The Wind Done Gone
Alice Randall


I think everyone should read this book.

First of all, I want to say that I loved "Gone With the Wind".  I couldn't put it down.  I blew through all 900 pages of it in about a week.  Scarlett is a fascinating character living in one of the most exciting times in our country's history so of course the book makes for an excellent read.  But let's be honest with ourselves, the book is extremely racist and to call Mitchell's view of the pre-Civl War South idealized is putting it mildly.

Randall gives us a very different view of Scarlett and her world through the diary of Cynara, a slave born on Tara who moves to Atlanta and, eventually, Washington D.C.  I accepted unequivocally Cynara's parentage, knowing how often things like that happened in the South, but Randall chooses to mess with Scarlett's history in certain other ways which I won't talk about due to my desire not to give away too many spoilers.  All I'll say is, after awhile, it seems as though Randall has gotten a little too intent on destroying Mitchell's version of Scarlett simply for the sake of destroying her.

Randall also messes with the reader's perception of Scarlett and Rhett's relationship so if all of your hopes and dreams of love are bound by the belief that Rhett and Scarlett are meant for each other, then I don't recommend this book because it will ruin your life.  Personally, I never understood what Rhett saw in Scarlett and he says himself, as he's leaving her, that his love for her was not of the undying variety.  Not to mention that Mitchell herself has Rhett staying at a whore house after the death of his daughter.  Randall did not have to stretch far from that into the love story she gives us in her own novel.  I also feel that one can enjoy this book and still enjoy "Gone With the Wind".  I have admitted that I loved reading "Gone With the Wind" and reading "The Wind Done Gone" has not changed that.  I enjoy both books in the way that I enjoy "Wicked" the book and "Wicked" the musical: as two separate entities and, while I recognize that they are related, I choose to see them more as distant cousins than siblings.

That's enough about "Gone With the Wind."  "The Wind Done Gone" is a beautifully written novel about a woman's struggle with her identity and with discovering what she really wants out of life.  It's about love and loss and longing and lack of love (or, at least, perceived lack of love) and grieving and learning to come into one's own in a world which has only very recently allowed her to do so.  When Cynara learns to let go of her resentment of Scarlett is when she really comes into her own and I think the same can be said of Randall: when her novel lets go of the Scarlett-bashing and focuses on developing its own characters is when it really shines.

The Mists of Avalon
I really enjoyed this book and its take on the King Arthur legend.  It incorporates both the legend of the sword in the stone and Excalibur begin given to him from the Lady of the Lake but it definitely has its own ideas on what "really" happened.  I also enjoyed the new take on both the Lady of the Lake and the Merlin as titles of positions rather than names of individual people.

As a book about one of the first (if not the first) Christian kings of England, it discusses Christianity but also religion in general.  Avalon has its own religion, very different from Christianity but with some definite similarities.  The book is centered around not only the dispute between these two religions but whether or not there should be a dispute and I enjoyed this dispute not less because it's relevant to all religious disputes.  It posits that there is only one god and that no religion is wrong, they're merely worshiping God in their own way and that's a message of which I highly approve.  Related to this is the very different take on the story of the Grail, which I also really liked.

The cast of the novel is made up of good, well-developed characters but I didn't like most of them.  I did not like Gwenhwyfar, Lancelet was too much of a pansy for me to be able to respect him, and I didn't get to see enough of Arthur to learn to feel much about him one way or the other.  I largely liked Morgaine, but she also did some things I didn't like.  Some of my favorite characters were actually the side characters such as Igraine, Arthur's mother, Morgause, Arthur's aunt, and the two Merlin's, Taliesin and Kevin.

I do recommend this book but be forewarned that it's 876 large pages and could have been at least 100 pages shorter.  I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning and the vast majority of the middle of the book but the end definitely dragged.  Bradley apparently felt the need to give us a conclusion on each and every one of her characters and, while I respect that, I didn't feel that it was entirely necessary.  (Of course that could be because of my aforementioned dislike of some of the characters).  It detracts from my enjoyment of a book when it begins to feel like a project and this book definitely began to feel like a project toward the end.