> Wonderful prose but man the storytelling was a disappointment.
If you're looking for quality prose with a confusing, hard-to-perceive story in the background, I can recommend Patricia A. McKillip. Most famously, I think, the Riddle-Master books, but most of her fantasy stuff is like this.
It's not so much that the storytelling is disappointing as that it's hard to understand what's supposed to be going on. But the writing style is something else.
As a followup, The 13 Clocks by James Thurber is a very short book, but it has some of the best writing I've ever seen. The story is not confusing, but it's nothing particularly special either.
If you're looking for quality prose with a confusing, hard-to-perceive story in the background, I can recommend Patricia A. McKillip. Most famously, I think, the Riddle-Master books, but most of her fantasy stuff is like this.
It's not so much that the storytelling is disappointing as that it's hard to understand what's supposed to be going on. But the writing style is something else.