I agree. I loved Steppenwolf, and it had several absolutely sublime passages - very much like in the rest of his bibliography - but The Glass Bead Game was completely devoid of any of the magic or imaginal that Hesse can conjure up, no timeless cultural analysis mirroring our times and no razor sharp Kierkegaardian character portrayal.

Instead it seemed like a was harrowingly long weird sci fi fanfic over some vaguely defined but stupidly complex future society imagined in the lamest and most naive almost pubescent mind. Simple in the sense that everyone from the politician to the ascetic guru seemed like complete one dimensional stereotypes.

Also you don't stop reading because of esoteric complexity you might "get" later when you know more of the western cosmology like in fellow complex works like Ulysses (funfact both books are among the top 10 most abandoned), - you stop because it's boring imagined political history. There really doesn't seem to be a whole lot under the surface, and the schisms between "academic life" or a "life of devotion" versus "a mercantile city life", or "life of politics" was incredibly naive with no mythological, historical or even poetic context mirroring our world.

I guess i must have missed something?