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2.92 AVERAGE
2.92 AVERAGE
The first 600pgs were boring and the last 300 were GARBAGE. Holy fuck I've never been under the impression that these books are Great Literature but I never expected to hate one of them as much as this. What a terrible way to end the series. Hella bummed.
Boring. Repetitive. Pointless. Long. Stopped reading it. And I made it halfway through.
Unfortunately, this didn't even come close to living up to the first in the series - Clan of the Cave Bear. It was extremely hard to read. Someone else said that the author turned on the terrific main character she created, and I have to agree. The Ayla in this book has very little substance compared to the girl in Clan of the Cave Bear...
I have no idea why I was compelled to read this beyond the fact that I'd read all the others. I'm giving two stars for all the research, which is fascinating and deeply interesting. I can't help but think that maybe Auel would have been better off telling this as non-fiction/fiction or even as fan fiction of her own novels. This was incredibly slow and lacking in tension, and I was getting frustrated even while I wanted to stick with it to learn more about the people of that area at that time. Abandoned.
This was a great series! I really liked it, even though it was kinda repetitive.
While I did enjoy this book overall, most of the action seems to take place in the last few hundred pages of the book. It is interesting to see Ayla go through a good bit of her Zelandoni training, but her relationship to her close family falls to the background. Most descriptions of her daughter Jonayla involve Alya asking someone else to watch her while she goes off to do something else. Jondalar doesn't have much of a voice in this book either.
While we do get a bit more time with the First, I was hoping to learn more about her internal thought process and her guidance of Ayla into the mysteries of the Zelandoni.
The thing I found most disappointing is the resolution of the conflict between Ayla and Jondalar at the end of the book. It didn't seem that they ever really learned how to communicate with each other to avoid this type of conflict in the future. At the very least, it seems that the First might have been a bit more instrumental in helping them face each other to work it out as a friend and spiritual leader.
One of the things that I did find refreshing was the ambiguity in the growing conflict brought on by new knowledge and ways of thinking. Auel does not wrap things up in a neat bow, but lets characters grapple with things that may have negative implications on many levels and that may not have any concrete resolution.
It will be interesting to see where the next installation will go if Auel continues with this series.
While we do get a bit more time with the First, I was hoping to learn more about her internal thought process and her guidance of Ayla into the mysteries of the Zelandoni.
The thing I found most disappointing is the resolution of the conflict between Ayla and Jondalar at the end of the book. It didn't seem that they ever really learned how to communicate with each other to avoid this type of conflict in the future. At the very least, it seems that the First might have been a bit more instrumental in helping them face each other to work it out as a friend and spiritual leader.
One of the things that I did find refreshing was the ambiguity in the growing conflict brought on by new knowledge and ways of thinking. Auel does not wrap things up in a neat bow, but lets characters grapple with things that may have negative implications on many levels and that may not have any concrete resolution.
It will be interesting to see where the next installation will go if Auel continues with this series.
One of the worst, most boring books EVER. I love Auel. But, I will be promptly throwing this book in the garbage where it belongs. I don't even want to donate it on the chance that some sorry sap will pick it up. Auel needs to refund everyone. Senseless, repetitious and very poorly constructed. It reads like a textbook for the first 507 pages. Then, it takes a hard left turn and throws a bunch of events at you, rapid fire. The characters started doing things they never would have done three books ago. I honestly thing Auel is senile. Someone who loves her should have told her to stop writing long ago.
I would have enjoyed this book so much more if it hadn't been so repetitive. I really felt the Mother's Song was unnecessary to read 50 times. I skimmed through a lot of the descriptive stuff and the long name introductions. When I could just get to what was going on and with who I was happy. It did pick up during the 2nd half of the book.