My experience has been the exact opposite. Yes, there's literally a lot of information, but so much of it is irrelevant fluff that could be eliminated or trimmed without losing much. I've seen multiple paragraphs of Tolkien, for example, that narratively boil down to "they walk across the field". To be clear, I don't see that as a flaw. The fluff serves to set the mood. But that's different from saying that the text is especially information-dense.