Month: July 2010

My Favorite Reads – The Mists of Avalon

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

From Amazon: Even readers who don’t normally enjoy Arthurian legends will love this version, a retelling from the point of view of the women behind the throne. Morgaine (more commonly known as Morgan Le Fay) and Gwenhwyfar (a Welsh spelling of Guinevere) struggle for power, using Arthur as a way to score points and promote their respective worldviews. The Mists of Avalon’s Camelot politics and intrigue take place at a time when Christianity is taking over the island-nation of Britain; Christianity vs. Faery, and God vs. Goddess are dominant themes.

From Wikipedia, if you want a bit more plot info: Mists of Avalon is a generations-spanning retelling of the Arthurian legend, but bringing it back to its Brythonic roots. Its protagonist is Morgaine, who witnesses the rise of Uther Pendragon to the throne of Camelot. As a child, she is taken to Avalon by High Priestess Viviane, her maternal aunt, to become a priestess of the Mother Goddess and witnesses the rising tension between the old pagan and the new Christian religions. At one point, she is given in a fertility ritual to a young man she will later learn is Arthur, her half-brother. She conceives a child, Gwydion, or “bright one,” later called Mordred, or “evil counsel” in the Saxon tongue.

After Uther dies, his son Arthur claims the throne. Morgaine and Viviane give him the magic sword Excalibur, and with the combined force of Avalon and Camelot, Arthur drives the invasion of the Saxons away. But when his wife Gwenhwyfar fails to produce a child, she is convinced that it is a punishment of God: firstly for the presence of pagan elements, and secondly, for her forbidden love for Arthur’s finest knight Lancelet (Lancelot). She increasingly becomes a religious fanatic, and relationships between Avalon and Camelot (i.e. Morgaine and herself) become hostile.

When the knights of the Round Table of Camelot leave to search for the Holy Grail, a young man seeks to usurp the throne: Mordred, bastard son of Arthur and Morgaine. In a climactic battle, Arthur’s and Mordred’s armies square off, and in the end Avalon and Arthur are magically removed from the circles of the world. It is Morgaine alone who lives to tell the tale of Camelot.

My thoughts: I read this book many years ago but I remember it so vividly. The character of Morgaine is wonderfully strong and fanatical at the same time but still likable. In many of the stories she’s a cruel shrew bent on revenge, in this book she has her moments, but she’s doesn’t go for the deep end. And I love that this Arthurian story is told from the perspective of the women. Women play a major role in Arthurian legend and sometimes are not given proper credit for the strength they bring to the story.

This book is actually a series — Book One: Mistress of Magic, Book Two: The High Queen, Book Three: The King Stag, and Book Four: The Prisoner in the Oak. The version I own contains all four and is a behemoth of a book at 876 pages. I also own a few other Bradley books in the Avalon series but this is by far my favorite.

This book was made into a TNT movie but I read the book before the TV miniseries but did watch it, and if I remember correctly, it didn’t disappoint. Of course, I’m one of those odd people that doesn’t mind movie and TV adaptions even if they are different from the book so don’t count that for much.

This is a fantasy novel, and yes, there are faeries and magic and Merlin and Lancelot but it’s also contains an interesting take on religion and the pull between keeping old customs and beliefs alive while others makes moves to take over the old with the new. It’s Paganism and Christianity and the fight between old worlds and new views. It’s also a violent story at times but I tend to think of that as normal when a story is based in this time period, about 5 A.D., so don’t let that be a turn off.

While I know that fantasy can be an acquired taste, I think this is one book that can make you a fan.

Benighted

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Benighted

Benighted

By Kit Whitfield

Del Rey

ISBN: 0-345-49163-7

4 stars

Lola May Galley is human. When the moon rises, she does not go lyco. Instead of growing fur and howling at the moon, she sets out with others from the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity (DORLA) to catch stray lycos and criminals who haven’t locked themselves up properly. She is a human in a world run by werewolves. She is looked down upon for being born non-lyco (considered a disability by most in her world), and like all others with her disability, she spends her days and nights working for the lycos in a lyco run world.

