I think I basically find Kowal's prose invisible, which is perfectly fine. I know what you mean though, there are definitely authors whose prose gets all the way to boring for me.

I did read a couple of the Vlad novels, and they were fun enough but not sufficiently intriguing to draw me into reading more. That kind of chapter-header is fine if it's some kind of metatextual commentary on what's going on in the chapter! In fact that's fun! Building out the context!