In 1955 Gerald Gardner, an Englishman, created the religion of Wicca, and ushered in a small movement of Neopaganism to mostly the UK and the US. His theory was that his religious practice was based on an Old Religion practiced by pre-Christian Britons for thousands of years. Based on the faulty archeological findings of a woman named Margaret Murray, this idea of an old religion still being practiced in secret is still around. If you are ever inclined to look further into this history and narrative, it's fascinating. But if you do read up on this story of the Old Religion, no one, not even Wiccan authors, brings it so exquisitely to life as Marion Zimmer Bradley does in The Mists of Avalon.

Before MZB, those people looking for tales of knights and chivalry could get all that, but what was the point? People were very two dimensional, and even the classic stories were reminiscent of looking at a faded watercolor: you could see the picture, but there wasn't anything that you could attach to emotionally. In Le Morte d'Arthur, Arthur was stupid, Lancelot was vain, Guinivere was overly pious and Morgan was evil. Bradley took these caricatures and gave them pathos. She didn't so much as dilute the bad aspects of the characters or make them something else, but you understood why they were the way they were.

In The Mists of Avalon, the story of Camelot is told from the view of the women instead of the men. We begin with Igraine, who is married to Gorlois but falls in love with Uther Pendragon. With the help of her sister Viviane, High Priestess of Avalon, she is able to marry Uther and have Arthur. We also hear from Viviane, who is committed to keeping her Old Religion alive in Britain and Avalon despite the encroachment of Christianity.

When Igraine's first child, Morgaine, is old enough, she is fostered on Avalon and trained to be a priestess in her own right. The story follows to how she came to fall in love with Lancelot, meet Gwenhwyfar, and conceive Mordred all on its shore. Sickened by religious politics, she leaves for the mainland. We follow Morgaine's highs and lows: her painful childbirth, her lovers, and her return to paganism and a belief in the Mother Goddess. But she's not the only person we touch on. There's Gwenhwyfar, who loves Arthur, but is blind for Lancelot. We see how she gets to be a hateful, overly pious person through her own personal struggle, but we sympathize. There's tragic Viviane and greedy (but sad) Morgause. As we see the threads of these women's lives intertwine, it tells a much more compelling tale than just a round table and a quest for a Grail. Here there is the clash of civilizations, of patriarchy over a matriarchal culture.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was a trailblazer in many ways. Her Sword and Sorceress anthology series reshaped how traditional fantasy viewed women warriors and sorceresses. Her work led to the careers of many beloved fantasy authors such as Jennifer Roberson and Mercedes Lackey. This book is no different, it is a radical retelling of the legend, and it changed the way that people viewed the myth. You see it in current fiction: in modern retellings of the tale, Morgan is no longer such a villain. If nothing else, she has motivations for how she feels. Furthermore, these myths are now told in the vein of a clash of some kind of civilization. You see this in current TV shows like Merlin, and older miniseries like… Merlin. It doesn’t mean that the women aren’t villains in the end, but it does mean that they are no longer two-dimensional supports for the men at the Round Table. This change in how Arthur myths are structured makes this book required reading for all lovers of this myth, and even contemporary fantasy. If you haven’t read it, get thee to a library or a bookstore and get this book. If my middle-school self could read it over five times, you no longer have an excuse.


   -- Sara Paige