I could totally understand how it would be bland if you were just reading a description and nothing was coming to you.
For the record I love novels, inc fantasy fiction and descriptive sci-fi without having a minds eye to bring it into.
e.g. Big fan of starship troopers (the book) which is completely set in an invented universe none of which I have visualized. I saw the film and I can't remember its visual interpretation. (I do remember it being lame compared to the book)
Even without a minds eye I sometimes find some directors visual interpretation jarring.
How do you visualizers get on with the colour of magic? Do you have to see everything?
On the plus side I support two concurrent internal monologues or one that goes double speed & I can go full-duplex.
Wow, really? I'd love to hear more about how that works.
reading fiction and fantasy books are also sort of boring for me because i have no mental image of the characters or their settings or faces or anything like that. like if it's describing a blacksmith's forge, sure i know that has a forge and anvil and tools and quenching bucket. but there's not really a cohesive setting in my head of what it looks like for the story.
i also cant really mentally image the faces of people i know. i can see their features but their face in my mind doesn't really look human. i can't imagine someone's whole body including their face. i have no issue recognizing faces and putting them to names in person though.
i have a notoriously bad memory. i still made good grades in school and can study and retain knowledge and skills. but i forget the vast majority of conversations i've had with people after a couple weeks, and my fiance is constantly telling me things i said where i have no memory of saying it.
I can't quite describe how it works, but I still get something out of a visual description. If the author mentions a small red leather book and then later a large wooden book with a blue ribbon across it I get a different "sense" for lack of a better word. I have seen both things and know what they look like even if I can't form a visual picture in my mind while reading it. To be more precise I haven't actually seen a wooden book with a blue ribbon across it, but I have seen both of those items individually and know how it would look if they were combined. But I don't actually have a picture of it in my mind.