I'm not saying they
have to, but most traditional epics aren't what anyone would describe as "concise and to the point." I'm just talking about literary conventions.
Here's a list of epic conventions:
http://english.tjc.edu/greekromanepic/conventions.htm
To sum up those conventions, I'll just say that an epic is traditionally told in long form, and the basic story is amplified with epic digressions, long speeches, epic catalogues (lists of all the ships at Troy, for example), and
other stuff that isn't essential to the main plot and tends to slow down the pace. So, traditionally, epics do "move slowly."
No, the slowness still matters, whether it's epic or not; if I didn't enjoy the pace, I wouldn't have started enjoying it just because it was epic. And I'm not trying to make you feel that you're wrong not to like the slowness; so what if it is epic? To tell the truth, I didn't enjoy the Aeneid all that much, as a whole, and that's an actual epic. Rather than liking Azz's slowness because it was epic, I liked it because it built up suspense
for me (not for everyone, I realize--we may not even define suspense the same way, but it certainly kept me up in the air for a long time on many points that I was interested in speculating about), and I enjoyed the unexpected digressions (truffles and all that).
"Slight" away. I'm just saying what I think, not bashing what you think. I agree with you that it was slow; I just happened to enjoy the slowness.
But the main point of my previous post was that the overall slow pace is really a separate issue from the difference between the first issues of the two runs. In Azz's first issue, there were two threads that came together in the end; in the Finches, there were a bunch of threads and they didn't converge. Different readers may prefer either one of these models over the other; some people may like the second because they find it provides more variety. I like the first because it provides me with more of a sense of purpose and focus.