[book review] The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel
(To be honest, this is more me snarking than it is an actual review. Jsyk.)
Because I had waited ages for this book to come out and sort of anticipated lulz, I decided to write a running commentary on the final book of Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series.
Caution: I ramble, swear like a sailor, and over-use reaction images and gifs. /o/ Also it gets more convoluted and immature the further I get into it. ^^;; The third part is mostly a lot of recapping about sex, so if you get squicked out easily, you might want to avoid it. (Trust me, I’d rather have avoided it too, BUT IT WAS SERIOUSLY THE ONLY PLOT HAPPENING. I had nothing else to freak out about.)
I tried to write it sort of funny, so that even people who don't know the series can perhaps be amused. On the opposite hand, there ARE spoilers under here, so beware!
Before anything else: I do not claim to be more of an “expert” on how something should be written than Auel. Have I written a series that has sold an epic amount of copies? No, I have not. For all I know I never will, probably because I’m no good at series-writing. But the art of writing is sacred to me and I pay very close attention to what I read and who it is about.
Sometimes, like this time, it doesn’t matter if I’m an amateur and I’m criticizing a professional. Because sometimes, something really is that bad.
The only things you need to know before reading:
The title of the book is The Land of Painted Caves. It is set in the Stone Age and is the sixth and final book in a series.
Ayla is a sue and will always be a sue. She will do amazing things and discover amazing things. People will love her. Anyone who doesn’t love her will get punished somehow. She is training to be a Zelandoni (a holy person.) But despite her sueness, I do rather like her. Jondalar is her mate and Jonayla is their daughter.
I hate Jondalar. Like…a lot. Because he’s an immature whiny brat who can’t keep it in his pants. All he cares about is sex and attention. When he’s mad or upset he takes it out on other people and treats Ayla like shit. He’s a passive-aggressive little bitch and has no personality and I hate him irrationally. Ayla could seriously do so much better. I will hate him even more before this book is over, so expect ranting.
---------------------------
So the book opens with Part One, lalala, big hunt scene, Ayla’s vast knowledge and greatness are pointed out by the second page.
“Ayla had an uncanny ability to interpret meaning from body language [and] had extraordinarily sharp vision. She could also pick up sounds above the normal range of hearing and feel the deep tones of those below. Her sense of taste and smell were also keen […] She was born with heightened acuity in all her senses.”
We are on the SECOND PAGE, people. If this was a stand alone novel, I’d write Ayla off as an insufferable sue right now. The fact that this is the sixth book in a series where all these things have already been pointed out just makes the whole scene tiresome. I’ve read the whole series. I already know these things. You can remind me about them later, Auel, if you must remind me at all.
There is much talking and re-introducing of people and Caves (capital C for Caves where people live as a community as opposed to small-letter-c caves where bats and gay people live), and then it’s time for a Summer Meeting!
I actually like Summer Meetings, they’re always interesting looks into the culture of the people. Lanidar is there, he’s a cool character with a deformed arm and is a freakin’ badass who brings all the boys to the yard. The storytellers are there too, I love them. They tell a fun story that is of course interrupted by Ayla musing about how wolves learn to hunt and Wolf (her pet wolf) showing up just in time to be speshul. Damn it, Ayla and your Super Sue pet, get out of the way, I want to hear the cool story. Also, a whole page is spent describing Ayla’s outfit. B|
The Zelandoni of the Fourteenth Cave is obviously mean and spiteful because she has stringy hair and is bony. However, despite setting her up as a villain, she will never be plot-relevant after this point. /o/
Also there is much omniscient narrating as we get paragraphs from each person who hates Ayla. Marona is a bitch and she thinks bitchy thoughts and plans to steal Jondalar (she can fucking have him for all I care) and by the way did I mention she was a bitch? She has this thing for Jondalar and is super jealous of Ayla. She moved to a new Cave to be away from them, but this is a Summer Meeting so every Cave is there.
BRUKEVAL. YOU ARE SUCH A CREEPER WTF. He fucking followed Ayla and Jondalar when they went off to have sex holy shit. Also, he loves Ayla and he hates her at the same time. The narrator exposits about this for a page or two.
And then Laramar is all “How dare she take care of my kids even though I never take care of them anyway because I’m a drunk arglebarglerargle.”
Ayla notices them all but because she’s Ayla she's all just:
Jondalar gets cockblocked by his own mom and that’s kind of awesome. xDD
Jondy and Ayla: *gettin’ all kinky in their sleeping bag*
Jondalar’s mom and some other people: *come in* "trollololololol."
Jondalar: *sadfaise* “Hey Mom.”
Marthona: “o hai son, did we wake you? 8D”
Me: *high fives Marthona because she is an epic troll*
A cold winter is foreshadowed and it’s gonna be all serious and stuff!
And that’s pretty much the end of anything interesting there. They must go look at caves. Painted caves. Wolf is a Zelandoni because he howls inside them and it echoes. The baby is a Zelandoni too because she cries when the wolf howls because OMG, what a totally non-normal thing for a baby to do! *sarcasm hat*
Also, Ayla’s giant boobs ache a lot when she hasn’t fed her baby. Did you need to know that? FUNNY, NEITHER DID I. We’re told multiple times anyway.
What follows is a lot of traveling to a lot of different places descriptions of flowers and rocks and rivers and honestly, I don’t know care. I can barely keep track of the dozens of side characters and started skimming pretty heavily. A few minor plots rear their heads and are resolved within a few pages. A stone penis is mentioned; I mention this because I have a suspicion that it will be plot-related later on. [ Note from the future: it won't be. =( ] Also, Ayla predicts an earthquake two days before it happens, but nothing happens except one kid dies. No, wait, he doesn’t die, he’s just dying but nobody does anything except go, “Yup, he’s gonna die. Might be awhile. That sucks.” His brain is fucking leaking out of his nose. My gods, just please end it quickly, don’t let him lay there and die slowly.
Paintedcavespaintedcavespaintedcaves…I love history and find cave paintings fascinating, and I am so sick and tired of painted caves after the second one. Also I hear entirely too much about people’s bodily functions. Seriously, I don’t care if you have your kid trained to pee when you hold her out. I didn’t need to know that.
Traveling and caves and traveling…
Ayla gets an uncomfortable feeling in this one random place so they leave. Nothing happens, at least nothing that I can discern. Um…all right, moving on?
Paintedcavespainted-
Oh, it’s Part Two now and- HOLY TIME WARP BATMAN.
It’s four years later now wut.
So I guess that cold winter wasn’t a big deal after all?
And they’re still looking at caves. Also, Marona Von Bitcherson lives back at the Ninth Cave where Ayla and Jondalar live now.
They drink some tea and trip in one cave, but nothing happens except Ayla has a vision of an eclipse and nobody cares. This eclipse will never be mentioned again.
They go on a fairly long journey. More minor plots emerge and resolve quickly, including two with potential to be cool. One where people get the measles, which, when I read spoilers, they just mentioned a "sickness" so I thought the sickness would erupt into a full-on plague and people would die and Ayla’s healing ability would be challenged. Maybe she would invent a cure! I was ready for danger and excitement. Instead a few people got a fever and some spots and then recovered.
