"The Mists of Avalon"

The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

Let's take a nice break from massive, nerdy history books to read a massive, nerdy women's studies retelling of the Arthurian legend. (I'm not kidding about how massive it is - the parts just dealing with Arthur's mother is enough text to have been a full-sized novel by itself.)
Where viewing the story through the eyes of the female characters didn't really work for The Penelopiad, it works wonderfully here, breathing new life into the old, tired story. The male characters stay offscreen unless what they're doing effects the women, so the book's real hero is Morgaine, with the villian being played by Geunievere. Gwen here seems to have severe agroaphobia along with the intellect and emotional maturity of a five year old - in other words, she comes off as a perpetually terrified, charmless, child-like, dumb weirdo. Arthur doesn't come off that much better, and neither does Lancelot, come to think of it. I think part of the problem - and this is so wide-spread that it even effects Morgaine - is that the main cast at times acts forehead-slappingly out of character. This seems to be a result of the story having to hew more or less to the original myth. It's annoying, but I suppose in the end a good tradeoff for how well the end result turns out. Even though the book runs over 800 pages, it really only drags when we're following Gwen around being dumb and scared, and these stretches are a drop in the ocean (albeit parts I recommend skipping anyway). Highly recommended.

Grade: A