145 Chapters

Does Poul Anderson try to fit too much information into Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003)? I am not sure. I am just raising the question. Unless I have miscounted, the novel is divided into 145 short chapters. You would not suspect that there are so many because they are separately numbered in the six Books. Book One has Chapters I-XIX, Book Two has Chapters I-XXII etc.

Some Chapters are unusually short:

Chapter XI of Book Three begins and ends on p. 232;
Chapter XVIII of Book Three begins a few lines down from the top of p. 264 and ends a few lines above the bottom of p. 265;
Chapter VI of Book Five fills p. 430;
Chapter VII is less than two pages in length;
the concluding Chapter XXXIII of Book Six is three paragraphs in the middle of p. 591.

In these Chapters, much information is summarised. In the conversation-less, three page Chapter XXVII of Book Four, pp. 384-386:

three paragraphs summarise the activities of Gunnhild and her sons over several years;
four paragraphs summarise conflicts in Scotland;
one paragraph summarises events in England and Ireland;
one summarises events in Normandy;
one summarises Iceland;
one describes the first king of Poland;
one summarises Sweden and Gardariki;
one summarises Kiev;
one paragraph of two sentences mentions the Holy Roman Emperor;
one mentions Spain, Castile, Cordoba, the Greeks, Crete, the Arabs, the Magyars, Bulgaria and Cyprus;
one sentence tells us that the English have bridged the Thames at London;
one paragraph mentions Alpine monks, Arab astronomers and Jewish linguists;
one sentence mentions years of peace in Norway.

It is obvious that we do not need to retain all this rich background information in order to follow the plot and that this Chapter could be skipped by anyone rereading the novel.