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.