I watched the miniseries before reading the book and that helped me remember all 900 characters in this book.

Are there really 900? I jokingly told a friend the "cast of thousands" was crazy hard to keep track of. lol I made it halfway through before I decided it was more trouble than it was worth to continue.

Until I read the Game of Thrones books with their 4,000 characters I'd never had to remember so many characters since reading W&P. I actually enjoyed the book because the miniseries was so great and I'd become attached to the main characters.