Another plot with a band of roving rapists appears. I read spoilers about the gang of rapists and thought they would be an over-arching plot too. I thought there would be rumors about them, people would go missing, someone would be killed. I thought they would be this threatening unseen menace for many chapters. Nope, instead they show up with absolutely no foreshadowing at all and then their plot is cleared up within a chapter.
Okay, I guess maybe this was foreshadowed in the previous book/books, because a gang of rapists was mentioned, but it seems awfully abrupt. I’m not positive this is the same gang; they never specify it. Auel has reminded us at least ten times so far about Ayla’s ability to whistle like a bird (which was mentioned in every single book before, too), so you’d think a band of rapists would warrant at least one mention or two before they arrive all like:
A WILD BAND OF RAPISTS APPEARS. AYLA USES SUE POWERS. IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE.
WILD BAND OF RAPISTS USES OBVIOUS ESCAPE PLAN IS OBVIOUS. It’s not very effective…
Citizens use RAGE. IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE x2.
And then that plot is over and off they go.
HEY SPEAKING OF STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW, DID YOU KNOW THAT AYLA SPEAKS ODDLY? I SHALL MENTION IT SIXTY MILLION TIMES SO THAT YOU KNOW.
Seriously, did Auel think we would forget or something? I can see mentioning it once early on, maybe another time mid-way through the book, hell I’ll even give her a third or fourth if she works it into dialogue, (someone asking about her accent or something) but nearly everyone they meet thinks about it to themselves when they meet her. Aside from it being a sort of annoying reminder of the all-knowing narrator who switches POVs multiple times a paragraph (I tend to prefer it if we stay in a single character’s head in a scene, kthnx), it’s redundant by now.
They entered the cave they’re in right now on page 471. It is now page 493 and they’re still in the same cave. In this amount of time Ayla had talked about her past twice for a fascinated audience and demonstrated how she can roar like a lion for probably the tenth friggin’ time AND someone noted how attractive she is.
And now she’s doing another monologue about her past and how speshul the cave paintings are. And now they’re singing the Mother Song for the umpteenth time. It lasts for three pages. Then Ayla demonstrates her lion imitations. Again.
Meanwhile, inside my head for the last 30 pages:
Auel apparently thinks we need to be told that Wolf poops in the cave.
And then OMGYAY, we’re finally to Part Three. I hear some interesting stuff actually happens in this part.
AYLA HAS PERFECT PERIODS THAT ALWAYS ARRIVE ON THE EXACT DAY LOLOLIHATEHER.
It’s Summer Meeting time again, but Ayla has to stay behind for awhile on Zelandoni business. This could actually be cool because it means Jondalar won’t be around. Aaaaaand apparently Ayla is pregnant. I somehow don’t think this is going to work out well, because in the few spoilers I have read, another kid was never mentioned. Uh oh.
+1 Ayla’s accent being noticed AGAIN.
Oh shit. She’s having Feelings about something bad happening again. And now she just accidentally drank this tea that she wasn’t supposed to drink because she’s an idiot who didn’t check the bag it was in. YOU’RE A FREAKIN’ SUPER SUE MEDICINE WOMAN, HOW DO YOU SCREW SOMETHING LIKE THAT UP. (Answer: because the plot needed her to.)
Dude, she is all sorts of trippin’ right now.
AAAAAND…she has just been told the final verse of the Mother Song in her hallucination. Nobody ever knew the last verse. Now, suddenly, she just knows it. Because she tripped balls and hallucinated the song.
The sad thing is that after everything in this series, I’m honestly not surprised by this.
Ohh. Okay, so apparently drinking the tea and tripping out of her mind was her “calling” from the Mother Goddess. O.o To become a Zelandoni you have to be called and I guess that “accident” was her being called...? Also, she miscarried the baby. I won’t make fun of that, that’s actually kind of sad. Although the sadness of the scene is somewhat lessened by her monologing about how babies are made.
The fact that she’s thinking about how much she loves Jondalar right now and how sad she is to lose his child is kind of breaking my heart because I did read a spoiler about something that happens later. =/
Now she’s thinking about Marona and how she can’t abide her because she’s such a bitch, and is all, “Why am I even thinking about Marona anyway!? This makes no sense.”
Auel, I have one thing to say to THAT (okay, two things, but the second is just a joke about shipping Ayla and Marona):
Foreshadowing. You’re doing it…well, blatantly.
Anyway, she’s going to the Summer Meeting…. Oh, this is kind of cool. Some people she lived with years ago randomly showed up there too. =D She used to live with some people called the Mamutoi who, quite honestly, I liked a lot better than Jondalar’s people. They were all fun-loving and rambunctious. It’s awesome to see them again.
Ayla is a legend and worshipped as a goddess of a sort among one tribe of people. Oh gods. The sueness, IT BURNS. However, I’m still loving the reunion scene.
(Warning: gif and reaction image abuse is about to triple)
Nobody knows where Jondalar is, oh dear. Ayla decides to go for a bath, and hears people talking as she’s approaching the spring to bathe. A man’s voice and a woman’s voice. And then the man laughs, A FAMILIAR LAUGH. Oh goddamn.
Yup. JONDALAR AND MARONA IN THE MIDDLE OF SEXYTIEMZ. OH HELL TO THE NO, JONDALAR YOU-
. . .
Okay, so technically there is no such thing as ‘cheating’ in their culture. (There really isn’t, all marriages are technically open, because at this point only Ayla-Sue knows that men are used to make babies.)
However. Ayla and Jondalar have an agreement (possibly unspoken, but it never really says it ISN’T spoken, either. At any rate, it’s a well-established fact that they never - the word “never” is used - share partners like other couples do.) to be true to each other. And in a previous book in the series, Jondalar flew into a jealous rage when Ayla went outside the relationship on accident (she was trying to fit in and everyone was telling her that sharing partners was the normal thing to do) and they weren’t even mated yet at that point. He still flipped his shit. So for HIM to turn around and cheat deliberately? Even though he would shit a brick if she ever cheated on him?
She falls down in shock, Marona and Jondalar spot her, and oh lawd, shit is going down.
Jondalar is like, “wait, let’s talk!”
Ayla: “Uh, no. Besides, clearly you’re busy.”
Marona: “Oh ho, this ain’t the first time, sister, we been gettin’ it on all year.”
Ayla: *storms off*
Jondalar: *goes after her*
OH FUCKING HELL. Okay, I have to type this quote out:
“I don’t want Marona, not if I can have you, Ayla,” Jondalar said, suddenly afraid he might lose her.
SERIOUSLY WTF. In one fell swoop he has managed to be a dick to his mistress, and treat Ayla like she’s his favorite toy, but if he can’t have her he’ll go get another one. Now that he stands a chance of losing her, he bothers to feel contrite. I don’t even have the words to describe this right now.
Then the narrator starts hopping viewpoints. Marona realizes he was just using her, that she meant nothing to him, and suddenly I start feeling bad for her, too. Jondalar starts expositing about how much he loves Ayla and how bad he feels about this and going, “Why did I couple with Marona? Why did Ayla have to see us? WHYYYYY?” AND YOU KNOW WHAT?
Jondalar, STOP TALKING. Nothing you ramble on about right now is going to help. (Besides that lamenting that she CAUGHT you isn’t exactly making you appear sympathetic.) You are a manwhore and pond scum. You are…what’s that colorful phrase Retail Hell Underground introduced me to?...oh yes, a foul-assed slaghog. That's what you are.
