i think part of the struggle is that, you have no way to know what the pronunciation of unknown characters is, which is really disruptive when you are trying to read.
in english, i feel like you can just kind of, fluff the pronunciation of a newly encountered word.
context is often sufficient to glean the meaning of those unknown vocab, but pronunciation less so. and that severely affects the flow of reading, disrupting your immersion and making the process of reading and learning less fun.