This seems to be a favorite novel of Hugo's for a lot of people, but I cannot say the same.

Unless you are incredibly knowledgeable about all aspects of the French Revolution including major and minor players across the board, a lot of this book loses meaning. Hugo goes off on incredible tangents, and some full pages are just lists of names of people in Tribunals. I have a fairly good knowledge of the Revolution, and most of it went over my head and didn't add anything to the story.

When Hugo was writing about his actual characters, his prose was beautiful, and some paragraphs were such gems that it made reading the entire novel worth it. However, I cannot put this book in the same league as Notre Dame de Paris, for example, which took my breath away with his philosophies as well as the epic tale. I only connected to the characters of ninety-Three at the very end.

Overall, if you're a major fan of Hugo like I am, worth the read, but don't have the highest of expectations.