I don't agree with the storytelling being awkward and the characters wooden. I do feel like the novels don't leave much to do after you've finished them, while

I don't agree with the storytelling being awkward and the characters wooden. I do feel like the novels don't leave much to do after you've finished them, while in some other works you can dig and dig and dig and never stop, but I don't know if this is true or just me. As for the sci-fi elements, just like with Hyperion I read these books as fantasy. It's in the future and they've got spaceship and robots, sure, and they often try to explain the technologies, but they do that in fantasy too when explaining how magic works. In general I don't think much about stuff like "objective quality" when reading or watching something, and prefer to dig into the actual story or universe, or the story behind it (how did they get the idea and stuff like that).