Once again, Auel has clearly put a great deal of research into the book, furnishing her descriptions with plenty of attention to detail. However, once again, Auel takes it too far at some points, with some passages reading like they'd been lifted directly from an anthropological academic journal. I don't mind being given information about the environment in which characters move, in fact I relish it, but the way it's written, it really feels like a chopped up academic article forcibly inserted into the main text of the historical fiction. I AM an academic, I spend all day researching and reading academic journals - I read novels to get away from that sort of thing! Auel should rather try and incorporate such information into the story, so the explanation seems relevant to the storyline, not stick it in anywhere with no relevance to the text at that point and try to ram it down our throats.The entire first third of the book, Ayla and Jondalar spend travelling without meeting any people, and Auel describes at length every little detail of their journey down to the Black Sea and upstream along the Danube before they come into contact with the Sharamudoi tribe. It's horribly drawn out, and just about the only occurrence of significance to the plot is when Ayla has a disturbing prophetic dream and barely manages to save them from a flood and a lightning strike - well, I say an occurrence of significance, presumably the scene is meant to develop the plot of her supposed shamanic powers. Other than that, it's an excuse for 250 pages of further dry description of the environment of the regions they're travelling through, and more bad sex scenes. This section of the book could easily be cut right out and you wouldn't miss anything for it. No major occurrences advance the plot, there are no big problems for the characters to solve, and the relationship between Ayla and Jondalar remains exactly the same, and neither of them develops as characters. It's just not necessary, it's the opposite of sharp and concise, which is to say sloppy.The premise of an epic journey following the travels and struggles of characters in a prehistoric world is a very interesting one, I've seen docu-dramas on the same subject that are wonderfully gripping and interesting, yet Auel's books manage to be inane and boring after "Clan of the Cave Bear". "Clan of the Cave Bear" managed to be a great book because it focused on some real, pressing issues that Ayla as a child had, and focused on her character development as a child. The problem with every book since is that Auel still focuses almost exclusively on character storylines over everything else, but there ISN'T any character development. It's all mindless fluff, nothing of significance ever happens, Ayla and Jondalar do not develop or grow as people whatsoever, they're about as flat as wafer thin paper. All other secondary characters are so frustratingly stereotyped and never get any story of their own, if they show the remotest hint of having interesting, hidden depths, they're killed off or get left far behind. The dialogue she writes for Ayla and Jondalar is painfully unrealistic and cheesy, and the purple prose she uses in the sex scenes is so horribly over the top it's like a Harlequin pulp.Time and again, Ayla meets a tribe of people, who are awed by her god-like powers, and Teaches Them The Error Of Their Ways. Mainly this involves spreading the message that Neanderthals Are People Too, and that people are Wrong to treat them as animals. I can't help suspecting that it's secretly also about teaching people that they are Wrong to treat Ayla as an abomination for her association with Neanderthals, because of course, Ayla is wonderful and perfect and has invented every significant piece of technology under the sun, and whatever would she do if she were truly outcast, why, then she wouldn't be able to fill her Chosen Destiny as the Best Shaman Ever. It's nauseating. No one gets to have an opinion apart from Ayla and Jondalar, and if anyone can do anything well you can bet that Ayla does it better, and if anyone actually develops a tiny bit of personality and depth (which would be a big threat to the Ayla character since she's so perfect by this instalment that she's little more than shallow fluff), they're punished for it and bad things happen to them.Final conclusions? The historical setting of the Ice Age, one which is not tackled very often by fiction writers, is on the face of it, of interest. However, Auel makes the people of the Ice Age's lives so inane and banal - nothing of importance ever happens and conversations feel forced and unnatural. The storyline is spends almost 1000 agonising pages describing how the protagonists got from A to B, interspersed with cheesy interludes in which the protagonists save a group of people and teach them the error of their ways with smug self-righteousness that makes you want to smack them. The plot has no arc to speak of, there is no character development in the two protagonists, who lack any depth, complexity, or empathy, whilst secondary characters are little better than stock stereotypes who serve to either sing the praises of the main characters or be humiliatingly belittled by them if they should prove antagonistic, and woe betide any character who has the potential to be a rival to our perfect Ayla, they are immediately written out, either killed, conveniently absent, or condemned to a miserable fate. The plot is not at all engaging or gripping as a result, since you know that the author will never allow anything truly bad to happen to Ayla.Still, now that Ayla has at last reached her final destination, I'm hoping this breezeblock of an interlude will give way to some real meaty stuff in the next book, and we can get down to her fulfilling whatever fate the author has in mind for her.
