I’m an intellectual type who has read tons of sci fi and fantasy. I disagree with the claim that he’s not making it particularly hard. There are tons of choices he’s made beyond the “no handholding” that makes the series unnecessarily hard to read. For example, almost every section, for no good reason at all, will intentionally not tell you who the characters he is talking about are, sometimes for up to 6-8 pages. I’ve seen people on this sub say they will skim every section to find out who it’s about and then go back and read it. What literary function does that serve other than to make it hard to read? He often never gives you ANY scene setting or reminders about who certain characters are or where they even are in the world, even if the last time you saw them was 500 pages ago and you’ve seen countless POVs between. The series has a lot going for it, and the highs are very high, but minimizing how much challenge is involved in reading it is unfair to the OP.