Review of Return to Avalon by Jennifer Roberson

Kythe42's Astral Library

I've been a book worm for pretty much my whole life. I've read many types of books over the course of my life, but currently the sorts of books I enjoy the most are fantasy and science-fiction. I particularly like it if these genre's are mixed with comedy like the style of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. I definitely can enjoy more serious fantasy and science-fiction though. I also enjoy vampire books, but not quite as much as I did when I was younger.

I'm not going to add any books to my shelves that I read before 2012 just because I've read so many books in my life and it's difficult to remember when I read them and how well I liked them, and I'm sure there are a great many books that I've read in my life that I've completely forgotten about.

The editions that I have displayed on my shelves do not necessarily correspond to editions that I actually own. I generally just use whatever edition has my favorite cover which may or may not match the covers of the books I actually own. If I own more than one copy of a book, in most cases I won't have multiple editions displayed on my shelves. An exception to this would be collective books/omnibuses in which the individual stories are all available separately. In this case I will probably use the individual books for tracking my reading, but will display the omnibus or anthology just as a book that I own.

Because BookLikes does not have any suitable way to track re-reading books, I have created a shelf called "all books read" in which I will permanently place every book that I have read. Books that I am re-reading will get transferred back and forth between the official "read" shelf and the "planning to read" and "currently reading" shelves.

Review of Return to Avalon by Jennifer Roberson

10:28 pm 9 October 2014

Return to Avalon edited by Jennifer Roberson is an anthology of Arthurian short stories. With the exception of Lady of Avalon(not to be confused with the novel by the same name), none of these stories have anything to do with Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon. Lady of Avalon is set some time after the events of The Mists of Avalon and tells the story of the current high priestess being captured and turned into a slave by a Saxon king. It was a pretty good story and I enjoyed reading it. Most of the other stories I'd rate as three stars with some four star ones scattered throughout the book. Of the other stories there weren't any that stood out as particularly good or particularly bad. One thing that was curious is that a lot of the stories in the book I would hesitate to classify as Arthurian fiction. There were many that had more the feel of fairy tales to them and didn't seem to have anything to do with Arthurian legends as far as I could tell. There was also one Shakespearian short story that seemed really out of place. I thought it was a good story and I did enjoy it, but it just really didn't seem like it belonged in this collection. Overall I'd say this book was an ok read and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Arthurian and medieval fiction, though I think I liked the Out of Avalon anthology better. To anyone wanting to read this book just for the Lady of Avalon story, it's probably only worth it if you can borrow the book or get it for a low price unless you are a really big fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series.