Let's start saying that I loved the first three books of this serie. They were just so lovely, and they communicated something...they gave me that "pre-historic" vibe... I don't know, they were quite charming. But I'm having serious issues with this fourth one: I'm currently half way through it and I'm not sure whether to continue it or no, as I'm not sure if I'll read the last two books (I already own 'Shelters of stone' but 'Land of Painted Caves' is still unpublished in Italy...). Why?Well, let's explain...First of all, it seems that Jean Auel couldn't come up with ideas for this book. There are pages and pages in which nothing significant happens, and all we can read is looong and boring descriptions of prehistoric landscapes...and sex scenes. If you already read one of the 1st three books you know how much Auel loves to put tooons of details in her descriptions -and you'd be aware of her sex scenes, which to me were a little bit too much! Let's be clear, it's not porn, but I don't like to know details of the sexual life of the characters!-... but this time...it's simply too much.As I said, you could go for pages withouth anything significant happened, and then when something did, It was just...boring. Book number two was about a journey as well, but it was funny, light hearted and lots of things happened and I was quite impatient to see where Jondalar and Thonolan's journey would lead them, what tribes they'd meet, what were their habits...I'd easily skipped over Ayla's parts to keep reading about the two brothers! (ok,I had a thing for Thonolan and Jondalar was so lovely and fun back in book #2...yep, he was a pain, but not a total one as in book #3 in which he was really a pain. An handsome pain, a cute pain, but soo pain!) In book number four I didn't feel the same. Retourning to the Sharamudoi? BO-RING. They were so lovely in book #2 but now... Ahem.As you could understand, really, few things happen in this book...and these episodes are separated by pages and pages of nothing,landscapes, Jondalar and Ayla's private life.It really seems that Auel has NO IDEA of what to write in this book. And I got the feeling that the last 2 books are pretty much the same...She really seems she lost inspiration after book #3... maybe she should have stopped there and let Ayla&Jondalar remain with the Lion Camp... or, she should have waited 'till better plot ideas'd come to her. Then, even characters lost something of their charme to me. I don't know, their interaction looks...somehow flat, there's no major...anything between them -even if they should be doing lots of discussions and stuff after the crisis they went through in book #3! They seem they never..talk about this...bah!-...and...dunno, maybe Ayla is starting to become a little bit too perfect. Auel was really, really uninspired. Ayla has always been a lovely character, a light hearted, strong, fierce young woman... she just got flat! Even Jondalar! C'mon, I love his being such a dumb... his flaws made him cute... I remember the first time I was introduced to him I thought "God, he's such an idiot!" and after some page "I LOVE this idiot! Yup! <3"... where is my BELOVED IDIOT in this book?? ç-çHow to ruin a lovely serie...I gotta say that there is actually something good in that book. The S’Armunai part was kinda good and interesting…but it goes on for a ridiculously low amount of pages…so we can’t consider it as a redeeming for the whole book.
What do You think about The Plains Of Passage (2002)?
