> They are almost invariably driven by unrealistically evil people, and the stakes are typically too high to bear any relevance to most of human life. Usually

> They are almost invariably driven by unrealistically evil people, and the stakes are typically too high to bear any relevance to most of human life. Usually authors try to make high stakes feel relevant by making you feel close to the characters or by connecting the high stakes situation to universal themes, although not always successfully. More interestingly, many good novels make relevant and fairly ordinary stakes feel like high stakes. Kurt Vonnegut's short stories[0] and The Bell Jar are great examples. I don't want to pile on or try to convince you that novels are actually for you (sounds like they aren't), but I think this is an interesting distinction to make about "high stakes." [0] Presumably his novels too, but I haven't read them yet.