A story rushing onward

River of Stars has a certain cinematic quality to it. Earlier in the book, the shifts from chapter to chapter covered greater geographical spaces and temporal gaps. Now, as the book's action rolls more and more quickly onward, the jumps in space and time between chapters are shrinking. In the case of the jump from Chapter XVI to Chapter XVII we actually see the two overlap.

Such jumps between scenes (the television/movie version of chapters) are common in audio/visual entertainments. Cutting between plot arcs creates the illusion of more things happening simultaneously, or at least within the bounds of a story.

Having more happen in a story makes it appear more interesting since it seems like there's a lot for the brain to process. By their nature, books can't replicate the pace at which television shows and movies switch between scenes, but because books are a slower medium they allow for more nuance, even in a flurry of scene and point of view changes.

Part of this nuance is the possibility of scenes overlapping each other. Or, because books take more time for the brain to process, you can see what might otherwise be frenetic scene hopping in slow motion and pick up on more of the detail of what's happening between scenes. Most importantly, though, this sort of scene hopping, either because of a flip book effect or because of what it's come to mean through the movies, indicates a story rushing onwards.