Oh, great, and now the narrator is trying to explain away what he did through exposition by other characters, who are thinking about his “strong drives” and how Ayla was so busy and there are no societal constraints so it was okay, including at least two pages of explanation of why Ayla shouldn't be/isn’t allowed to be jealous.
(Or you can skip to the tl;dr below if you’d like to avoid the extra RAEG.)
Fuck what society says is okay; he shouldn’t care about betraying society, he should care about betraying his partner. SHE is the number one person whose respect he should want. If I had to choose between the trust of someone I love or the respect of society, the person I love wins. Hands down, every time.
Let me put it this way. Society says I can’t marry a woman. Some parts of society (or my own family!) would even encourage me to find a man and have babies because it’s traditional for women. However, if I and my partner agree with each other that we will be monogamous, then OUR agreement is the one that holds, even if society would just go “meh” if we cheated on each other. Even if society/family encouraged one of us to cheat, it would still be a terrible betrayal if one of us did after agreeing we wouldn’t. Where my loyalty should lie is incredibly clear here, at least to me.
I don’t care if Ayla was often busy, CLEARLY she wasn’t so busy that she couldn’t get pregnant, so obviously he was getting something. And on that note, fuck his fucking “strong drives.” I don’t care if Ayla’s training meant he had to be celibate as a friggin’ monk. This may be because I’m asexual, but I don’t believe that lust (or unsatiated lust for that matter) is EVER an excuse to cheat. If sex is that big of a deal to you and your partner is busy and your sex drive is high and your culture says it's a "waste of seed" to masturbate, then TALK TO THEM about a solution you’ll both be comfortable with. Especially in this culture, where it’s fine to have an open marriage. I’m sure there were tons of girls who would have loved to be no-strings-attached flings for him, (and don’t try to tell me he’s so good in bed that they’d fall in love with him even after agreeing to keep emotions out of it. Sex does not equal love, end of story, close the damn book.) who Ayla could have approved of. This isn’t like he’s been cheating with a courtesan (which don’t exist in this world because they have no real money concept but you get the idea) who will keep things professional, he’s cheating with Marona, who he knows hates Ayla and WANTS to hurt her. That’s not a no-strings-attached relationship. THOSE ARE STRINGS.
I have said many things about how vomit-inducing Ayla’s sueness is, and I’m destined to say many more, but above all that: Ayla deserves to be treated better than this. Any woman deserves better than this; hell, Marona, Dutchess of Bitchland deserves better than this. Yes, I hate how sues are treated like they’re oh so speshul and amazing and talented and smart, but even a sue deserves the right to be treated with respect by her husband.
And honestly...the problem here isn’t that he had a fling, even though it was a dick move considering he would never want Ayla to have a fling and even though I personally have serious issues against cheating (if this rant didn't give that away. xD;) I'd be willing to let go of all my above problems if not for one thing: Jondalar is still being held up as this “good guy” character. The other characters are making excuses why it’s okay, Ayla is beating herself up for feeling jealous because she’s not allowed to be jealous, and Auel is placing all the blame on Marona, and that isn’t right. It takes two to tango. If you cheat, half the blame is on YOU. 50% of that is YOUR FUCKING FAULT. You always have a choice. And then consider that he never even felt guilty about doing this UNTIL they were caught. Only then did he think about how hurt Ayla would be. I am honestly pissed off as all hell right now at Auel for even trying to explain it away or absolve Jondalar of blame. No, Auel. You didn’t write a confused nice guy character, you wrote an asshole character that no modern woman reading this is going to respect. Now treat him like one and stop making excuses for him.
tl;dr: FUCK THIS WHOLE SUBPLOT ALL TO HELL. Ayla can do ten million times better than Jondalar and if this was MY book, she’d kick him to the curb. Sadly this is not my book and I know that they’ll make up somehow. I’m saying this now so that nobody gets their hopes up that he will die in a fire.
Okay. Back to the more amusing commentary.
Well, Ayla’s officially a Zelandoni now. All the other Zelandoni people are already saying she’ll go on to be the First (sort of the leader of the Zelandoni.) -_-
Ahaha, they’re all discussing how they’re going to tell all the men that they’re half of what makes a baby. xD (Before now everyone assumed the Mother just picks a guy’s spirit to mix with a woman’s, and then the woman gets pregnant. Hokay.) This should be interesting.
OMG, SOMEBODY IS BEING REASONABLE.
Proleva, even though your name sounds like a prescription drug, you are my new favorite character for this line:
[talking about how Jondalar is being a brat and avoiding Ayla] “He shouldn’t have started up with her [Marona] again, even if she was encouraging him every way she could. He knew how Ayla would feel about her.”
THANK YOU, PROLEVA. A MILLION TIMES THANK YOU. I SHALL ASK MY DOCTOR IF YOU ARE RIGHT FOR ME.
Gods, Brukeval is like the Swimfan of the Stone Age. He is creeping me the fuck out, going on about how he loves Ayla more than life itself and gets off on fantasies of her. O_o
Time for the Mother Festival! They just told all the men that they’re half-responsible for making babies. Aaaand Jondalar sees Ayla flirting with Laramar (the drunk I mentioned back in part 1) is all, “can we talk?” to Ayla, who is all, “You had plenty of opportunities to talk to me before and didn’t bother, so I don’t see why it’s so important now.” *goes back to flirting with Laramar*
Jondalar is wandering around all stunned about her being so pissed at him. And he’s contrite and feeling sorry for what he did and going, “Why did I do thisssss? D=” GUESS WHAT JONDALAR? YOU FUCKED UP.
…OH MY GODS WHAT THE BLOODY FUCK IS THIS. D|
Okay, so Ayla’s drunk, right? Apparently she’s now having an orgy with three guys, one of whom is Laramar, who starts gettin’ it on with her right there AND JONDALAR GOES BATSHIT, RUNS OVER, YANKS HIM BACK AND BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF HIM WHILE SCREAMING “HE’S MAKING MY BABY” WHAT THE HELL.
I…I don’t…this book has just gone…
...Yeah.
And then, and THEN…
Oh, this is priceless. Ayla is talking with the First, (current leader of the Zelandoni, I’ll call her First to make things simple) and is pissed off and freaked out by Jondalar’s actions. She asks the First why he did it, and when told it was because she was with another man and not him, Ayla is all:
“Just because I haven’t done it before with anyone else shouldn’t make any difference. After all, he’s been coupling with Marona.”
YES. PREACH IT, SISTA. FUCKING PREACH IT.
And then the First has the gall to say, “Yes, but you weren’t available when he did.”
WAT. WAAAAAAAT.
Following this is a long conversation in which the First pretty much absolves Jondalar of any blame, explaining away why he did what he did and making Ayla feel like crap for being pissed off and hurt. And now Ayla is guilt-tripping herself like crazy for having a life outside of Jondalar and how it’s her fault he strayed because she wasn’t giving 100% of her attention to him. There are not enough middle fingers in the world to describe what I would like to say to the First OR Auel right now. So I’ll let someone 20% cooler than me say what I would like to say:
On an unrelated note, the stone penis I mentioned way back before that I thought would be relevant apparently wasn’t. Huh. (See, I thought she was going to use the stone penis to masturbate and prove to Jondalar that Rocky the Dildo was a better lover than he, so he can have Marona because she doesn't need him.)
