I borrowed this book from the library more than once in the 60's and 70's and remember it as a great read for a lazy afternoon. From what I recall, the plot is told from the view point of Joseph of Arimathea and revolves around his household and his slaves. He is a trader and has ships that go as far as Spain and England (Avalon). He brings the child Jesus with him on a trip to England and the book deals with his understandable confusion and scepticism of our Lord's claims and teachings. The storyline brings us up to Calvary and just beyond. I'm thrilled to see it is still available and now on audio.

I would have to say that if anyone has yet to read Sarah Glory by Christina Starr should take a moment out to get it from the local library and read it. There is so much to learn from Sarah in the book concerning, life, dropping everything to go out west to find gold, to find heartache and eventually love. Sarah Glory is a good book for any reader who loves historical romances and earlier times. After reading what others had to suffer, you find yourself being blessed for the simple things that you have in life. Sarah Glory is a good book read.

I really enjoyed this book. I have never been much of a western
book reader, but I was given this book to read and really enjoyed
it. It has a little bit of everything, mystery, family troubles,
action, and love. Buy it, you will enjoy the read.

Very entertaining read, can't wait to read more from this exiting new author...

Having never read this author before, I can't compare this book to any of his others. Avalon was well written- and even engaging- but certainly not what I expected when I bought it. The dust jacket and synopsis make it seem as though the story was about the rebirth of Arthur into modern England. Instead we are left with an interesting albeit off-topic tale of the battle between the "evil" Prime Minister who wants to overthrow the monarchy, and the Man Who Would Be King. The idea for the book seemed like a great one, I just struggled with the manner in which it was laid out. I mean, if this book was really about Arthur, why do we have so few examples of his life (via flashbacks or whatever), and so many chapters full of the Prime Minister bantering with his flunkies? I can only hope that perhaps this is the first in a series of books, and Lawhead will eventually show us more of how his modern-day Arthur would lead the England of the future. An interesting read, but not "Arthurian" enough for me.

I've never read Lawhead before, but will now, and had enjoyed lighter treatments of the theme of Arthur's return, i.e. "The Forever King" and "The Broken Sword" or "Arthur King" or a couple of mid-90's novels that did put modern folks with chivalric dreams in the bodies of authentic,cruder Arthurian court figures. Lawhead has avoided most of the potential whimsy, grappling with thinking through how such an extravagant idea could work in a complex, modern England. The contrast between the wasted opportunities of Britain's royalty since Queen Victoria and what a leader could do was particularly powerful and pounded home so a deaf man could hear it. The characters are well done, the plot moves along modern political thriller lines instead of a few whacks from the Caliburn blade to resolve things, and there is a lot of long reflection obvious in the entire book. If you enjoy the many interpretations of Arthur, you'll enjoy this as well.

I have been a Stephen Lawhead fan for about ten years now. I think that he is a very under-rated author. Time after time, with the now acknowledged classic Pendragon Cycle, Song Of Albion, and the soon to be classic Byzantium, Lawhead proves himself as one of the best authors around, able to contend with the best of them. I read almost all John Grisham, Steven King, Tom Clancy etc. While all good too, they all seem to lack the flair and insight that Stephen Lawhead does.

Avalon, about Arthur in modern day Britain, deserves to be a top ten best-seller. It is gripping, emotional, intelligent and written in Lawhead's unimitable witty style.

My only regret now was to read it in two days, because now I have to wait several months before his next book! A great stand alone novel. Get it!

Wow. What a waste of money. I think this guy wants to slice the pie so thin that a musician ends up owing large sums of money to record companies, producers, engineers, lawyers, and accountants. I can get those kinds of one-sided form contracts at my local law library for free. This book is nothing more than the same tired, old corporate talking-point garbage.

This book is easy to read. It goes straight to the point and gives you inside information so you can undestand everything. I recommend this book to any kind of person, including lawyers (like myself).

Avalon fills the books with plain text translations of virtually every major clause in a standard record deal and makes it very easy to understand. He puts in plenty of narration and real world examples to let you see how each of these clauses can come into play and where loopholes lie so you won't just have to take your lawyer's word for really anything. Great book. Will save you tonnes of cash in legal fees and might end up saving your career. My only complaint is that he uses false names for all the stars he talks about in his examples to protect himself from being sued. But a lot of them are really famous so if you think about it you can figure a few out (I found the Michael Jackson one quite an eye opener). Definitely recommend it.

Unfortunatley, this is a bad book. The first editon was much better. Wolfe wants us to take her views seriously, but we can't because she comes across as a writer who does not have the knowledge to separate science from her own personal unfounded views. I cannot tell if this is supposed be a new-age philosphy book or a scientifically founded manual to help someone be a vegetarian. Wolfe has done vegetarianism a diservice in this book.

I have been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for a few years now and was thrilled to receive this book as a present. It clearly explains reasons for going vegetarian, degrees of vegetarianism (ie pescatarians or pesco vegetarians eat fish, but other than that consume a plant-based diet), how to eat healthily, and provides witty information throughout the entire book. It's been a great source to me and I always recommend it to people who have questions about vegetarianism. I do not find it to be preachy. I just think it provides thorough information. It's simply a great source!

