A Nine Hundred Page March

or, Sophia’s review of The Mist of Avalon

 

 

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mist of Avalon is a retelling of the Arthurian legends, from the perspective of Morgan and Guvenir. Marion Zimmer Bradley was born on a farm in Albany, New York, in 1949. She went to Berkeley, wrote mostly sify, and encouraged fanfiction for her series, “Darkover”. I’m sure there was a lot in between those vents, but these were the facts that interested me.

Only a handful of pages into it and I was smitten. Oh, I wasn’t so much enarourmed with Igraine, Morgan’s and Arthur's mother, whose perspective the book begins from.  I found her thoughts redundant and she seemed to often contradict herself, though she had enough redeeming qualities that I could never quite decide if I liked her character. It was the social commentary that hooked me. The opening of the book had me doing first pumps because I realized this was going to be 900 pages of not so subtle hints that women are superior to men and Christianity has corrupted our society. The raging feminist part of my was very excited by this.

It was refreshing to see Christianity picked apart, rather than slipped into a novel’s backbone, made to suggest it’s a universal truth, as it is many classic novels. I liked what Bradley had to say. She continually referenced that all gods are the same god, even going so far to say the old religion’s goddess would not object to being called Mary. She criticizes the beliefs of Christians, but it’s primarily their narrow mindedness he disapproves of,  not the religion itself. For example, when the High King dies, she talks about how wrong it seems they pray for him to repent his sins in Hell, rather than celebrating the life of a great man.

  Much of the story centered on female power. For example, she continually mentioned the logic in power being passed through the female line, as apposed to the male. In Avalon, the fathers had no say in their children's lives. The Merlin, a great and powerful male sorcerer, even acknowledges that because he is her father, not her mother, he has no right to influence Igraine's decisions. She once points the injustice in woman being judged for sleeping with multiple men, when men have the right to take as many mistresses as they please.

Her writing style was also really interesting. There were a lot of beautiful descriptions, my favorite being a depiction of a prophetic ceremony in Avalon that actually gave me chills. She chose her verbs well, stitched sentences together so they flowed and trapped the reader in the story. My only complaint is that the plot dragged on a bit, there was a lot of filler to the story.

         Over all though it was a great read and I would definitely recommend it.