Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

This Christmas present from fellow book addict Rascal has kept me busy reading compulsively for weeks on end now. Friends are dreaming segments and imagery from chapters I've been devouring in the wee small hours as psychic flashes are travelling over dreamtime. Marion Zimmer Bradley has created an entire universe that is fun and interesting to go back to again and again - which you are bound to do since the saga is nearly 900 pages long.

The premise is that we learn about King Arthur's reign from the point of view of the women of the time, but there is more to it than that. For once someone has got the heroine right! All the tales of princesses in my youth had that vapid, passive blonde heroine having all the fun (and there was never much of that for her) and even the comic books told us that Betty was better than Veronica, when we all knew better. But here we are not treated to Arthur's queen, Gwenhwyfar's romantic turmoil - well, not primarily anyway. We learn the legend of Avalon from a heroine we can all relate to, smart and independent thinker Morgaine of the fairies.

So as a book to satisfy the fantasies of all intelligent females, that is very happy news. And then we discover another layer to the story, which is that this is a history lesson in theology disguised as a novel, with lots of plot, characters and sex thrown in for good measure. So not only do we get to read about smart women but we become smarter as we read. And get a bit of an idea about why Christianity makes us jumpy about gender equality.

The novel begins with a flurry of birth and characters appearing one after another, becoming more melancholy towards the end when the pagan culture is on the decline and the island of Avalon starts to drift into the mists. I did regret the most sexually independent character, Morgause, being rather terrifying towards the end and declining into a bit of a wicked witch of the west, but maybe she was supposed to represent a bit of female evil, because by then men had been chopping one another to bits for pages and pages already, battle after deadly battle. I also enjoyed the modern treatment of Lancelot's woes and feel an urge to see that film A Lion in Winter again, because I was reminded of Timothy Dalton swashbuckling darkly while reading this.

More legends from a feminist perspective please, grrl power galore, - will have to hunt down the Avalon prequels she has written since and also her book on Atlantis, most intriguing, because Marion Zimmer Bradley understands!

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