When my I opened my book to the "beginning" on my Kindle, it was past the maps and at the prologue.  I had to backpedal to get to the maps.

Edit: just checked mine- for me the maps are after the table of contents, but before the prologue.

yeah! and most of all I love her for the part because of her proficiency at smiling without smiling xD.  Imagining that lady with the ability to make me claw out my own eyes with her mind gives me the shivers.

It's worth noting that creating their shipyard effectively put a target on the back of Habble Landing as a legitimate target of war; there are bound to be many habbles who want nothing to do with that kind of risk in an age of turmoil. 

I'm also fairly sure that each habble has four spiral access points to other habbles(refer to the habble maps), and if these exits are indeed spiral in structure, it wouldn't surprise me if many raw goods were transported by windlass up the middle of the spiral, while the actual ramps are mostly for pedestrians.

All in all, I'm pretty sure you're right that spire life is likely a civil engineer's nightmare.

I actually imagined her as Cate Blanchett from the new Cinderella movie.

I just finished TAW, and I must say it was my favorite read in years.  Here are some thoughts I had in review:

-I loved the different perspectives, especially with the presence of characters that are insensible to normal characters- i.e. Cats/etherealists.

-It was definitely the kind of read I was thankful to have a Kindle for; as someone with as little regard for nautical terminology as Harry Dresden, I was glad to be able to highlight and define such things on a whim.  It was, however, very difficult to make sense of the maps on my little Kindle Paperwhite.

-I actually like the setting more than that of Dresden.  The earlier Dresden books have a certain amount of baggage to them, and while it is somewhat cool to see an author's skill blossom over the course of a series, it's hard to argue with a world newly minted at a time when he is beyond exceptional at his craft.

-I think some kind of data-book for Cinder Spires would be amazing and appropriate; unlike Dresdenverse where the major powers are hyper-obsessed with keeping nearly everything about themselves a secret, it seems like much more of the political and militaristic infrastructure in Cinder Spires would be a matter of public record- which we aren't privy to as readers yet.  The sort of things I'd love to devour are details on Spires (flags, government structure, alliances, economy, culture, etc), airships (classes, famed vessel examples/service histories), military hierarchies and estimated strengths, footnotes on significant historical conflicts, a bestiary of surface creatures, etc.  Words cannot express how quickly I would buy such a thing.

-It would be cool to see some short stories such as the Olympian airship race, Bridget/Rowl adventures, the Perilous incident, Espira training marines for the Albion mission, Captain Castillo perspective chasing Predator, verminocitor tall tales, and more!