Alma's length reflects how much narrative material Mormon had to compress from the large plates for this stretch of Nephite history, and the book alternates between sustained sermon, such as Alma's discourse to the poor of the Zoramites comparing faith to a seed that must be planted and nurtured before it can be judged, and extended battlefield narrative describing fortifications, troop movements and casualty counts in more procedural detail than almost anywhere else in the Book of Mormon.
The book's combination of intense violence and intense religious conversion, often within the same chapters, has made it a frequent focus of both devotional reading, for its teachings on faith, repentance and personal transformation, and critical discussion, for how it frames warfare, ethnicity and the moral status of the peoples the Nephites fight. Captain Moroni in particular has become one of the most referenced figures in later Latter-day Saint discussion of civic and military virtue, based almost entirely on his portrayal within this one book.
Editions of the Book of Mormon in wide circulation divide Alma into sixty three chapters under the standard versification most modern printings use, more than any other book in the collection, which is itself a rough index of how much narrative ground Mormon compresses into this single stretch of his abridgment.