The confusing multi-viewpoint 'I'

I'm working my way through a well-respected SF author's novel right now.  I'm about seventy pages into it, and still not sure how many characters I'm dealing with,  I know I have 'flu and I'm not at my brightest, but even so, this far into the book I should have a clear idea of the number of viewpoints.

There seems to be a vogue for multi-viewpoint first person SF books at present.  One of last year's multi-award winning books was first person viewpoint.  I got all the way through it, and still wasn't clear how many viewpoints it was dealing with.  I suppose I should go back and re-read it, but I don't feel inclined to.

The job of a storyteller is to tell us a story.  If I as the listener don't know who the story is about I'm going to get confused.  If those authors (or maybe it's their publishers) would stop being so clever, and  put the character's name at the top of the chapter when they changed viewpoint I wouldn't get confused.  It's a simple thing to fix, but it doesn't get done, and leaves the reader feeling confused and dissatisfied.

I get frustrated with SFF publishing because it seems there's a triumph of style over story.  I've read several SFF short stories recently that had fragmented sections and viewpoints jumping everywhere, and to me there seems no good reason for most of it.  In fact, often when I analyse the story it's a boring domestic tale with nothing unusual about it except the jumping-about viewpoints.

I wish this trend for fancy writing would die out.  I grew up with the writing of Anne McCaffrey, a straightforward storyteller.  I also like Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War books.  They're multi-viewpoint, with the characters spread out across the universe, but they don't get confusing.  Why not?  One, they're third person viewpoints, and second, every time the viewpoint and location changes, that information goes at the top of the new section or chapter.  I can easily follow this large cast of characters back and forth across the galaxy without getting lost, and I wish we'd see a return to that clarity.

I've gone to the other extreme in the book I'm re-writing now.  Jade is a fifteen year old novel, told in one viewpoint, that of xenoformer Kaath N'Kosi.  I've found the return to a simple structure with one viewpoint character refreshing.  It allows me to present the complex science and ideas without them getting lost in character changes.  Bring back simplicity in viewpoint.