I’m fighting so hard not to go into a rant right now over how sickening this is. The one thing I liked about this series was that Ayla had a backbone. She could live without a man, unlike the heroines of 95% of other books on the market today. When she found a man I was disappointed, but whatever, I won’t begrudge her happiness. But now here she is lamenting that she can’t live without Jondalar and how this is all her fault. Thank you, Auel, because there wasn’t enough literature on the market telling women they are nothing without their man and how he is all that matters and how dare they have a life outside of him. Thank you so much, I really needed another reason to cry myself to sleep.
Ah, Brukeval is having a random bitchfit. That actually made me laugh because it was so random. xD Then he runs away.
Now Ayla is all, “woe, I should just go live in a cave by myself forever angst angst angst.” Honestly, I wish she would. I would a million times over rather read about the strong, cool, independent woman who raised animals and taught herself artwork, the Ayla we knew back in Book 2 before she met Jondalar, than ever read this again.
Lovely. Ayla is going to do something deliberately stupid that she knows might kill her (she and the First are going to eat these roots that make you trip all the way to Narnia and nearly killed Ayla the last two times she did them) all because Jondalar doesn’t love her anymore and so nobody would miss her. You cannot fathom how fucking pissed off this makes me. Take every single angry reaction image I have used, combine them, and exponentially multiply that, and you might come close. This is just…fucking sickening. What happened? What happened to this series that started with such promise, that it’s ending this way? I kind of want to stop reading here and imagine my own ending, but there are literally less than 60 pages of this left and I’m not a quitter.
Oh goody, it’s Jondalar’s chance to mope. Except his moping annoys me even more than Ayla’s.
Hey, Jondalar the Wonder Penis?
Go talk to Ayla, apologize, and face what has happened. Seriously, this whole, “he/she can’t possibly love me anymore so I’m going to hide in a corner and mope” thing was already done three books ago. It seriously feels to me like Auel copy-and-pasted parts of the draft from Book 3 into this one. And I suspect it’s going to get worse.
...AND IT DID.
Okay, so back in Book 3, the end of the book basically went like this:
Ayla and Jondalar are both convinced the other doesn’t love him/her anymore and are refusing to talk to each other.
The Medicine Man of the Mamutoi asks Ayla if she’ll do the special roots and trip with him.
They trip balls and she sees all kinds of things, including stuff about her son.
She won’t wake up.
Someone has to run and get Jondalar and race against the clock to get him to her before she dies.
He arrives just in time, cries about how much he loves her, and his great love for her “pulls her back” from the brink of death.
Would anyone like to take a guess at what just happened in THIS book? Anyone? 8D I won't keep you in suspense.
Ayla and Jondalar are both convinced the other doesn’t love him/her anymore and are refusing to talk to each other.
The First asks Ayla if she’ll do the special roots and trip with her.
They trip balls and she sees all kinds of things, including stuff about her son.
She won’t wake up.
Someone has to run and get Jondalar and race against the clock to get him to her before she dies.
He arrives just in time, cries about how much he loves her, and his great love for her “pulls her back” from the brink of death.
Okay, no, seriously, did she accidentally paste in Book 3’s rough draft or something?
Gods this is so sickening, the narrator actually exposits that every woman at the Summer Meeting wishes she had a man who loved her as much as Jondalar loves Ayla.
Excuse me? Are you insinuating that all those other couples are somehow inferior?! I’ll bet you all the money in the world that, if many of those women did the crazy roots, their mates (male OR female, and I feel the need to mention this because the series, which used to be sort of gay-positive, has suddenly gotten very hetero-only in these last few books and especially this one) would come to them and beg them back to life as well.
(Also, in her hallucination, which I’ve completely failed to address because honestly it was a let down, there’s a nice anvilicious message about caring for the Earth or we’ll all perish. I agree with the sentiment, but it was pretty heavy handed.)
Oh lawd, Danug, I LOVE YOU. I want to have your red-haired babies. He’s one of the guys from the Mamutoi and he basically just told Jondalar and Ayla, “You two are fucking melodramatic idiots, srsly. STOP BEING STUPID FROM NOW ON.”
I swear to gods, suddenly I want to read a book that is nothing but Danug being awesome and traveling around tellin’ it like it is like a boss.
Ayla has just given Jondalar permission to chase tail if his “needs” mean he has to. That sound you hear is every single woman who was kicked, beaten, thrown in jail and ridiculed for trying to get anyone with two X chromosomes equal rights. /o/ \o\ \o/ kill me now please how is this book not over yettttt
Blah blah blah, everyone loves Jondalar and Ayla, his “punishment” for hurting Laramar is to adopt Laramar’s kids…which isn’t really a punishment considering they sort of already half-adopted them anyway, but he’s a Sue too so I really shouldn’t be surprised that his “punishment” isn’t really one.
Some random wrapping up exposition about flowers and a paragraph of overview of their travels ANDDDDD…
AND FINALLY IT’S OVER.
Final thoughts (reaction image-free!):
This was not what I would call a good book. An okay book, I suppose, although my relief at it being over might be what’s suddenly giving me such a sunny disposition toward it. Throughout the book, however, I did not feel good things. I felt mad, I felt sad, I felt disappointed and disgusted and plain old pissed off. The problem is that instead of feeling those things because the story was supposed to make me feel them, I felt them toward the book itself.
I really want to sit down with Auel and ask her what the hell she thought she was writing. If she wants to write a stand-alone novel that reads like a bad soap opera and makes me hate half the cast, fine, but for the final book in a series? The book everyone will remember?
For me, the series went like this:
Book 1: Loved it.
Book 2: Loved all the parts of it that didn’t involve Jondalar, so about 75% of it
Book 3: I loved the Mamutoi, but there was this stupid love triangle and it all got dumb. Liked 50% of it though.
Book 4: Hated 90% of the damn thing. The only part I did like was when they stayed with some river people. I hated the minor plot with the Wolf Women, and that was really the only plot in the whole book.
Book 5: Not as bad as Book 4, but still not that exciting. However I did really enjoy the Summer Meeting that took up a large bit of the book, so I’d rate this one lower than Book 3, but not as bad as 4.
What I wanted was for Book 6 to bring me back into the series with a bang. I was hoping Auel would pull something epic out. We’ve spent five books learning about the cultures and plants and flowers. I thought Book 6 was going to be chock full of stuff about the people. I wanted Ayla to be a healer and use her medicine skills, NOT her whistling skills. I wanted to learn tons more about the side characters. I wanted excitement and suspense and plot, damn it. When I heard about the "sickness" outbreak and the band of rapists, I was so excited. A band of rapists lurking around while Ayla is desperately trying to avert a plague? Talk about excitement! I even, as much as I hated him, hoped Jondalar would redeem himself and become a character I could respect, or if not, died heroically helping people in the plague or fighting off the gang to protect his daughter or something.
Instead we get this: five hundred pages of set-up and another 300 or so pages of contrived, stupid plot that belong in a bad romance novel or a fanfiction. I barely respect any of the characters anymore, even the ones that I used to.