I bought this book a year ago when I was thinking about becoming a vegetarian. A year later I'm still a ovo-lacto vegetarian (the book goes over the differences), and about to cut out all egg products. I've also lost all the weight I've gained since high school (18 pounds) just from nixing the meat.
This is the first book I bought on being vegetarian and it has proved to be invaluable. I don't think I could have stuck with the change in diet if I had not read this book.
Ms. Wolfe does a great job covering everything you could want to know about going vegetarian, or just eating healthier! Knowing what to expect from my body as far as cravings and how to continue to get enough protein were incredibly helpful.
There is also a great chapter about eating out!
I would strongly recommend this to anyone who wants to go vegetarian or just cut back on meat. The book is easy to read and follow- perfect for anyone!

A tribute to the influence of Marion Zimmer Bradley, Return to Avalon is a collection of short stories devoted to the fantasy genre. Authors include Melanie Rawn, Diana L. Paxton, Laura Resnick, Dave Wolverton, Katharine Kerr, Adrienne Martine-Barnes and others. I mostly enjoyed the book, but felt the publicity was misleading. It was not any sort of continuation of MZB's Avalon stories, nor were most of them connected to Avalon's legend in any way. The main focus in each story was finding strength within, communicating with the Goddess, and early Christians confronting the Old Religion. I feel that some of the authors did not have signficant talent relaying their creative ideas on paper.

It's difficult to tell what these stories have to do with Bradley's work, or what most of them have to do with any conception of Avalon. A handful are interesting, but most are simplistic or muddled--and few show real skill with words. They could easily have been collected under a different title, suggesting that the titular link to Bradley is more a marketing ploy than a developmental reality. I really don't recommend it.

I think that this book was a very good idea, but it is nothing like The Mists of Avalon, the book it was a tribute to. It was, however, a worthy achievement of those authors who contributed to the book. Some of the stories will be forever memorable in my mind. I loved this book, and I hope that all fantasy fans at least give it credit for effort!

Marion Zimmer Bradley illuminated my world when I was a teen, when I read Mists of Avalon. I've read all the books of the serie, in french and english (I speak french). After reading the Avalon Cycle serie, I've realized that every stories Bradley wrote was the same: She changed names and places in Britain, but the story is always the same. Always a foreign Savior in love with a priestess that will bore their child of the Prophecy.
I think Bradley was obsessed and fascinated with Arthurian myths, so am I. But she never did serious researches for her writings about them, until the last decade. So I believe she began to be interested by the 'real' history much later in her life, after The Mists of Avalon.
And The Priestess of Avalon is her final cut, with too much of history (names, places...), probably because scholars didn't think Bradley was a serious writer and discredited her. I think she was obsessed now with the credibility of her stories and she loses all the magic... and the mists!

So, shortly, as a fan, Priestess of Avalon doesn't worth the buying. But if you fall on it, read it. But nothing is new and I've guessed everything from the beginning to the end.

I'll read and read and read The Mists of Avalon again and again.

P.S. The TNT special series was pathetic and didn't look what I thought. Too bad.

I am so sad to realise that this is the final Avalon book.It's also hard for me to guess whether or not a reader who isn't INTO the old Celtic religions would find this an interesting read, but for me, it was another wonderful, absorbing and magical read involving the occupants of the mystical island of Avalon and the gentle, loving form of their religion.A young priestess, Eilan, falls in love with a handsome Roman soldier named Constantius, and forsakes her home on Avalon for love of him and also because she believes that her future is inextricably bound with his.
She bears a son who becomes the Emperor Constantine who eventuually caused the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity.Eilan,or the Empress Helena as she is known when she becomes the mother of the Emperor,somewhat reluctantly accepts Christianity as she realises that much of the new religion is based on the old and, because of pressure from her son, tours his Empire on his behalf. As a very old lady, she stages her own death in order to return to her true home, the Isle of Avalon.As always when I read books about Avalon, I feel a tremendous sense of deja vu....perhaps in a former life???

Of course, Priestess of Avalon isn't really part of the lot. For the most part, it's a story tangential to the Avalon epic. I also suspect Diana Paxson did a lot of the filling in of Marion Zimmer Bradley's dream of the tale. Take it in this context--as a book about Avalon but not really part of any series--and perhaps this novel will have a different meaning.

The idea proposed to us the readers is that Eilan (Helena in the Roman world), a priestess of Avalon, falls in love and runs away with Constantius, a Roman. He existed, by the way. Somehow through her travels in the Empire (after all, her patroness is Elen of the Ways), Helena gains a wisdom and an understanding. She gives birth to Constantine, the Roman emperor who embraced Christianity. Eilan, through it all, begins to see where all religions and paths are reflections of a greater truth. Sometime after the book ends this Eilan/Helena is canonized as Saint Helena. In short, it's a detailed autobiography of a fascinating figure of a woman.

