I guess if you create a wildly successful new take on Arthurian legend, and your fans decide to adopt the religion you created* for the book, it makes sense to write yourself and your fans some new holy texts under the guise of science fiction. I mean, it’s the L. Ron Hubbard thing to do, and that seems to have worked out very well.
(*I believe Bradley did research druidism, but it’s not like there’s a lot of living Druid from the time of the Roman invasion of Brittany to really fact check her work.)
If you have read The Mists of Avalon, you may not know that she also write a prequel, The Forest House. Lady of Avalon, the third book in the series, bridges the two books, making The Forest House into a pre-prequel, I guess. In other words, if you wanted to read them in chronological order, go with book 2, book 3 and then book 1. But don’t do that, because book 2 is okay, but book 3 will bore you to tears and then you’ll never get to The Mists of Avalon. Because you are still dead from boredom.
Having read the first two books, I’ll admit to being attached to the world Bradley created, but not enough to drink the Celtic Kool-Aid and go declare myself a Priestess of the Moon, which left me only some immunity to the crushing boredom of this book. There’s not much driving the book plot wise, since it pre-dates Mists and you know how that one ends up, so there’s not tension because when a new character is introduced, and you know they weren’t in Mists, it’s pretty obvious this character is going to be marked for death. It’s pretty much the reason I have given up Arthurian stories altogether, I know how it’s going to end – the Christians win and the pagans lose. (No disrespect to Christians, I just want to see a world where pagans win for a change.)
I’m also not entirely sure if the book’s purpose was to continue the world Bradley created or if she wanted to make a book of parables for her devotees. In more than one story, Vivienne (now a young girl, instead of the old Lady of the Lake that she is in Mists) doesn’t take her studies seriously and an older priestess has to explain to her (but really, us, the audience) the reasons behind certain traditions. It so blatantly spits in the face of the old tradition of “show, don’t tell” in storytelling that she must have planned for people to use this book as a holy primer for her new druids.
I have only ever read The Mists of Avalon and wasn’t all that impressed with it. Your review of this book made me laugh several times though, so while the book might be quite dull and rather pointless, you’ve certainly written a very entertaining review.