But the worst part…the worst part, I think, was that I never forgot I was reading a book. I could practically see the strings on the characters that Auel was using to manipulate them. The plot hinged on stupid, out-of-character things, (Ayla messing up the tea, Jondalar cheating, the whole fight at the Mother Festival, etc.) and plot devices we’ve already seen, (the whole roots scene.) Never once was I swept up in the story. Every time I nearly was, something stupid happened and reminded me these characters weren’t at the wheel, an author was. An author who did a disservice to the world and characters she created.
As much as I loved the first book and wanted to defend the whole series, I can’t deny it: this book deserves the two-star Amazon rating it has. And to see a series with such a great start go out with a sad fizzle is just depressing.
If you haven't read the whole series yet, read Clan of the Cave Bear and Ayla’s chapters of Valley of the Horses, and then stop right when she meets Jondalar and imagine your own ending to the story. If it's too late, read this book if you must know the canon ending, but I'd suggest reading a synopsis (one with less rambling than mine. xD) and then, again, making up your own ending instead. I’m pretty sure your version will be better.
Because I had waited ages for this book to come out and sort of anticipated lulz, I decided to write a running commentary on the final book of Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series.
Caution: I ramble, swear like a sailor, and over-use reaction images and gifs. /o/ Also it gets more convoluted and immature the further I get into it. ^^;; The third part is mostly a lot of recapping about sex, so if you get squicked out easily, you might want to avoid it. (Trust me, I’d rather have avoided it too, BUT IT WAS SERIOUSLY THE ONLY PLOT HAPPENING. I had nothing else to freak out about.)
I tried to write it sort of funny, so that even people who don't know the series can perhaps be amused. On the opposite hand, there ARE spoilers under here, so beware!
Before anything else: I do not claim to be more of an “expert” on how something should be written than Auel. Have I written a series that has sold an epic amount of copies? No, I have not. For all I know I never will, probably because I’m no good at series-writing. But the art of writing is sacred to me and I pay very close attention to what I read and who it is about.
Sometimes, like this time, it doesn’t matter if I’m an amateur and I’m criticizing a professional. Because sometimes, something really is that bad.
The only things you need to know before reading:
The title of the book is The Land of Painted Caves. It is set in the Stone Age and is the sixth and final book in a series.
Ayla is a sue and will always be a sue. She will do amazing things and discover amazing things. People will love her. Anyone who doesn’t love her will get punished somehow. She is training to be a Zelandoni (a holy person.) But despite her sueness, I do rather like her. Jondalar is her mate and Jonayla is their daughter.
I hate Jondalar. Like…a lot. Because he’s an immature whiny brat who can’t keep it in his pants. All he cares about is sex and attention. When he’s mad or upset he takes it out on other people and treats Ayla like shit. He’s a passive-aggressive little bitch and has no personality and I hate him irrationally. Ayla could seriously do so much better. I will hate him even more before this book is over, so expect ranting.
---------------------------
So the book opens with Part One, lalala, big hunt scene, Ayla’s vast knowledge and greatness are pointed out by the second page.
“Ayla had an uncanny ability to interpret meaning from body language [and] had extraordinarily sharp vision. She could also pick up sounds above the normal range of hearing and feel the deep tones of those below. Her sense of taste and smell were also keen […] She was born with heightened acuity in all her senses.”
We are on the SECOND PAGE, people. If this was a stand alone novel, I’d write Ayla off as an insufferable sue right now. The fact that this is the sixth book in a series where all these things have already been pointed out just makes the whole scene tiresome. I’ve read the whole series. I already know these things. You can remind me about them later, Auel, if you must remind me at all.
There is much talking and re-introducing of people and Caves (capital C for Caves where people live as a community as opposed to small-letter-c caves where bats and gay people live), and then it’s time for a Summer Meeting!
I actually like Summer Meetings, they’re always interesting looks into the culture of the people. Lanidar is there, he’s a cool character with a deformed arm and is a freakin’ badass who brings all the boys to the yard. The storytellers are there too, I love them. They tell a fun story that is of course interrupted by Ayla musing about how wolves learn to hunt and Wolf (her pet wolf) showing up just in time to be speshul. Damn it, Ayla and your Super Sue pet, get out of the way, I want to hear the cool story. Also, a whole page is spent describing Ayla’s outfit. B|
The Zelandoni of the Fourteenth Cave is obviously mean and spiteful because she has stringy hair and is bony. However, despite setting her up as a villain, she will never be plot-relevant after this point. /o/
Also there is much omniscient narrating as we get paragraphs from each person who hates Ayla. Marona is a bitch and she thinks bitchy thoughts and plans to steal Jondalar (she can fucking have him for all I care) and by the way did I mention she was a bitch? She has this thing for Jondalar and is super jealous of Ayla. She moved to a new Cave to be away from them, but this is a Summer Meeting so every Cave is there.
BRUKEVAL. YOU ARE SUCH A CREEPER WTF. He fucking followed Ayla and Jondalar when they went off to have sex holy shit. Also, he loves Ayla and he hates her at the same time. The narrator exposits about this for a page or two.
And then Laramar is all “How dare she take care of my kids even though I never take care of them anyway because I’m a drunk arglebarglerargle.”
Ayla notices them all but because she’s Ayla she's all just:
Jondalar gets cockblocked by his own mom and that’s kind of awesome. xDD
Jondy and Ayla: *gettin’ all kinky in their sleeping bag*
Jondalar’s mom and some other people: *come in* "trollololololol."
Jondalar: *sadfaise* “Hey Mom.”
Marthona: “o hai son, did we wake you? 8D”
Me: *high fives Marthona because she is an epic troll*
A cold winter is foreshadowed and it’s gonna be all serious and stuff!
And that’s pretty much the end of anything interesting there. They must go look at caves. Painted caves. Wolf is a Zelandoni because he howls inside them and it echoes. The baby is a Zelandoni too because she cries when the wolf howls because OMG, what a totally non-normal thing for a baby to do! *sarcasm hat*
Also, Ayla’s giant boobs ache a lot when she hasn’t fed her baby. Did you need to know that? FUNNY, NEITHER DID I. We’re told multiple times anyway.
What follows is a lot of traveling to a lot of different places descriptions of flowers and rocks and rivers and honestly, I don’t know care. I can barely keep track of the dozens of side characters and started skimming pretty heavily. A few minor plots rear their heads and are resolved within a few pages. A stone penis is mentioned; I mention this because I have a suspicion that it will be plot-related later on. [ Note from the future: it won't be. =( ] Also, Ayla predicts an earthquake two days before it happens, but nothing happens except one kid dies. No, wait, he doesn’t die, he’s just dying but nobody does anything except go, “Yup, he’s gonna die. Might be awhile. That sucks.” His brain is fucking leaking out of his nose. My gods, just please end it quickly, don’t let him lay there and die slowly.
Paintedcavespaintedcavespaintedcaves…I love history and find cave paintings fascinating, and I am so sick and tired of painted caves after the second one. Also I hear entirely too much about people’s bodily functions. Seriously, I don’t care if you have your kid trained to pee when you hold her out. I didn’t need to know that.
