Books like A Place of Greater Safety

Finally decided to jack this one and I'm light-headed and blinking like a person unaccustomed to the light and the sweet air of liberty. What a bummer when you pick a big long novel and it turns out to be the pain in the arse this one did - not so bad that I could apply the 100 page rule but not so good that I actually wanted to pick the thing up and read the words in it. This is a magnificently detailed weird-ass almost day-by-day recreation of the French Revolution seen through the ever-talking mouths of Danton, Desmoulins and Johnny (they call me Mr Terror) Robespierre but all these grand revolutionaries seem to be on Prozac, perpetually polite, never agitated - they're the world's most unagitated agitators - all the dialogue (and there is a real lot) is slightly oblique, brittle but never witty, like it was written by Oscar Wilde's little-known Asperger-Syndrome brother, the zillion secondary characters swarming around the three main ones are totally confusing, the main issues thrown up by the events of the revolution are rarely alluded to and really the whole complex edifice made me want to watch Terminator 2 again because with T2 you know what the issues are, you know that Arnie is a cyborg sent back in time to protect John Connor and you know the T-1000, a superior machine, has been sent back to kill him and you know these two mothers have this giant knock down drag-out for two hours and Arnie has to win otherwise the entire future of the very human race will be aswirling down the cosmic sump of time so biff bang clang and squish.... I think Hilary Mantel could have learned a few things from T2. Like action, humour and a clear understanding of what's really at stake.