patrick_dale91 's review for:

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

3.0

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Although written in the classic, wonderful Mantel prose, this book was ultimately too long and quite simply paled in comparison to her Wolf Hall trilogy. It's centred around 3 characters who were huge cogs in the French revolution: Danton, Camille and Robespierre, following them from childhood to revolution. If this book has started nearer to the revolution, it would definitely be getting 4 stars; unfortunately, it took a good 300 pages until it gets going and was a slog until then. When it's st its best, it's fantastic, depicting the horrors of the Terror years so well, where revolutionary factions fought for power; as I said, the last 400 pages show Mantel as the queen of historical fiction. Still, a shame it took a while to get there.