I can see where Mists devotees would be disappointed by this book. After all, only a small part of it actually takes place in Avalon. But does Eilan need to have spent her entire life on the island to be a priestess of Avalon? It seemed to me that she spread and shared the wisdom she learned on Avalon with people all over the Empire. If that doesn't make her a worthy heir to the Avalon legacy, nothing does.

Most popular books in search of the historical Arthur (and there are many such books and just about as many theories regarding who the "real" Arthur was) use the same classic sources (Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and a few others) and, increasingly, archaeological data. Welsh literary sources, such as the "Brut Y Brenhinedd," the Triads, and bardic poetry, are generally relegated to the background and are often wholly ignored, despite the rather obvious fact the Welsh people are the primary cultural heirs of whatever society in which the historical Arthur existed. Blake and Lloyd reverse this approach in "The Keys to Avalon," giving their main focus to such Welsh literary sources. Their approach certainly is not without controversy. They follow the lead of a few earlier writers who contend that at least some versions of the "Brut Y Brenhinedd" derive independently from the same source used by Geoffrey of Monmouth to write his great "Historia Regum Britanniae" and are not, as most scholars contend, simply Welsh translations of Geoffrey's work. The difference is crucial since the "Brut" uses Welsh names for locations which differ greatly from the English names in Geoffrey's book. Blake and Lloyd contend that Geoffrey altered the Welsh originals to make his book better suited for an English audience and for political purposes. This is an important point and, if true, could mean that the historical Arthur operated on a smaller stage (North Wales, for the most part) than most popular accounts which have him ranging over large portions of present-day England and Scotland. I certainly am not qualified to absolutely judge the validity of what Blake and Lloyd have to say on the matter, but I do hope their book inspires others to take a serious look at this possibility, either to confirm their analysis or to disprove it.

I have little doubt that Blake and Lloyd in their enthusiam for their Welsh-oriented reconstruction of Arthurian fact have at least in a couple areas gone well beyond what the evidence can support. Specifically, I find their claim that Offa's Dyke (a mammoth earthwork almost universally credited to the Eighth Century Mercian King Offa) was built by the Third Century Roman Emperor Severius to be entirely unconvincing. (There is now archaeological evidence that Wat's Dyke may date from the Fifth Century and thus might explain accounts of a wall in northern Wales prior to Offa.) And secondly, I consider their re-writing of the history of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of much of Britain (moving events from their traditional locations to an exclusively Welsh context) to be very unlikely, as it seems to ignore non-Welsh and archaeological sources that bear upon the question.

Nonetheless, I think that "The Keys to Avalon" is worth reading, even if with a sceptical eye, for its intriguing analysis of the North Wales sites associated with a possible historical Arthur.

As someone very interested in Arthurian legends I bought this book not really expecting to read anything really new - especially as a work has recently appeared on Arthur in Wales. I was wrong!

O.K., you can argue about place names and whose source material is better than whose until doomsday, but nothing helps more to give a book that 'something extra' than a good dose of common-sense.

My initial reaction was one of sceptcism, especially when Geoffrey of Monmouth appeared on the scene, but I took a jump of faith and waded in. Once you have read the entire book - and not tried to nit pick on every individual piece of evidence - the overall picture is extremely convincing.

I may not agree with everything held within this books cover, but there is certainly enough here to warrant further study and debate. I take my hat off to the authors for an extremely well researched piece of work.

Suddenly, the Dark Ages make sense.

The Keys to Avalon explores fact, folklore, myths and legends and brings them together in a work which offers a stunningly simple,logical explanation for why so many 'academics' have struggled for so long to make sense of the Dark Ages.

Put simply, it is the survival of the ancient Welsh language and culture which provides the Key to this new understanding of the Dark Ages.

Until this book, Arthurian (and other) legends associated with the Dark Ages have been interpreted from the anglicised (as in Anglo Saxon) view, with errors having crept in through translations from Welsh to Latin and then to English.

The Keys to Avalon goes back to the original Welsh records of these times, and unlocks the door to a greater understanding of the period by considering the meaning of the original Ancient Welsh language, which differs from the current Welsh language in some critical ways.

In 'The Keys to Avalon' the authors seem to have compared the ancient Welsh accounts of the Dark Ages with the standard versions based on the Anglo-Saxon accounts. The authors give due regard to the fact that there is often a grain of truth in folklore, myths and legends passed down verbally through the generations. This seems particularly appropriate in Wales where even today, despite the celebration of the survival of the Welsh language in the various Eisteddfodau, the majority of fluent Welsh speakers have difficulty in reading and writing the Welsh language.

This book brings to life the Welsh countryside - looking at names and features on maps and showing how the Arthurian legends suddenly 'fit' into specific geographic areas of realistic extent.

Once in a while something comes along which is so blindingly obvious that you think 'why didn't anyone say this before?' I can imagine there are a lot of academics and authors out there who will be wishing now that they had made the same efforts that Steve Blake and Scott Lloydd have in their work, which literally does rewrite Dark Age history.

This is a superb book which will be enjoyed by anyone with an open, unprejudiced, mind.