The mists of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley

I wish I could have started this blog with a great review but unfortunately I can’t with this book.


At first I was very excited to read a book about religion, and all these mystical characters. On paper it sounded really interesting and throughout the beginning I was really getting into it. However, after a while the author kept repeating the same things over and over again. I was getting frustrated because it was way too repetitive. So by the middle of the book I lost interest because it just draaaaaaged along. The book could have done with 150 to 200 pages less without loosing anything important, which says a lot for a book that is a massive 876 pages long.

The characters were very conflicting and inconsistent. The most contradictory character was Gwenhwyfar. You wanted to hate her because she was totally against Avalon, almost to the point of exasperation, however everyone in the book still loved and admired her, which didn’t make sense. The author describes her as educated, but after being repeatedly told by other characters in the book, Gwenhwyfar still keeps repeating the same hatred without ever learning anything. While reading you couldn’t wait for Gwenhwyfar to finally understand how ignorant she was, but then the author made her into a hero?!? Don’t understand the concept there.

Near the end you started to wonder what the point of this book was all about. I got confused as to what the author wanted to accomplish and really what was happening. I still don’t know how the book was supposed to end. The storyline was very poor. Some characters were supposed to be bad but they then weren’t, and the hero’s of the story then ended up being bad, or at least I think so... So you get my drift.

To give credit to the author, the idea was good and the characters could have been great, however the story got sidetracked and confused without really delivering. I believe that this is the fault of the editor. As an author, I’m sure you can get too involved into the storyline and characters and loose a grip as to what is being said, but that’s where the editor should have stepped in to bring the story home. Which is a shame because with some direction and effective edditing, this book could have been great. I'm not sure why it was on the 100 most popular books chosen by readers.

Lesson learnt:
Not sure why, but even though I did not particularly enjoy this book I received a really strong lesson from it. I learnt that you cannot force things, if they are meant to happen, they will happen anyway. You have to have faith and accept the flow of nature. Now at this point of my life, and where I am at the moment it was really good advice.
So even a bad book can teach you something that you can carry into your everyday life and make it better.

If you have any thoughts on my review or would like to comment please do so. I would love to hear what others have to say, and maybe clarify what actually happened in the end :)