Oh my goodness where to begin.
This book was absolutely amazing, and I have no idea how I can possibly do it justice here, without actually revealing the whole plot. Actually I'm not sure I could even do that it's so complex, and to be honest I'm not sure I remember all the details.
This is a huge book too, it took me about a week and a half to read, and that's without doing anything else on the side.
It's basically, if I'm to be extremely brief, a retelling of the legend of Arthur, but from the point of view of the women surrounding him, especially his sister Morgan le Fay (named Morgaine in this version of the story). She's really the main character of the story, but we see the point of views of all the important female characters from the original legends (the Lady of the lake, Vivianne, Nimue, Gwenhywfar, etc).
So first of all instead of approaching the story from a male point of view, we see in all through the eyes of women, and a great variety of women too.
There's also a whole lot of religion in this book. Ms Bradley shows the conflict between the old Druid religion, worshipping nature and the Goddess, and the new Christian religion worshipping Christ. So again there's this conflict between a patriarchal point of view and a matriarchal one. This is an important plot key that appears again and again as the story progresses.
The book starts as Morgaine is just a young girl of five years old, and Arthur isn't even born yet, and the book follows the path of her entire life, until we finish with Morgaine as an old woman remembering the days of her youth. So the story takes place over at the very least a good fifty years.
And it's just so good. You see her go through all these changes as she adapts to these situations, and how she reacts to what life throws at her. You see her defend her beliefs against all odds, how she both helps and attacks Arthur, how she simultaneously loves and hates him.
And the older she gets, the more she sees things differently, and she does things that she swore she would never do and vice versa.
It's just a fantastic book, it's definitely become one of my favourites and I would not hesitate to read it again sometime. To think I almost didn't read it because I thought it looked too ordinary and boring.
100% would recommend.
