Sophia’s Reviews > The Pillars of the Earth > Status Update

It’s fascinating to me how much sheer wordage could be removed from this book without really changing the text narratively or stylistically. It’s been a while since I’ve read mass market fiction but that’s surely one reason the books are always so long.
Is the repetition a holdover from when books like this were published in installments? A “previously on/in” in case you forgot?