This book is the prequel to Mists of Avalon, which I liked quite a bit. This book describes the way that the community of priestesses in MoA ended up moving to their island. It describes the beginning of the attempt of the Romans to impose their culture and beliefs on Britain, persecuting most of the native culture. The main characters are the young girl who will end up being the next high priestess and the young roman (who has a British mother) who falls in love with her and is torn between the priestess and his obligations to his father, country and career. Additionally, the male druids have basically taken over the priestesses and are telling them what to do and guiding their visions, which various priestess are fighting in different manners (going along to fight it from inside the plot, fighting them in the open, leaving the community entirely, etc.)

If you've read MoA, these themes are familiar. However, I cared about these characters less. I felt like they were stereotypes, or embodiments of ideas. There was also more sex in this book than in MoA, I think, and it fit less into the necessity of the plot, I think. I felt a little bit like I was reading a Jean Auel book. The young priestess did have an interesting relationship with the older woman who was the main caretaker for the current high priestess. The two of them have a strong bond and have had experiences which have given them complementary hurts - they are both able to help each other. I like that aspect of the book. Also, I found the relationship between this caretaker and the high priestess interesting and more flushed out than the other relationships in the book, particularly given that they both know the high priestess is being used by the druids.

Overall, this book gets a '0'. It wasn't really worth it, but there were snippets of it that I liked okay.

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