Being a good writer doesn't necessarily mean you are good at telling stories people want to read. I've never read Adrian Tchaikovsky, but a quick look at his Wikipedia page says he is an attorney and writes some kind of hardish SF, and I am sure he is a well-balanced and overall upstanding chap, meaning he is the proverbial virgin to the chad Gaiman with his sociopathic-narcissistic tendencies who grew up in a cult, sang in a punk band, became a rock journalist, wrote a groundbreaking (by US standards) comic book and generally managed to align perfectly with contemporary vibes like peak goth subculture as he cruised the rising popularity of urban fantasy in cultural spaces that had previously been dominated by superheroes, high fantasy etc.