Yeah I think Card is at best a mediocre writer. And I thought that before I knew he was an ultra-right-wing nutjob.
The problem with sci-fi and fantasy is that because they're so niche, and because so many people are predisposed to liking them based on subject area alone, the average successful writer makes even Dan Brown look like Charles Dickens. That makes Card look good by comparison because he isn't a bad writer (certainly far better than Brown) and most in the genre are.
That's a good way of putting it. For all his flaws, Card is an actual writer. Many of his contemporaries never were.
Of course, there's legitimate literate science fiction out there that's among the best literature of the century. Frank Herbert and Philip Dick are going to be known as some of the greatest forces in writing; Isaac Asimov wasn't a brilliant prosist but conceptually he was in a league of his own.
The problem with sci-fi and fantasy is that because they're so niche, and because so many people are predisposed to liking them based on subject area alone, the average successful writer makes even Dan Brown look like Charles Dickens. That makes Card look good by comparison because he isn't a bad writer (certainly far better than Brown) and most in the genre are.