And what a surprise it was that this piece, Book Three of Part Five, was only seventeen pages long. The shortest of the book's digressionary segments. Very different from what I'd imagined from years of hearing people bemoan its vastness – but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, given how people similarly multiply the length of Moby Dick's Cetology by several times in the telling.
The chapter itself? I liked it well enough, which is not surprising when you grew up playing SimCity, found The Power Broker to be one of your favorite books, and regret having chosen a major other than civil engineering in college. Lacked the poetic and political sweep of Petit-Pictus and A Few Pages of History, but here it's the succeeding chapter on Valjean's struggle through the tunnels that I guess will give the thematic conclusion. Reading these thousand pages has been one of the finest journeys I've been on in recent years, and I lament that there's only a small novel-sized chunk remaining before I must say goodbye.
by PM_BRAIN_WORMS