The Forest House
First edition cover
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| Author | Marion Zimmer Bradley |
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| Cover artist | John Jude Palencar |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
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Publication date
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1 April 1994 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 432 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 29184773 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3552.R228 F67 1994 |
| Preceded by | Ancestors of Avalon |
| Followed by | Lady of Avalon |
The Forest House is a fantasy novel by American writers Marion Zimmer Bradley and Diana L. Paxson, though the latter is uncredited by the publisher. It is a prequel to Bradley's Arthurian novel The Mists of Avalon.
The plot of The Forest House is based on that of the opera Norma, relocated from Gaul to Britain, but sharing the basic plot outline of a love affair between a Druidic priestess and a Roman officer.
The Forest House is set in the first century CE in the west of Britain, which was then part of the Roman Empire. Bradley wrote of the conquest of the Celtic tribes and the political and religious implications of the occupation. The novel revolves around the Druidic priestesses who serve the Goddess and keep the ancient rites of learning, healing, and magic lore in their sanctuary, The Forest House. The forbidden love between the priestess Eilan and the Roman officer Gaius is one of the book's principal story lines. Bradley tells the story from both the British, female, druidic perspective, and the Roman, male, legionary perspective, and does so without apparent prejudice, in a style characteristic of her Avalon Series. The complexity of the plot and characters in this novel is somewhat less than that of The Mists of Avalon.
In the early days of the conquest, when the Roman Legions are aggressively persecuting the Druids, the sanctuary of the Goddess on the isle of Mona is destroyed and its Druids are murdered and its priestesses are raped. Mona had enjoyed a degree of independence from Roman rule for almost twenty years because Boudica's revolt had forced Roman general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus to withdraw before consolidating his conquest. When the Romans returned under Gnaeus Julius Agricola, they were determined to decisively break the power of the Druids. After the destruction of the sanctuary, the raped priestesses that conceive children kill all of the girl children but leave the boys alive that are born and then kill themselves rather than live with the atrocities done to them; the males later became a rebel group known as the Ravens, which swore vengeance against Rome. Lhiannon, one of the remaining priestesses, re-establishes a new sanctuary at Vernemeton (Most Holy Grove), or The Forest House, which is partially controlled and protected by the Romans.
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