Traveling and caves and traveling…
Ayla gets an uncomfortable feeling in this one random place so they leave. Nothing happens, at least nothing that I can discern. Um…all right, moving on?
Paintedcavespainted-
Oh, it’s Part Two now and- HOLY TIME WARP BATMAN.
It’s four years later now wut.
So I guess that cold winter wasn’t a big deal after all?
And they’re still looking at caves. Also, Marona Von Bitcherson lives back at the Ninth Cave where Ayla and Jondalar live now.
They drink some tea and trip in one cave, but nothing happens except Ayla has a vision of an eclipse and nobody cares. This eclipse will never be mentioned again.
They go on a fairly long journey. More minor plots emerge and resolve quickly, including two with potential to be cool. One where people get the measles, which, when I read spoilers, they just mentioned a "sickness" so I thought the sickness would erupt into a full-on plague and people would die and Ayla’s healing ability would be challenged. Maybe she would invent a cure! I was ready for danger and excitement. Instead a few people got a fever and some spots and then recovered.
Another plot with a band of roving rapists appears. I read spoilers about the gang of rapists and thought they would be an over-arching plot too. I thought there would be rumors about them, people would go missing, someone would be killed. I thought they would be this threatening unseen menace for many chapters. Nope, instead they show up with absolutely no foreshadowing at all and then their plot is cleared up within a chapter.
Okay, I guess maybe this was foreshadowed in the previous book/books, because a gang of rapists was mentioned, but it seems awfully abrupt. I’m not positive this is the same gang; they never specify it. Auel has reminded us at least ten times so far about Ayla’s ability to whistle like a bird (which was mentioned in every single book before, too), so you’d think a band of rapists would warrant at least one mention or two before they arrive all like:
A WILD BAND OF RAPISTS APPEARS. AYLA USES SUE POWERS. IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE.
WILD BAND OF RAPISTS USES OBVIOUS ESCAPE PLAN IS OBVIOUS. It’s not very effective…
Citizens use RAGE. IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE x2.
And then that plot is over and off they go.
HEY SPEAKING OF STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW, DID YOU KNOW THAT AYLA SPEAKS ODDLY? I SHALL MENTION IT SIXTY MILLION TIMES SO THAT YOU KNOW.
Seriously, did Auel think we would forget or something? I can see mentioning it once early on, maybe another time mid-way through the book, hell I’ll even give her a third or fourth if she works it into dialogue, (someone asking about her accent or something) but nearly everyone they meet thinks about it to themselves when they meet her. Aside from it being a sort of annoying reminder of the all-knowing narrator who switches POVs multiple times a paragraph (I tend to prefer it if we stay in a single character’s head in a scene, kthnx), it’s redundant by now.
They entered the cave they’re in right now on page 471. It is now page 493 and they’re still in the same cave. In this amount of time Ayla had talked about her past twice for a fascinated audience and demonstrated how she can roar like a lion for probably the tenth friggin’ time AND someone noted how attractive she is.
And now she’s doing another monologue about her past and how speshul the cave paintings are. And now they’re singing the Mother Song for the umpteenth time. It lasts for three pages. Then Ayla demonstrates her lion imitations. Again.
Meanwhile, inside my head for the last 30 pages:
Auel apparently thinks we need to be told that Wolf poops in the cave.
And then OMGYAY, we’re finally to Part Three. I hear some interesting stuff actually happens in this part.
AYLA HAS PERFECT PERIODS THAT ALWAYS ARRIVE ON THE EXACT DAY LOLOLIHATEHER.
It’s Summer Meeting time again, but Ayla has to stay behind for awhile on Zelandoni business. This could actually be cool because it means Jondalar won’t be around. Aaaaaand apparently Ayla is pregnant. I somehow don’t think this is going to work out well, because in the few spoilers I have read, another kid was never mentioned. Uh oh.
+1 Ayla’s accent being noticed AGAIN.
Oh shit. She’s having Feelings about something bad happening again. And now she just accidentally drank this tea that she wasn’t supposed to drink because she’s an idiot who didn’t check the bag it was in. YOU’RE A FREAKIN’ SUPER SUE MEDICINE WOMAN, HOW DO YOU SCREW SOMETHING LIKE THAT UP. (Answer: because the plot needed her to.)
Dude, she is all sorts of trippin’ right now.
AAAAAND…she has just been told the final verse of the Mother Song in her hallucination. Nobody ever knew the last verse. Now, suddenly, she just knows it. Because she tripped balls and hallucinated the song.
The sad thing is that after everything in this series, I’m honestly not surprised by this.
Ohh. Okay, so apparently drinking the tea and tripping out of her mind was her “calling” from the Mother Goddess. O.o To become a Zelandoni you have to be called and I guess that “accident” was her being called...? Also, she miscarried the baby. I won’t make fun of that, that’s actually kind of sad. Although the sadness of the scene is somewhat lessened by her monologing about how babies are made.
The fact that she’s thinking about how much she loves Jondalar right now and how sad she is to lose his child is kind of breaking my heart because I did read a spoiler about something that happens later. =/
Now she’s thinking about Marona and how she can’t abide her because she’s such a bitch, and is all, “Why am I even thinking about Marona anyway!? This makes no sense.”
Auel, I have one thing to say to THAT (okay, two things, but the second is just a joke about shipping Ayla and Marona):
Foreshadowing. You’re doing it…well, blatantly.
Anyway, she’s going to the Summer Meeting…. Oh, this is kind of cool. Some people she lived with years ago randomly showed up there too. =D She used to live with some people called the Mamutoi who, quite honestly, I liked a lot better than Jondalar’s people. They were all fun-loving and rambunctious. It’s awesome to see them again.
Ayla is a legend and worshipped as a goddess of a sort among one tribe of people. Oh gods. The sueness, IT BURNS. However, I’m still loving the reunion scene.
(Warning: gif and reaction image abuse is about to triple)
Nobody knows where Jondalar is, oh dear. Ayla decides to go for a bath, and hears people talking as she’s approaching the spring to bathe. A man’s voice and a woman’s voice. And then the man laughs, A FAMILIAR LAUGH. Oh goddamn.
Yup. JONDALAR AND MARONA IN THE MIDDLE OF SEXYTIEMZ. OH HELL TO THE NO, JONDALAR YOU-
. . .
Okay, so technically there is no such thing as ‘cheating’ in their culture. (There really isn’t, all marriages are technically open, because at this point only Ayla-Sue knows that men are used to make babies.)
However. Ayla and Jondalar have an agreement (possibly unspoken, but it never really says it ISN’T spoken, either. At any rate, it’s a well-established fact that they never - the word “never” is used - share partners like other couples do.) to be true to each other. And in a previous book in the series, Jondalar flew into a jealous rage when Ayla went outside the relationship on accident (she was trying to fit in and everyone was telling her that sharing partners was the normal thing to do) and they weren’t even mated yet at that point. He still flipped his shit. So for HIM to turn around and cheat deliberately? Even though he would shit a brick if she ever cheated on him?
She falls down in shock, Marona and Jondalar spot her, and oh lawd, shit is going down.
Jondalar is like, “wait, let’s talk!”
Ayla: “Uh, no. Besides, clearly you’re busy.”
Marona: “Oh ho, this ain’t the first time, sister, we been gettin’ it on all year.”
