Objectivism isn't all that much different then atheistic libertarianism, which is probably the most common author rant after atheism+socialism, so I wouldn't call his politics abnormal and I don't mind much. His arguments in book are contrived, his lectures on it though are fairly high quality compared to the norm in SF, if still not very stellar. Not only is the political diatribe pretty common in SF/F, they show up in most of the good ones.

But yeah, the recaps and reuse gets old, its also why I think his editor is AWOL or useless, or he'd hang lanterns on it, the classic way to avoid pissing off your audience at the repetition of sometihng like losing your powers is to have the hero remark on how it happens so much. Richard could just say something like "This happens all the time, unsurprisingly when you're a very powerful war wizard, super-soldier, and Emperor, your enemies usually hold of striking till they've figured out a way to remove at least on of those edges.", it's also a great excuse to recap in a fashion that doesn't piss off the audience.

He's definitely got some talent as a writer, he sells a lot of books and I've mostly enjoyed them. Admittedly I'm a bad judge of quality as I'm entirely happy to keep reading the endless volumes churned out in any number of shared-universe settings, Star Wars, D&D's vairous series, W40k, etc.

Faith of the Fallen, I really enjoyed it my first read until the ending, rereads though had me disliking the book a lot. I actually mean re-listens since I absorb most books via audio and often listen to them a dozen or more times while working on other things. I often really enjoy a book, then read or listen to it again and have to shut it off because its not as good and actually reduces my original sensation of wonder, and I often enjoy them again on the 20th or 30th time I've played, which is the case with the Hitchhiker's radio dramas. I rarely enjoyed a book but then hated it the second time, the end ruins it and ruins its good parts for reread.

I'll have to give it a try if I make it through the current volume, he apparently did another prequel book too which was referenced a lot in the current one. I wonder if FoF's bad ending coming after an otherwise good book is what makes it so aggravating.

His later books seem like the expanded director's cut of an otherwise good film with the director's commentary over top of them.

That would be more okay if many of the people I hear complain about it didn't also happen to be huge GRRM fans. Crossing or flirting with the moral event horizon is normal enough in SF/F, I think its probably that his characters don't agonize about it afterwards that damages it. If he chopped out one of the sections of Richard lecturing in favor of Richard agonizing, or better yet had him do it with occasion displays of self-doubt, remorse, second thoughts, etc it would be better. Or ditto if the recaps were in dialogue and showed him selectively editing events as an unreliable narrator. Unfortunately that would screw up his Marty Stu character, though it would make for a much better story.

She doesn't die, she actually comes back as an even more psychopathic and older version of herself to be killed by her former victim. I think he was going for intentionally not taking the easy way out, I see her as a parallel to Joffrey from aSoIaF. The characters are clearly monsters who have about a 0% chance of ever not being monsters and running people's lives, most authors would have just had a villain kill or minor character them. The books don't try to hide the heroes doing monstrous acts, as I said above though it would be a lot better if there was at least some regret shown afterwards or emotional damage.