Sandefur contests my perceptions of Rand. However, even he can't explain away her shrillness or didacticism, two characteristics she shares with that other Russian expat novelist Solzhenitsyn. Of course, I don't think these are typically Russian qualities, just typical qualities of Russian ideologues who became novelists, like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Rand, Solzhenitsyn, and Turgenev.

I clearly stated that Rand plots her novels well, and I agree with Sandefur that her imagery is highly evocative, even when it enters the realm of science fiction. But her dialogue is oblique, obfuscatory, and so contrived as to make it wholly unreadable. Again, something she shares with Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn: execrable dialogue.

In any case, the point I was trying to make was that Rand was a lot more concerned with putting her ideas across in the form of a novel, rather than writing good novels. In that, she resembles Charles Dickens, another writer loved by many, yet loathed by me.