If that sounds a lot like USC Film School technique, I'm afraid that may be correct. Whatever it is, it makes one very disinterested in following the twists in the plot. We simply don't need to see a lot of the tiny events. Where the novel fails is in making choices of what to show. If it is not essential for the reader to draw his or her own conclusion from a scene, a character, a bit of dialogue, it should not be shown.
Different choices make different stories.
Neither is it a reaction to books so thick that the spine breaks with even a light hand. It is a plea for editorial attention. What I find most irritating, though, is the recognition that Crown of Stars is vastly superior to most IFS published since the late 1980s. It could have been so much more by being less, and yet is still superior to even the best of its competitors. The actual writing, at the lowest level of abstraction, isn't bad at all.