Product Description

Here is the tragic tale of the rise and fall of Camelot - but seen through the eyes of Camelot's women: The devout Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen; Vivane, High priestess of Avalon and the Lady of the Lake; above all, Morgaine, possessor of the sight, the wise, the wise-woman fated to bring ruin on them all...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6106 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1024 pages

About the Author
Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67. She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens, and made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Fantastic/Amazing Stories in 1949. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to Vortex Science Fiction. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels. In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited many magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called Sword and Sorceress for DAW Books. Over the years she turned more to fantasy; The House Between the Worlds, although a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was "fantasy undiluted". She wrote a novel of the women in the Arthurian legends -- Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, and others - entitled Mists of Avalon, which made the NY Times best seller list both in hardcover and trade paperback, and she also wrote The Firebrand, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical fantasy novels, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Mists of Avalon are prequels to Priestess of Avalon. She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack. She was survived by her brother, Leslie Zimmer; her sons, David Bradley and Patrick Breen; her daughter, Moira Stern; and her grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

New Threads in the Tapestry
At its absolute best, this book is just plain fun and appeared in my life when I was discovering interests in both Arthurian legend and paganism.

Told through the experience of the women of King Arthur's court, the book takes a unique look at the familiar legend and embraces most, if not all, of the female characters involved in the tale in a manner and depth not found in more classical renderings. This beautifully fulfills the ultimate aim of any fictional re-telling of a familiar story: to light a faded tapestry to show threads of a more brilliant hue, thus drawing the eye and satisfying the heart with heretofore unrecognised hidden depths.

The main character, Morgaine, classically known as Morgan le Fay, is traditionally presented in the simplest terms as the nemesis of King Arthur. In The Mists of Avalon, she is portrayed in a rather more forgiving and heroic light. Convinced by what she interprets as the inexorable erosion of her native mystic-Celtic tradition to the tide of Christianity sweeping the land, she calls upon her childhood training and deeply held beliefs to battle what she sees as the death of her culture, to ultimately find that the only absolute is change and the only firm ground upon which to stand is love.

The voice of the book is not limited to Morgaine, also represented are Gwenhwyfar, Morgause, Igraine, Vivian and Nimue, all contributing their own often humourous, often heart-rending, maddening and unforgettable accounts of reality in their own thoughts and words. This book forges a feeling of having re-discovered nearly every woman you have ever known and realise you never really forgot.

Enchanting and stunningly written
Anyone who has any interest in anything pagan or pre-christian would definitely love this beautifully written and cleverly crafted book. It is very much a tale of enchantment and magik. Marianne Zimmer-Bradley takes you on a mystical and at times whimsical journey through the changing times of England from before the reign of Arthur to after his death. The reader is taken through the realms of faery and across the mists to the isle of Avalon which is forever under threat as a result of the narrow minded, ever punishing christian priests. The main character, Morgaine le Fay, through whose eyes we see all this is portrayed in a very sympathetic light in comparison to most other Arthurian tales who tell of her as an evil temptress continuously plotting for Arthur's downfall.
This is a truly magikal book and i doubt i shall ever read another book like it.

How the Goddess can survive
This book re-tells the story of King Arthur and his knights, from the perspective of the women. This is partly what attracted me to it - as another reviewer described, it is unashamedly female - but the other aspect of the book's attraction for me was the description of how Christianity and 'paganism' collide. Due to personal changes in my life, as I have grown into womanhood, I have become more and more interested in Goddess religion / wisdom. For me, Christianity just does not have the same respect for what is female. Having now finished THE MISTS OF AVALON, I can easily say that the book did not disappoint. I found the way Zimmer Bradley wrote about Christianity and the Goddess truly inspiring. I loved the way she presented an alternative way to live a religious life, detailing different ways of performing ritual, and detailing differences in religions see certain behaviours, or acts. For example, how the expression of sexuality differed - from the Christian perspective we are told that woman is responsible for the original sin in the Garden of Eden, while from the Goddess perspective, sex is not a sinful act, but sacred.
This book was truly a breath of fresh air for me, I think I shall treasure it, and I shall certainly make the time to read it again in the future.
Highly recommended.