Summary: Ayla and Jondalar travel to his homeland.Oh, you wanted me to be a bit more specific? Okay.Summary: Ayla and Jondalar head out to his homeland (because while Ayla is supposed to sacrifice her newfound family, the Mamutoi, Jondalar can whine and complain to get what he wants). They stumble upon Mammoths having sex, the Sharmudoi and the Ramudoi who almost immediately induct Ayla into their clan, a group of Femi-Nazis (aka, what many conservatives think Feminists are), a couple of Clan people, the Losadunai, and Jondalar's sister's people (whoever the hell they are). In the meantime, Ayla and Jondalar cross rivers, have lots of sex, chase after their damn animals, and talk about where babies come from (actually, it's Jondalar doing a lot of the wondering where babies come from--Ayla must have FINALLY come to grips with it).NOTE: I listened to this on audiobook and am a super lazy person, so I am not even bothering with getting all the new names of peoples and places correct.This book is a perfect example of what happens when you write a novel and don't have a plot to fill it. The book becomes just a volume of people going here and there, bumping into random tribes for the hell of it, and studying in excruciatingly textbook detail the flora, fauna, and biosphere.In some ways, this book is actually an improvement over the (in my opinion) dismal "Mammoth Hunters". We don't have any stupid Big Misunderstandings, we get to meet a lot of new peoples and customs, and journey stories are some of my favorites. That said, this book is something that I definitely couldn't call "Mammoth Hunters" and that is BORING.Journey stories are inherently tough and not everyone is going to like them. I think a good journey story is more than just Character X has to get to Point B. A good journey story will have the CHARACTER undergo a change, some sort of trial, in the midst of the external journey. By the time the character reaches the end of the journey, something should have been learned, characters should grow, knowledge should be gained.None of that happens in this journey. At the end of the book, Ayla and Jondalar are the same vapid, 1-Dimensional Mary Sue and Marty Stu they were when they started this book. Ayla is perfect in every way; every man wants to tumble in the furs with her, she is the most gorgeous woman ANYONE has ever seen (and EVERYONE will let you know it), everything she does is perfect and wonderful, she can win over people who hate the Clan and anyone associated with it, she can heal a rape victim with a few sympathetic words, she can save a village from Femi-Nazis but come out without having shed ANY blood, she teaches people how to sew (a skill that apparently NO ONE ELSE is capable of learning), and she can get ANY tribe to almost immediately want to have her join their clan. If Ayla has a flaw, it is the "I don't realize how beautiful I am" curse (yes, even after all this time with Jondalar and the bajillion men saying how gorgeous she is, Ayla still thinks she is "Big and Ugly"). Or the "I have to save someone no matter the cost" (but don't worry--unlike in "Clan of the Cave Bear" where Ayla wasn't able to save someone, Ayla never has that problem here!). Both of them are Mary Sue checkmarks in my book.What makes Ayla more irritating in my book isn't her Mary Sue qualities (although, damn, they were enough to make me want to hit something). What makes me upset is how Ayla falls for the trap so many novels featuring a female protagonist fall for: Ayla gives up EVERYTHING for Jondalar. She even jokes, "Well, I belong to you, don't I?"[image error]
—Crystal Starr Light
Oh my God . . . the most boring book I've ever read! and i must give credit to jean auel because i read about how much work and research and time she puts into these novels and i know how accurate her descriptions are of everything . . . but she easily devotes 4 pages (atleast) to describing the terrain, the flora and fauna, the animals . . . and picture this . . . the story is about two people crossing ice age europe from one end to the other . . . and the book is 865 pages . . . the longest one in the entire series so far!!!!! by the way, this book took me about 2 months to read, the longest i've ever spent reading a single book. but i finished it. and a few years later i re-read the series, but i skipped this book.
—mrs. fig
...Does that mean it's a good book? No, not really. The novel just has too many flaws for that. At best, I'd call it a guilty pleasure. It's a book that at a rational level, could be burnt to the ground in a review without requiring any great effort from the reviewer. Nevertheless, I have a soft spot for it. I don't think I would have bothered with The Shelters of Stone and The Land of Painted Caves without enjoying this book at some level. It is still more than a few steps down from The Clan of the Cave Bear however. The tragedy of this series is that Auel never managed to come close to the level she reached in the opening volume. Still, this minor step up was just enough to keep me going and even to convince me to reread the fifth book. I guess I will finish this series of reviews after all. Full Random Comments review
—Rob