During a full moon, a friend loses a hand when a lune goes bad and then he ends up murdered before the attacker is brought to trial. She finds herself wrapped up in a case that runs much deeper than she thought with societal implications that leave her terrified and almost numb.

I know vampire and werewolf stories are starting to run thin, and even I myself, who happens to like stories with these creatures, am getting a bit tired. Yet, after reading In Great Waters, I found I liked Whitfield’s writing and wanted to read more. I found Benighted and became entranced with her world. She takes the normal werewolf story and turns it upside down. It is now the humans living in poor conditions, fighting prejudice at the hands of a world run by werewolves, and living degrading and horrifying lives. Being born a bareback (the negative term given to those children born head first and human) means living a life only to attend to lycos. They are given no other choice and for them it is a sad, scary, dangerous, and mostly short life.

Lola was the only non-lyco born in her family and she lived her entire life wondering what it would be like to turn with the full moon. When she finds herself in a relationship with a lyco, she ends up finding answers to questions that she never thought about. The devastating consequences make for a good, and sad, story. There are some, more like many, disturbing moments in this book. When Lola talks about her childhood I felt like she shared a bit too much and I wished she would take some of it back but it was already on the table at the point. It took me a while to like Lola even though I felt for her from the start. She does things that she hates, and begins to hate herself with good reason. It’s unfortunate that she feels, and in many cases is right, that she has no other choice. For someone in her position, it is only a life of servitude and nothing more even if she is made to feel free. It is the life she was born into and nothing will change her. She becomes more hardened against the outside world and that’s just to keep herself sane.

Whitfield is a good writer and I enjoyed this one much more than In Great Waters. Even if you’re tired of werewolves, I’d say give this one a chance. It’s an interesting, if sad and disturbing, world to get drawn into. There are a lot of themes at play, many of which I haven’t even touched on here, that leave you wondering more about societal ramifications than actual werewolves. It’s a dark world to get drawn into.

Teaser Tuesdays

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My husband and I decided to skip town last week so I’m back this week with a Teaser. Hope you had a wonderful 4th, if you’re in the U.S. that is. Now, on with the teasing.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

Play along: Grab your current read; Open to a random page; Share two teaser sentences from that page; Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

This week, I’m reading The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn. I’m half way but I found the first sentence amusing which is what I’m sharing this morning.

“’I am afraid we must settle the problem of what to do with Theodora,’ my brother-in-law said with a weary sigh. He looked past me to where my sister sat stitching placidly on a tiny gown.” (1)

What are you teasing us with this week?

My Favorite Reads – The Hound of the Baskervilles

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

From the back cover: The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of master mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most accomplished stories. Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson confront one of their most difficult cases ever: is there truly a curse on the old Baskerville estate? Is there truly a ghostly beast lurking on the dark, eerie moors? A masterful concoction of plot and mood, this story is guaranteed to give you the shivers.

Since that doesn’t give you much, and in case you want more, this wikipedia page should give you what you need.

My thoughts: I don’t read many mysteries, so I wonder sometimes why I like books and short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes so much. A few years ago, I remember going on a binge and reading pretty much everything I had in the house that the Holmes characters was even vaguely mentioned in. In the last few months, I’ve gone out of my way to read several mysteries hoping to find something I like. I can’t say that I’ve found anything yet but I’m hopeful.

The reason I like this book so much — there’s more than a mystery here. It’s the suspense, the mood, the darkness, the setting on the moors, murder, a ghostly pack of hounds hunting individuals at night, and the possibility of death while investigating. Other mysteries have these things but somehow the parts don’t add up the same. There’s something about the way all the elements come together here that make this a perfect read. Out of all the Sherlock Holmes books on my shelf, this one always sticks out in my mind as a wonderfully chilly read that makes you want to turn on the lights while sleeping.