Arthur books

[Doodlebug]

I have read 'The Mists Of Avalon' by Marion Zimmer-Bradley and i was wondrin if anyone could recommend some other versions. Oh yeah, and is 'Morte d'arthur' by Malory any good?

[woofgang]

Mary Stewart's books are good The crystal Cave, the Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, The Wicked Day. Also Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset. For a different slant on Arthurian legend, try Guy Gavriel Kay The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, The Darkest Road

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.mysticrealms.org.uk/eboox.htm and a link will take you to a web-page from which you can download a free copy of 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. Then you can decide for yourself whether it's any good.

[woofgang]

wow quizmonster, great website. You can also downloadf a variety of free e-texts here http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/

[WaldoMcFroog]

The Christian writer Steven Lawhead wrote a pretty good series of books about Arthurian legend - they're pretty good but do tend to have a whiff of the 'happy clappy' about them. Even better (and I suspect something of a deliberate repost to Mr Lawhead) is Bernard Cornwall's series of books, which strip away the later Christian parts of the legends to portray Arthur as a pagan warlord. Very bl**dy, violent and brutal, but brilliant!

[Waterwolf]

You don't say whether you're after retellings of the Arthurian myths or original fiction based on them, but some others I can think of are: The Mordred Cycle by Haydn Middleton (comprising The King's Evil, The Queen's Captive and The Knight's Vengeance), which retell the story from Mordred's viewpoint; Nancy McKenzie's The Child Queen and The High Queen (recently reissued in an omnibus as Queen of Camelot), which are about Guinevere; Alice Borchardt's The Dragon Queen, which is an original story about Guinevere; The Enchantresses by Vera Chapman, which is about Morgan Le Fay; and, of course, T.H. White's The Once and Future King, which is generally regarded as one of the best Arthurian fantasies. Stretching the definition a bit, Gwyneth Jones has recently begun a near-future sequence with underlying Arthurian themes; the two books published so far are called Bold as Love and Castles Made of Sand. And there are plenty more than just these: if your local library has a copy of John Clute's and John Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy, check out the entry on Arthur for a good general survey.

[suswin]

did you like the mists of avalon? i read it and thought it was rubbish. i would certainly agree with waldomcfroog that the bernard cornwell books are a really great read - definitely recommended. i think they are called the warlord chronicles?!