fuegen's work (the knife with the bolster carved into the face of an old man, with the handle like the mitre of a Lemurian priest). But they have a solid coherence where the profile provides the substance and the concept provides the flavor.
Maybe at this point dial back the concept a bit and focus on laying that solid foundation that will benefit from the concept. Make the concept the second thing people see, after first seeing that it's a good knife.
Right now, your handle may have a good shape to it, but I'm so distracted by the wood pattern that I'm not sure.
