A Goodreads user asked Isaac Marion:

Hi, I read your post on Tumblr about how The Burning World and The Living are 900 pages long. That is an impressively massive undertaking and I can't even imagine the editing process. No wonder it took three years! I was just wondering how you maintain the tension in a novel that long? Is it part of the editing process or do you find it comes naturally as you write? Thanks!

Isaac Marion I don't necessarily subscribe to the religion of pacing. Some writers, that's all they talk about, how to keep it taut, how to maintain the suspense, and I think there's a lot more to a good novel than tension. If I read a 900 page book--or even a 900 page story divided into two books, as is the case with mine--and it was non-stop tension all the way through, just sting after obligatory sting like some junk TV show, I'd be totally exhausted. Tension would become boring. I prefer a steady movement of tones throughout the story, shifting from tension to humor to quiet contemplation, from intimate personal moments to shocking action and back again. That's what keeps me hooked on a story, the feeling that I'm having a rich, multifaceted experience and there's a new facet waiting behind every page. Which I guess could be described as a sort of tension, but not in the traditional sense of anxious "What happens next??" nail-biting.

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