Ayla: *storms off*
Jondalar: *goes after her*
OH FUCKING HELL. Okay, I have to type this quote out:
“I don’t want Marona, not if I can have you, Ayla,” Jondalar said, suddenly afraid he might lose her.
SERIOUSLY WTF. In one fell swoop he has managed to be a dick to his mistress, and treat Ayla like she’s his favorite toy, but if he can’t have her he’ll go get another one. Now that he stands a chance of losing her, he bothers to feel contrite. I don’t even have the words to describe this right now.
Then the narrator starts hopping viewpoints. Marona realizes he was just using her, that she meant nothing to him, and suddenly I start feeling bad for her, too. Jondalar starts expositing about how much he loves Ayla and how bad he feels about this and going, “Why did I couple with Marona? Why did Ayla have to see us? WHYYYYY?” AND YOU KNOW WHAT?
Jondalar, STOP TALKING. Nothing you ramble on about right now is going to help. (Besides that lamenting that she CAUGHT you isn’t exactly making you appear sympathetic.) You are a manwhore and pond scum. You are…what’s that colorful phrase Retail Hell Underground introduced me to?...oh yes, a foul-assed slaghog. That's what you are.
Oh, great, and now the narrator is trying to explain away what he did through exposition by other characters, who are thinking about his “strong drives” and how Ayla was so busy and there are no societal constraints so it was okay, including at least two pages of explanation of why Ayla shouldn't be/isn’t allowed to be jealous.
(Or you can skip to the tl;dr below if you’d like to avoid the extra RAEG.)
Fuck what society says is okay; he shouldn’t care about betraying society, he should care about betraying his partner. SHE is the number one person whose respect he should want. If I had to choose between the trust of someone I love or the respect of society, the person I love wins. Hands down, every time.
Let me put it this way. Society says I can’t marry a woman. Some parts of society (or my own family!) would even encourage me to find a man and have babies because it’s traditional for women. However, if I and my partner agree with each other that we will be monogamous, then OUR agreement is the one that holds, even if society would just go “meh” if we cheated on each other. Even if society/family encouraged one of us to cheat, it would still be a terrible betrayal if one of us did after agreeing we wouldn’t. Where my loyalty should lie is incredibly clear here, at least to me.
I don’t care if Ayla was often busy, CLEARLY she wasn’t so busy that she couldn’t get pregnant, so obviously he was getting something. And on that note, fuck his fucking “strong drives.” I don’t care if Ayla’s training meant he had to be celibate as a friggin’ monk. This may be because I’m asexual, but I don’t believe that lust (or unsatiated lust for that matter) is EVER an excuse to cheat. If sex is that big of a deal to you and your partner is busy and your sex drive is high and your culture says it's a "waste of seed" to masturbate, then TALK TO THEM about a solution you’ll both be comfortable with. Especially in this culture, where it’s fine to have an open marriage. I’m sure there were tons of girls who would have loved to be no-strings-attached flings for him, (and don’t try to tell me he’s so good in bed that they’d fall in love with him even after agreeing to keep emotions out of it. Sex does not equal love, end of story, close the damn book.) who Ayla could have approved of. This isn’t like he’s been cheating with a courtesan (which don’t exist in this world because they have no real money concept but you get the idea) who will keep things professional, he’s cheating with Marona, who he knows hates Ayla and WANTS to hurt her. That’s not a no-strings-attached relationship. THOSE ARE STRINGS.
I have said many things about how vomit-inducing Ayla’s sueness is, and I’m destined to say many more, but above all that: Ayla deserves to be treated better than this. Any woman deserves better than this; hell, Marona, Dutchess of Bitchland deserves better than this. Yes, I hate how sues are treated like they’re oh so speshul and amazing and talented and smart, but even a sue deserves the right to be treated with respect by her husband.
And honestly...the problem here isn’t that he had a fling, even though it was a dick move considering he would never want Ayla to have a fling and even though I personally have serious issues against cheating (if this rant didn't give that away. xD;) I'd be willing to let go of all my above problems if not for one thing: Jondalar is still being held up as this “good guy” character. The other characters are making excuses why it’s okay, Ayla is beating herself up for feeling jealous because she’s not allowed to be jealous, and Auel is placing all the blame on Marona, and that isn’t right. It takes two to tango. If you cheat, half the blame is on YOU. 50% of that is YOUR FUCKING FAULT. You always have a choice. And then consider that he never even felt guilty about doing this UNTIL they were caught. Only then did he think about how hurt Ayla would be. I am honestly pissed off as all hell right now at Auel for even trying to explain it away or absolve Jondalar of blame. No, Auel. You didn’t write a confused nice guy character, you wrote an asshole character that no modern woman reading this is going to respect. Now treat him like one and stop making excuses for him.
tl;dr: FUCK THIS WHOLE SUBPLOT ALL TO HELL. Ayla can do ten million times better than Jondalar and if this was MY book, she’d kick him to the curb. Sadly this is not my book and I know that they’ll make up somehow. I’m saying this now so that nobody gets their hopes up that he will die in a fire.
Okay. Back to the more amusing commentary.
Well, Ayla’s officially a Zelandoni now. All the other Zelandoni people are already saying she’ll go on to be the First (sort of the leader of the Zelandoni.) -_-
Ahaha, they’re all discussing how they’re going to tell all the men that they’re half of what makes a baby. xD (Before now everyone assumed the Mother just picks a guy’s spirit to mix with a woman’s, and then the woman gets pregnant. Hokay.) This should be interesting.
OMG, SOMEBODY IS BEING REASONABLE.
Proleva, even though your name sounds like a prescription drug, you are my new favorite character for this line:
[talking about how Jondalar is being a brat and avoiding Ayla] “He shouldn’t have started up with her [Marona] again, even if she was encouraging him every way she could. He knew how Ayla would feel about her.”
THANK YOU, PROLEVA. A MILLION TIMES THANK YOU. I SHALL ASK MY DOCTOR IF YOU ARE RIGHT FOR ME.
Gods, Brukeval is like the Swimfan of the Stone Age. He is creeping me the fuck out, going on about how he loves Ayla more than life itself and gets off on fantasies of her. O_o
Time for the Mother Festival! They just told all the men that they’re half-responsible for making babies. Aaaand Jondalar sees Ayla flirting with Laramar (the drunk I mentioned back in part 1) is all, “can we talk?” to Ayla, who is all, “You had plenty of opportunities to talk to me before and didn’t bother, so I don’t see why it’s so important now.” *goes back to flirting with Laramar*
Jondalar is wandering around all stunned about her being so pissed at him. And he’s contrite and feeling sorry for what he did and going, “Why did I do thisssss? D=” GUESS WHAT JONDALAR? YOU FUCKED UP.
…OH MY GODS WHAT THE BLOODY FUCK IS THIS. D|
Okay, so Ayla’s drunk, right? Apparently she’s now having an orgy with three guys, one of whom is Laramar, who starts gettin’ it on with her right there AND JONDALAR GOES BATSHIT, RUNS OVER, YANKS HIM BACK AND BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF HIM WHILE SCREAMING “HE’S MAKING MY BABY” WHAT THE HELL.
I…I don’t…this book has just gone…
...Yeah.
