I had the exact same experience. Struggled through it, searched hard for the genius that was supposedly exuding from the pages. I didn't see any of it and I don't remember a lick of the story. I was simply bored. Perhaps I'm not intellectual enough to "get it."
Same, same. I'm an avid reader. I don't shy away from complex literature. I also don't take great pleasure from overcomplication.
Computing analogy: It's like seeing that someone wrote "fizzbuzz" using a microservice architecture, quantum computing, multiple LLMs, and some custom hardware. Bravo! Cool that you pulled it off and made this monstrosity! I don't want to use it though, nor do I care to see the details of every bizarre choice, and I'm not impressed at the number of references to COBOL that you shoved into the diode layouts of the CPU you invented for it. I can see why other people would find it fascinating. I am not one of them.
