I stopped reading Card in my 40s or thereabouts because, while I was fascinated by the character torture, I became uncomfortable with my fascination. I'd earlier realized that there's something really creepy about a lot of the older male characters in Card-- they do horrific things which are justified in the text.

Discovering that you can no longer stand a book you used to love is sometimes called "the book was visited by the suck fairy".

More recently, (on the strong recommendation of a friend) I read Empire, and amazingly, it has a positive father/son relationship.