Goodreads | The Mists of Avalon

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Claire rated it:

03/21/07

bookshelves: books-i-loved-in-high-school, books-with-swordfighting-in-them, elves-witches-vampires-and-the-like, five-stars, top-25-of-all-time

You have to be a particular kind of girl to fall in love with this book the way I did.

--You have to be in the sixth grade, a freakishly precocious reader, whose beloved sixth-grade teacher brings a box of her ten favorite books to class and sets them up on the chalkboard and leaves them there for weeks for you to look at, including one HUGE book that looks like it's a billion pages long with some cool fairy priestess chick on a horse on the cover.

--You have to have grown up reading King ...more You have to be a particular kind of girl to fall in love with this book the way I did.

--You have to be in the sixth grade, a freakishly precocious reader, whose beloved sixth-grade teacher brings a box of her ten favorite books to class and sets them up on the chalkboard and leaves them there for weeks for you to look at, including one HUGE book that looks like it's a billion pages long with some cool fairy priestess chick on a horse on the cover.

--You have to have grown up reading King Arthur stories and LOVE the movie "The Sword In the Stone."

--You have to be so hopelessly nerdy that you would rather sit on the side of the playground reading than play kickball, never mind how much the other kids make fun of you about it.

--You have to be Catholic enough to understand the mentality of the occasionally hateful Christian characters in the book (as well as to be baffled and perplexed by all the sexuality which will make a number of plot elements only make sense to you when you re-read the book as a college student and go, "Ohhhhh. Now I get it").

--You have to be the kind of girl who loves and relates to the plain outcast Morgaine who is treated as a freak has to learn how to rely on herself alone.

--You have to hate the shallow blonde princesses, even when they seem like they might be kind of nice people, and always root for the feisty brunette.

--You have to be a fantasy geek who LOVES any book with swordfighting, magic, princesses, and doomed romance.

--You have to be patient enough to read 800+ pages that cover one woman's entire lifetime from before her birth to old, old age.

--You have to come to the end of the book and secretly wish that (despite your religious conviction in your Catholic upbringing) Britain had never been Christianized and we were all still witches.

--You have to secretly wish you belonged to a mystical female cult where you had to have a blue crescent moon tattooed on your forehead.

--You have to wish you knew how to ride a horse in a dress and look majestic, instead of falling off every time you were forced onto a horse at camp or on vacation and now you hate them and they scare you. ...less

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Keely rated it:

08/31/07

bookshelves: contemporary-fiction, fantasy, novel

Read in May, 2004

Though I am wont to blame the inescapability of genetics for various aspects of an Epicurean reading of Absurdism, I tend to pause, for some reason, in ascribing gender differences as stringently. Whether this is simply a bias of wishful egalitarian thinking or truly an outgrowth of my understanding may be difficult to say, for precisely the reasons that Epicureus is worthy to interrupt my many Suicides. So, when it falls to me to say that women seem more than men to be capable of breaking the T...more Though I am wont to blame the inescapability of genetics for various aspects of an Epicurean reading of Absurdism, I tend to pause, for some reason, in ascribing gender differences as stringently. Whether this is simply a bias of wishful egalitarian thinking or truly an outgrowth of my understanding may be difficult to say, for precisely the reasons that Epicureus is worthy to interrupt my many Suicides. So, when it falls to me to say that women seem more than men to be capable of breaking the Tolkien curse laid so thickly upon the plotting of Modern Fantasy (barely proper), it is with some trepidation.

However, flatly laying that blame at the feet of rude and wretched socialization always seems an easier step; despite the fact that such cannot be extricated from the First Source. Original Sin infects us all.

There is certainly something bound in the flesh which drives a breed of dwarfish, ill-socialized escapists to un-self-consciously build and habitate an unoriginal world; and for a further gaggle of the nearly less-talented to consume such. It seems that, in the spirit of the contrary, when women find themselves thrust by love of horses or exceedingly lax tonsorial concerns into the same arena, that they will fight a different fight.

Perhaps they must approach the incline from a different vantage; arriving not by way of Tolkien to Conan to some unspeakably modern half-wit, but by Malory, McKinley, and Spenser. Of course, one may not forget that the vein of Fantasy still runs, at least in part, through Austen; and that though those alloys be rarer, still inhabit the edges.

Bradley has certainly taken a different tack on her way to the summit (never tor) of fantasy. She evokes Spenser, the Idylls, and all manner of other ridiculous romanticisms of the Arthurian Mythos. She also endeavors to pull the characters themselves out of the romantic and toward the post-modernity of psychological conflict, and on occasion succeeds.

There is certainly an undeniable depth and a pleasing graying at the temples of morality which immediately places her at the opposite pole from her male contemporaries. That that pole is really not so far away somewhat lessens the impact, and one is eventually bound to recognize that there really is a reverse pole to the whole of modern fantasy lying somewhere in Peake's Titus trilogy.

Actually, that's not true. One could very easily read a fantasy novel a week for life and never have to realize that Bradley is really only a little bit out there; but certainly enough to feel like a breath of the fresher....less

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Chelsea rated it:

03/01/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2008

It took me two whole months to get through this 876 page tome. Not that it wasn't two months well spent, but in the scheme of things, even with my slow pace of late, two months is a long time.

MZB's well crafted world of Avalon and Camelot is not a bad place to spend two months; I actually quite enjoyed the book, up until the last hundred pages or so. She creates a rich tapestry of characters and circumstances (one of those books that probably needs a map and family tree in the back, but hasn't...more It took me two whole months to get through this 876 page tome. Not that it wasn't two months well spent, but in the scheme of things, even with my slow pace of late, two months is a long time.

MZB's well crafted world of Avalon and Camelot is not a bad place to spend two months; I actually quite enjoyed the book, up until the last hundred pages or so. She creates a rich tapestry of characters and circumstances (one of those books that probably needs a map and family tree in the back, but hasn't.) Generally, I'm not a big fan of books that have to give you character maps, but because of the epic nature of the novel, you're introduced to the characters gradually, over time as they move in and out of the story, and some die off, some are born, so you're not trying to keep all of their stories straight at the same time.

There are times when the time line itself gets a little confusing, simply because of the effort to tell all these congruent tales. Ultimately, they blend together pretty well into something that's pretty readable and often captivating, if sometimes a little wordy. (Like fantasy tends to do.)

Something I'll only mention briefly is the issues of sexuality/sexism that are addressed through the characters lives. Bradley creates women who are strong-willed, born into a tradition of matriarchal hierarchies and yet, when brought into the increasingly Christian court of Arthur, they seem to meld themselves right into the "traditional" female roles - sitting in gossipy group, spinning and weaving all day. Kinda frustrating. Stop whining about how you want to be included in the court talk and go down there, dammit!

As I mentioned earlier, my biggest problem with the book is the end, really. In the last coupl of chapters, the whole story seems to dissolve into mists and uncertainties; suddenly a lot of people are dying. The main character, who's spent the majority of her time being very strong willed and self-assured starts to break down into mush. The religious talk gets very mealy-mouthed in the Druid/Christian/Pagan debate. Overall, it just sort of felt like she spent the first 700 pages creating this great world, and then realized in the last 100 that she had to destroy it somehow to get back to "reality".

All told, I really like her retelling of the Camelot story. Her characters are real, and the three-somes/pagan sex rituals are kept to a tasteful minimum. I do have to say that its length worked against it in one respect - it took me so long to read that I was kinda wanting to be done and move on to the next thing about two thirds of the way through. So, if you're a quick reader, or you find yourself with lots of free time on your hands, I would recommend this classic fantasy novel. ...less

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