A Place of Greater Safety

Turns out even Hilary Mantel can just baaaarely get me to read a book about French history, even fictionalized. I'm audiobooking this, currently halfway thru a 33+hour reading. It's... clearly good. But also interesting to compare with Mantel's Cromwell books, which she wrote... 15 years later? They're so much better - she grew so much as a writer. There's a lot that's stilted here, and some tonal unevenness compared to what I expect.

Noted on March 13, 2025