The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

There were some things I liked about this book. I enjoyed the morally ambiguous portrayals of the protagonists, especially Gwenhwyfar, although she was a very dislikeable character. I also enjoyed the portrayals of the various characters' relationships, although at times they strayed into melodramatic confrontations worthy of an episode of Jerry Springer.

However, I found the portrayal of the rivalry between Christianity and paganism irritatingly clumsy and one sided, despite a few, brief attempts at providing a more balanced view. Christianity was portrayed as being some kind of spiritual con perpetrated by black hearted misanthropes. That people may have found anything positive or wholesome in the new religion that contributed to its success doesn't seem to be considered. Paganism, on the other hand, is portrayed as a system of broad minded tree hugging. I can't help feeling that the savage, barbaric ancient Britons are being done something of a disservice by being turned into a bunch of gentle hippies.

I didn't really enjoy this very much I'm afraid. It's portrayal of the conflict between paganism and Christianity seemed to be completely morphed by the author's slightly naive view of modern, 20th century, spirituality/wiccan/etc which are clearly as heavily influenced by eastern religions as they are by the ancient druidic religions of Britain. It therefore felt unrealistic and overly modern which wasn't helped by it's desire to do to the Matter of Britain what David Benioff and Wolfgang Petersen did to the Iliad with "Troy".

Throughout (the first half anyway, I didn't finish the book) I felt the author was trying to say "This is how it could have happened" but my mind was constantly rebelling against this and telling me "But it didn't happen... none of these characters existed". That may seem an odd complaint but a lot of what makes the Arthurian legend interesting is the magic and the mystery of it and when it's stripped away you're left with a rather uninteresting soap opera.

I admire the attempt to tell the story from the point of view of the often overlooked female characters but this is completely ruined by the fact that we already know the fate of all these people from the off so it doesn't feel like the characters are making their own decisions of influencing their own path. This idea was done much better by Ursula Le Guin in "Lavinia" and in a slightly different way, by Gregory Maguire in "Wicked".

I could have forgiven the above complaints a bit more if the book hadn't been so long. In the end I was left with nothing more than a desire to re-read Malory and re-watch Excalibur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.