Jean Auel - Land of Painted Caves

[Brian G Turner]

It's taken around 30 years for Jean Auel to complete all six books in the Earth's Children series, with Land of Painted Caves released this month.

However, I think any regular readers will be sorely disappointed, and it's getting a lot of flack.

Main problem appears to be: there's no story.

The plot is: Ayla wanders around looking at lots of caves and their paintings. And introduces Wolf to people who are very surprised she has one. Then there are a couple of minor incidents which seem completely pointless and out of character, then it finishes without concluding anything.

There's no tie in to The Clan, no sense of story, and no feeling of completion that the final novel in an epic 6 part series should convey.

It almost gives the impression that Jean Auel used to have an editor friend who guided story elements and character development into her anthropology studies, but that they feel away somewhere around book 4/5.

So Jean instead conveys her own travels of looking at painted caves in France, writes another person in another world looking at them, and then throws in some empty plot elements in as an after thought.

The book is getting slammed on Amazon's reviews for being disappointing and I can understand why.

Question is, has anyone here read it and actually enjoyed it?

 

[Metryq]

I read the first three books. I thought the first was excellent, despite any technical inaccuracies. There was more to that story than just the plot itself. This sixth book (which I have not read) sounds similar to the second book where Ayla spends the majority of the story alone. The third book, about the mammoth hunters, was more memorable, but it was becoming increasingly evident that Ayla single-handedly invented all of civilization. I dropped out early in the fourth book because it seemed that Ayla and Jondalar or Jumbalaya, or whatever his name was, were banging each other like rabbits every five pages.

 

[Vertigo]

Yes I got much the same impression, Metryq, the amount of detailed sex passages did seem to increase as the books went on. Mind you not much else of consequence seemed to happen in those passages so they were easy enough to skip.

My main problem with the books was imbuing the people with a very modern level of sophistication (note I am not saying intelligence) that simply does not seem realistic. Also I was unhappy with many of the historical (pre-historical?) inaccuracies. Some I'm prepared to allow for on the basis that, for example, there was no evidence at the time of the first book that Neanderthal could talk, whereas we now know that they probably had a greater vocal range than us. So she couldn't be expected to have known that. On the other hand many of the skills and such like were simply placed into the wrong timeframe.

However so long as I suspended belief and treated it as pure fantasy and skipped the sex and skimmed the enormously detailed descriptions of the food they foraged (interesting at first but...), I found them well written entertaining stories. But IMHO they definitely declined in quality as they went on so now I'm very unsure whether I will bother with this last one.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I couldn't read much more than a quarter of her first book because it was essentially a list of things. One person wandering around, absolutely no plot...

 

[Vertigo]

In fairness it did get better than that later on but I would have to say that they are classic examples of heavy handed info dumping.

 

[Robsia]

I loved the first three. I actually thought in Book Two, where Ayla is alone for much of the time, Auel handled it quite well - must be hard to write about one person doing stuff with no other people there.

Was slightly disappointed in the fourth, very disappointed in the fifth and, although I haven't read the sixth, am seriously considering not actually buying it at all, based on the reviews and comments I have read.

 

[Parson]

I have also read all 5 of the predecessor books. I too thought that they declined over time, with the first book a really, really, memorable one. (I'm not wild about that Vision Quest junk, but beside that.) I'm also frustrated by the "romance." I have little patience with people who will not own their own feelings and continually talk in ways to be misunderstood, or can easily be misunderstood. -- I will probably read the sixth book because Ayla is one of the more memorable characters in fiction during the last century.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I loved the first three. I actually thought in Book Two, where Ayla is alone for much of the time, Auel handled it quite well - must be hard to write about one person doing stuff with no other people there.

Was slightly disappointed in the fourth, very disappointed in the fifth and, although I haven't read the sixth, am seriously considering not actually buying it at all, based on the reviews and comments I have read.

I really enjoyed the first three, too.

But the fourth was: Ayla and Jondalar walk thousands of miles from the Black Sea along the Danube. Watch as nothing happens! Oh, alright, here's a warped camp with a bit of story, then they climb a glacier!

Book 6 is pretty much Book 5 extended. Hundreds of pages of Ayla meeting irrelevant people, sharing lineage, introducing wolf, people surprised by wolf, go look at caves, and not really going anywhere.

 

[drosdelnoch]

To be honest this last one I felt was just a waste of time, it was too repetitive as well as being over stuffed with filler. Felt cheated with it.

 

[Vertigo]

Oh dear it sounds like my mum is going to be seriously disappointed. She loved these books (except for, you guessed it, the sex) and was beginning to get worried that she would miss the last one (She's in her 80's but tough and independant so I wasn't really worried she would). She'll be well miffed if it's a dud.

 

[Rosemary]

I'm sorry to hear that her 6th book has not been well received.

Having read the previous volumes, I too enjoyed the first three. I don't think there have been too many books with a similar theme so they were very interesting, even if some of the historical points are now outdated, as previously mentioned.

Somehow I do not feel that I shall be reading her latest publication.

 

[Tansy]

Oh dear - like most of you I've read most of them so far and thought they got progressively worse, shame really as I was enjoying the early books

 

[Robsia]

I don't think there have been too many books with a similar theme so they were very interesting.

I don't want to be annoying and I'm really not only here to plug my book but parts of my book are set in the Stone Age - the Mesolithic to be specific. It's a time travel book so skips between three time periods, but I guess I was quite influenced by the Earth's Children Books. A sort of "What if a future time traveller went back to the Stone Age and somehow someone slipped through and ended up in the present day and they had to try to find her" kind of thing.

Sounds a bit mad but I think it works. I won't put a link in case I'd be violating any protocols, but it's available on Amazon.

 

[Angrybushpig]

I keep expecting Ayla to invent electricity.

 

[Vertigo]

I keep expecting Ayla to invent electricity.

He he it does get a bit like that