Talk to me like I'm a five-year-old.

Can someone please explain why A Canticle for Leibowitz is supposed to be good? I read it a couple of years ago but it just seemed mediocre: no particularly striking ideas (regurgitated Santayana and "church versus state"? not original, not originally done), no good characters (especially female characters; women apparently sink into chattel status after the apocalypse and their experience tells us nothing of interest), no unique insights into the human condition, the prose is unexciting and the plotting only serviceable . . . . I hate to say it, but I prefer Starship Troopers.