I started reading late as well but am enjoying it so far. Regarding character depth, part of it might be that the characters and their world are just more relatable to the audience. It would make it easier for both the author to come up with clever subtleties that elaborate on who the characters really are, and easier for the audience to get something meaningful out of it. As compared to writing about a werewolf and his beloved horse or some such. Less connections get invoked when showing some aspect of the latter relationship, whereas what I've read so far is almost cringe-worthy in how it reminds me of all the love/hate relationships and marriages I've actually seen. An off-hand comment about their relationship gives you deeper insight into all the things it implies, compared to more fantastical characters and worlds where you're already bringing in a good deal of suspension of disbelief, and changing the rules to allow for larger-than-life characters. Consider the amount explanation that has to be given to the audience of how things worked in some far removed time and place. That's only necessary because those connections aren't already in their mind waiting to be invoked with some clever quip. Of course great writing can cram a lot of meaning and context into very few words, even starting with pretty far fetched premises, but it does seem harder than when writing about more familiar situations.
Though I think the focus on characters vs. things like worldbuilding, concept and plot, and the fewer characters = high wordcount per character is a pretty good explanation. The fantasy genre still seems a lot better off than the scifi genre in this regard. Maybe it's just the stuff I've read, but writing quality and character depth have definitely seemed to have a higher average in fantasy than scifi. It'd be interesting to compare things like that across genres and see what variables are changing to cause the effect.
Though I think the focus on characters vs. things like worldbuilding, concept and plot, and the fewer characters = high wordcount per character is a pretty good explanation. The fantasy genre still seems a lot better off than the scifi genre in this regard. Maybe it's just the stuff I've read, but writing quality and character depth have definitely seemed to have a higher average in fantasy than scifi. It'd be interesting to compare things like that across genres and see what variables are changing to cause the effect.