The Clan of the Cave Bear was awesome, as was The Valley of Horses. The Mammoth Hunters was an enjoyable read, although the whole "love triangle" thing felt a bit contrived. The Plains of Passage had a bit more adventure to it, and was still fun to read. The Shelters of Stone was decent, but not as good as the others. I still enjoyed it, but not as much as the rest. I firmly believe that 99% of the sex scenes in those books could have been reduced to "Then they fucked.", but that's just one small annoyance that many people might not agree with. In any case, it didn't detract from the story, as I could easily skim past it and continue with the actual plot.
Then we get to the focus of this post. The Land of Painted Caves. I can sum up my opinion of this book with a simple "What the fuck was that pile of shit I just forced myself to read?" The only possible redemption for this pile of garbage is if it's only purpose is to set up for a book 7.
What I hated:
I can only assume that Jean Auel took an extended tour of some caves, and wanted to share what she'd seen. She went into nauseating detail about caves and cave paintings. Now, don't get me wrong, the detail is part of what I enjoyed about her earlier works. This time it was too overdone and redundant to be even remotely entertaining after the first description. A better place for it would have been a guidebook to ancient cave sites.
The Mother's Song. Great, she wrote a nice poem. I don't really need to read it 300 times. Okay, it wasn't really 300 times, it just felt like it. Maybe someday I'll go back and count the number if times it's there.
Ayla has an accent. Yes, we know Ayla has an accent. It's mentioned a few times in previous books. Mentioning it once or twice in this book would have been okay, but does it really need to be mentioned every single time she talks within hearing of anyone but Jondalar? Do even the people she's known for years need to take special note of it every time she opens her mouth?
Hey! Horses! Holy shit, a wolf! Every time she meets someone, the reaction is the same. That's somewhat understandable. The problem comes when people she's lived, hunted, and worked with for 5 fucking years can't get over it. Really people? The Mamutoi got over it in a few months.
Ayla can't lie, but she's either pretty good at it or she doesn't remember shit very well for someone with an almost super-human memory. I'm not going to punish myself by going back and looking for specific examples, but there were a few points where I thought "That's not what happened. Stop making shit up." I re-read the entire series before I started this one so it would be fresh in my mind.
This book was redundant redundant. Oh, and did I mention that it repeats itself too? I don't know, maybe Ms. Auel got so caught up in her detailed descriptions of the world that she never noticed that the characters had the exact same conversation 5 times already, but you'd think her editor might have noticed. Her detailed descriptions are great, but I swear she just copy - pasted them whenever she wanted to add filler. Rehashing every single important event of the previous 5 books 12 times wasn't entirely necessary, either.
****Spoiler****
Ayla the dirty bitch. Jondalar had an affair, which long time readers know wouldn't actually be a major problem for Ayla. She might be a bit irritated over the specific person he banged on the side, but it wouldn't drive her to do something petty and stupid. For some unknown and unexplained reason she becomes wildly jealous and decides to fuck some dirty drunk that Jondalar hates for the sole purpose of pissing her mate off. It works. Afterwards, she seems surprised by his violent reaction, even though she knows that he beat the fuck out of another guy before they met just for being a tattle-tail.****End Spoiler****
Unfulfilled promises. Alright, we were never really promised anything. I just assumed that all the talk of opening communications with the Clan before bad shit happened would be covered at some point in this book. It wasn't. We don't even get a report of a Clan sighting. The closest we come is finding out that the Clan visits, and probably holds ceremonies, in one of the sacred caves that is visited. We also see almost nothing but dirty looks and unflattering comments from the "bad guys". They were a potential plot point that was ignored unless Ms. Auel needed to add a couple paragraphs in somewhere. Like this book needed more useless filler.
What I liked.
Well...Jonayla had a fun scene where she got to be more "heroic" than either of her parents managed through the entire book.
There must be something else I liked, but I'll be damned if I can think of any right now.
For those who haven't purchased this book yet, don't. Don't even borrow it from the library. If you have purchased this book, and you have a friend that wants to read it, tell them "no". I can't think of a better gift to give a friend that a refusal to let them waste even a few minutes of their life on this piece of garbage.
