Novels with 60+ chapters

What is the general opinion on novels with lots of chapters? If I remember rightly, Cestus Deception and Labyrinth of Evil are quite bad for this. Some chapters will only be a page and a half long.

I mean, I know it's not that big a deal, but I personally don't like this format.

 

I generally like shorter chapters, because it tends to keep the pace flowing (I think those Force Heretic books didn't have any chapters at all, which was... weird...). LOE did get a little annoying with the short chapters, only because they made the book fly by in no time.

The worst was Rogue Planet. IIRC, there were a couple of chapters in that one where a "chapter" would be little more than a paragraph on one page.

 

I don't let it get to me.

Rogue Planet's were very short but that may be simply the author's style.

I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow and it has no chapters. Tom Jones has more than 200. As long as the narrative flows easily, chapter breaks aren't that important. Some people like them to mark a good place to 'stop' reading. I can stop in the middle of a page or a sentence if I need to.

 

It depends on the purpose of the chapter. If there's only a few bits of info that the author needs to tell me from a different part of the story, I'd rather it was a short chapter and not a longer chapter of crap just to get a few thoughts to me.

 

Labyrinth of Evil's chapters were nothing compared to Rogue Planet and The Cestus Deception. In fact, I don't really remember LOE's chapters to be terribly short. The narrative flowed quickly in an incredibly effective way. I do remember being a bit disenfranchised with the short chapters of the latter two, though. It seemed like it could have been accomplished with a paragraph break, but it didn't detract from the story or anything.

 

Dosn't bother me, I enjoy books with or without chapters. However it is fair to say books with Chapters can be done poorly if they are too inapropriately spaced out be it too long or too short. I've never noticed a problem with Star Wars books - I just enjoy them for the Star Wars not the literature, there are some exceptions of course.

 

The short chapters in LOE were not the problem, but rather Luceno's usual hodgepodge and vain writing was the problem.

 

Heresy!

 

I do not like them. Rogue Planet had at times half page chapters. Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns series has really short chapters. Then again, you have long chapter books like The Black Fleet Trilogy, and Steven Erikson has some really long ones too.

Or you have koalas like the co-authors of Reunion who abolished chapters altogether, making you rush to the end until realise the bear trap. But those lads always have different "chaptering" style in their books. Stackpolean books have short chapters, but they always seemed filling, conveying what they needed.

No, I do not like abundant chapter books. It gives a bad impression.

 

Small chapters don't bother me at all. They keep the book fast paced. I just wish SW books were longer.

 

But what's the rush to finish faster, EUreader? Why not enjoy a leisurely pace? Once the book is over, it's a wait for another.

On another note, SW books are full of converstaions, most them fairly short. Speech pages are pages light on printed words, thus moving you faster to the end. A 400 SW pager today is no longer a real 400 page book, not like in the "outside" world.

 

Speaking of chapters, the style of chaptering in LOTF annoyed me majorly, how the location was included for all the dumb readers who couldn't keep up.

But I'm with Ex, short chapters are dumb, they tempt you to put the book down earlier than you want to (which is what I did with Cestus and never picked it up again).

Was it Cestus that had 1 paragraph chapters? Or Am I thinking of another book?

 

I actually like the location headers at the start of the chapters. I like knowing what's going on when I start reading so I can visualise it from the beginning, not having to read a couple of pages before the author bothers to mention Luke isn't actually on the same planet he was last chapter anymore.

As for short or long chapters... doesn't bother me. I dislike very, very, very long chapters. I'm not really bothered about minimal length though. I am finding Death Star unusual because some of the chapters are extremely small but it doesn't bother me. It's actually been quite nice as it makes it easy to pick the book up when I've got five minutes free, read a chapter or two, then put it down again. I don't like stopping in the middle of a chapter.

New paragraph? New chapter? The only real difference is whether there's a big number at the top of the page. I care about the novel flowing properly. I don't really care whether they have the "* * *" thing, an extra line space or a whole new chapter. To me that's all just cosmetics.

I'm probably like EUReader though in that I like to finish books quickly. I read more than just Star Wars so there's always the next one waiting on my desk for when I finish whatever I'm currently reading.

 

I agree, the location headers are always helpful. I wish the EU books had started doing that earlier.

 

I don't care how long the chapters are, just how long the book is (in words, not in pages; it's amazing just how different in length those 292-page NJO books could be...).

 

I remember that John Miltons epic poem Paradise Lost had 12 Chapters only, although they were all very long and drawn out, but at the same time utterly brilliant, this made reading Paradise Lost fustrating at first, probelm was solved by a quick glance at cliffsnotes before each chapter to better understand what was happening, subsuquently the sequel Paradise Regained had only 4 chapters and was so much easier to understand, although the English was old and not commonly used modern english standard and that gets annoying at times.

 

The ultimate in long chapters that I've read is Thomas Hardy. His books are divided into sections, then chapters, then subchapters.

And Matthew, novels weren't really around in Milton's time, bext to look at Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Hardy if you want to know about chapters.