Cyndi J. (cyndij) reviewed on 2/10/2019 + 1032 more book reviews

Wow. I am so disappointed in this massive waste of time. It was thousands of hours of careful research on Auel's part, looking for a plot. 3 sections, mostly unconnected with each other, only the last of which has any semblance to a story - and it's regurgitated from previous books at that! Section two is just endless boring trips into caves looking at paintings, Auel's attempt to include every single documented prehistoric cave art, all in descriptions down to each passageway of each cave. It needed illustrations, not description. In section 3, we go back to Jondalar and Ayla having a big fight and not talking to each other. And the big revelation at the end, which Ayla and the readers have known since the first book? That's it? That's how she's going to end this? I guess it is sort of ironic that Ayla, who started out as a child overcoming massive adversity and becomes a gifted healer (then turned into Wonder Woman), is now the revealing the message that will upset this whole society in an awful way, and pretty much lead to women being chattel for most of human history.
Sadly I could go on and on with criticisms. I do think Auel's vision of this series was a wonderful one, but the execution got worse with each book. Clan of the Cave Bear was wonderful and now she ends with this dreck. I loved the depiction of the landscape, the technical details on how people survivied, the plants and animals. Even the social dynamics were mostly okay. But so many loose ends that could have been fascinating - what happened to Durc, for example? And...oh well, no point in going on. I so wish that Auel had had a really good editor, someone who would have ignored the dollar signs and instead pointed out the major flaws in the last few books, because this series started out with such promise and just goes down in flames.

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