You have to be able to believe in the characters at a minimum. My statement is that every single novel ever written requires the reader to suspend disbelief. Rugby Playing Ashaman's statement was ipso facto wrong. The only books that don't ask the reader to suspend disbelief are non-fiction works.

To my mind, WoT fails (in some books, dreadfully so) to allow me to suspend my disbelief because at a base level I can't find any real or meaningful motivations in most of the major characters that would give them depth or reality to the point where I can suspend my disbelief. You have a different (I would tend to say lower) threshold for suspending disbelief, but YOU STILL HAVE TO.

On that level, both your response and his are still ipso facto wrong, and in a way that can be easily and objectively proven. All fiction requires the reader to suspend disbelief in one way or another to be moved by the book in any way (suspense, concern for characters, etc. ).