I really liked the Empire of the East trilogy, but the 4th "bridge" book - Ardneh's Sword - between it and Saberhagen's Swords series is weird

Not in content - that's good, and what I'd expect - but it's doing a lot of strange things as a book.

For one, it uses sections / scene breaks constantly. as in 15+ times per chapter, sometimes 3-4 times on the same page (picrel)

Chapters often end mid-dialogue and then pick up immediately afterward. it's never on a dramatic moment, or an "oh shit!!!" reveal, it's just placed seemingly at random

and speaking of dialogue, he's doing this weird mix of actual dialogue interspersed with summaries of what was said, then back to more explicit dialogue. it's like he realized that multiple pages of dialogue would look ugly, but he picked the strangest solution.

am I missing something he's trying to do? is there a style or pattern that he's trying to evoke? it's distracting as hell.