The land of Painted Cave - Finally finished!

At the age of 15 I began to read 'The Clan of the Cave Bear" at my mum's recommendation.  At 15 I couldn't get into it but gave it a go again when I was about 21 and LOVED it. In fact, it became my favourite book.

The story is set in Europe during the last Ice age. It is about a young girl named Ayla who is of cro-magnon decent and at the beginning of the tale is found by a group of neanderthal humans. It follows her story living with them.  If you want to read more about it you can here. I thoroughly recommend it.

My favourite quote from the book is;
"...and because no one told her she couldn't, she did."


Having loved 'The Clan of the Cave Bear' so much I decided to read the entire series.  At that stage that was 4 more books, which I quickly made my way through.  I loved the second the the third novels - "Valley of the Horses" and "The Mammoth Hunters".

The second follows Ayla after she is cast out from the 'clan' and considered dead by them.  She lives in a valley by herself and befriends a baby lion, a horse and a wolf.  It's a dual story line.  Her story and that of two traveling brothers. At a point the two stories cross paths and Ayla falls in love with one of the brothers who she has to nurse back to health.

The third is about the couples travels to the settlement of mammoth hunters called the Mamutoi and their time living with them. Excellent stories, both of them.

The fourth novel, "The plains of passage" is about Ayla and Jondalar's trip back to Jondalar's people - the Zealandonii.  Very long, very detailed.  Not my favourite of the series and it was a big job to get through it but I did enjoy all the descriptions of the land around them as they travelled, animals, flora and fauna.

The fifth novel is about when the couple reach Jondalar's family and his people. It's not great.

I've just recently finished the 6th novel.  Which, even though I didn't enjoy the 5th so much, was really looking forward to prior to it's release early last year.  I was extremely excited when Mr. Man came home with it on the day of release to surprise me. I started it that night but it fell off with my busy 'getting ready for baby schedule'.

I started reading it again a month or so back and waded through pages and pages of (sadly) boredom :(. The book repeats waaaaay to much of the stuff that you already know.  Surely at the 6th novel the only people reading it would be those that have followed the story all the way through?
The storyline is incredibly detailed again, which previously I've liked, but it was a little bit TMI at some points - I don't want to know everytime the baby needs to pee! I ended up just flicking through the last 10 chapters of the book and was able to get the gist of the story.

So a very boring end to a much loved series of books. I wonder if Jean M Auel lost her mojo at some point?  Her writing was GREAT in the 80s and early 90s!