And then, and THEN…
Oh, this is priceless. Ayla is talking with the First, (current leader of the Zelandoni, I’ll call her First to make things simple) and is pissed off and freaked out by Jondalar’s actions. She asks the First why he did it, and when told it was because she was with another man and not him, Ayla is all:
“Just because I haven’t done it before with anyone else shouldn’t make any difference. After all, he’s been coupling with Marona.”
YES. PREACH IT, SISTA. FUCKING PREACH IT.
And then the First has the gall to say, “Yes, but you weren’t available when he did.”
WAT. WAAAAAAAT.
Following this is a long conversation in which the First pretty much absolves Jondalar of any blame, explaining away why he did what he did and making Ayla feel like crap for being pissed off and hurt. And now Ayla is guilt-tripping herself like crazy for having a life outside of Jondalar and how it’s her fault he strayed because she wasn’t giving 100% of her attention to him. There are not enough middle fingers in the world to describe what I would like to say to the First OR Auel right now. So I’ll let someone 20% cooler than me say what I would like to say:
On an unrelated note, the stone penis I mentioned way back before that I thought would be relevant apparently wasn’t. Huh. (See, I thought she was going to use the stone penis to masturbate and prove to Jondalar that Rocky the Dildo was a better lover than he, so he can have Marona because she doesn't need him.)
I’m fighting so hard not to go into a rant right now over how sickening this is. The one thing I liked about this series was that Ayla had a backbone. She could live without a man, unlike the heroines of 95% of other books on the market today. When she found a man I was disappointed, but whatever, I won’t begrudge her happiness. But now here she is lamenting that she can’t live without Jondalar and how this is all her fault. Thank you, Auel, because there wasn’t enough literature on the market telling women they are nothing without their man and how he is all that matters and how dare they have a life outside of him. Thank you so much, I really needed another reason to cry myself to sleep.
Ah, Brukeval is having a random bitchfit. That actually made me laugh because it was so random. xD Then he runs away.
Now Ayla is all, “woe, I should just go live in a cave by myself forever angst angst angst.” Honestly, I wish she would. I would a million times over rather read about the strong, cool, independent woman who raised animals and taught herself artwork, the Ayla we knew back in Book 2 before she met Jondalar, than ever read this again.
Lovely. Ayla is going to do something deliberately stupid that she knows might kill her (she and the First are going to eat these roots that make you trip all the way to Narnia and nearly killed Ayla the last two times she did them) all because Jondalar doesn’t love her anymore and so nobody would miss her. You cannot fathom how fucking pissed off this makes me. Take every single angry reaction image I have used, combine them, and exponentially multiply that, and you might come close. This is just…fucking sickening. What happened? What happened to this series that started with such promise, that it’s ending this way? I kind of want to stop reading here and imagine my own ending, but there are literally less than 60 pages of this left and I’m not a quitter.
Oh goody, it’s Jondalar’s chance to mope. Except his moping annoys me even more than Ayla’s.
Hey, Jondalar the Wonder Penis?
Go talk to Ayla, apologize, and face what has happened. Seriously, this whole, “he/she can’t possibly love me anymore so I’m going to hide in a corner and mope” thing was already done three books ago. It seriously feels to me like Auel copy-and-pasted parts of the draft from Book 3 into this one. And I suspect it’s going to get worse.
...AND IT DID.
Okay, so back in Book 3, the end of the book basically went like this:
Ayla and Jondalar are both convinced the other doesn’t love him/her anymore and are refusing to talk to each other.
The Medicine Man of the Mamutoi asks Ayla if she’ll do the special roots and trip with him.
They trip balls and she sees all kinds of things, including stuff about her son.
She won’t wake up.
Someone has to run and get Jondalar and race against the clock to get him to her before she dies.
He arrives just in time, cries about how much he loves her, and his great love for her “pulls her back” from the brink of death.
Would anyone like to take a guess at what just happened in THIS book? Anyone? 8D I won't keep you in suspense.
Ayla and Jondalar are both convinced the other doesn’t love him/her anymore and are refusing to talk to each other.
The First asks Ayla if she’ll do the special roots and trip with her.
They trip balls and she sees all kinds of things, including stuff about her son.
She won’t wake up.
Someone has to run and get Jondalar and race against the clock to get him to her before she dies.
He arrives just in time, cries about how much he loves her, and his great love for her “pulls her back” from the brink of death.
Okay, no, seriously, did she accidentally paste in Book 3’s rough draft or something?
Gods this is so sickening, the narrator actually exposits that every woman at the Summer Meeting wishes she had a man who loved her as much as Jondalar loves Ayla.
Excuse me? Are you insinuating that all those other couples are somehow inferior?! I’ll bet you all the money in the world that, if many of those women did the crazy roots, their mates (male OR female, and I feel the need to mention this because the series, which used to be sort of gay-positive, has suddenly gotten very hetero-only in these last few books and especially this one) would come to them and beg them back to life as well.
(Also, in her hallucination, which I’ve completely failed to address because honestly it was a let down, there’s a nice anvilicious message about caring for the Earth or we’ll all perish. I agree with the sentiment, but it was pretty heavy handed.)
Oh lawd, Danug, I LOVE YOU. I want to have your red-haired babies. He’s one of the guys from the Mamutoi and he basically just told Jondalar and Ayla, “You two are fucking melodramatic idiots, srsly. STOP BEING STUPID FROM NOW ON.”
I swear to gods, suddenly I want to read a book that is nothing but Danug being awesome and traveling around tellin’ it like it is like a boss.
Ayla has just given Jondalar permission to chase tail if his “needs” mean he has to. That sound you hear is every single woman who was kicked, beaten, thrown in jail and ridiculed for trying to get anyone with two X chromosomes equal rights. /o/ \o\ \o/ kill me now please how is this book not over yettttt
Blah blah blah, everyone loves Jondalar and Ayla, his “punishment” for hurting Laramar is to adopt Laramar’s kids…which isn’t really a punishment considering they sort of already half-adopted them anyway, but he’s a Sue too so I really shouldn’t be surprised that his “punishment” isn’t really one.
Some random wrapping up exposition about flowers and a paragraph of overview of their travels ANDDDDD…
AND FINALLY IT’S OVER.
Final thoughts (reaction image-free!):
This was not what I would call a good book. An okay book, I suppose, although my relief at it being over might be what’s suddenly giving me such a sunny disposition toward it. Throughout the book, however, I did not feel good things. I felt mad, I felt sad, I felt disappointed and disgusted and plain old pissed off. The problem is that instead of feeling those things because the story was supposed to make me feel them, I felt them toward the book itself.
I really want to sit down with Auel and ask her what the hell she thought she was writing. If she wants to write a stand-alone novel that reads like a bad soap opera and makes me hate half the cast, fine, but for the final book in a series? The book everyone will remember?
For me, the series went like this:
Book 1: Loved it.
Book 2: Loved all the parts of it that didn’t involve Jondalar, so about 75% of it
Book 3: I loved the Mamutoi, but there was this stupid love triangle and it all got dumb. Liked 50% of it though.
Book 4: Hated 90% of the damn thing. The only part I did like was when they stayed with some river people. I hated the minor plot with the Wolf Women, and that was really the only plot in the whole book.
Book 5: Not as bad as Book 4, but still not that exciting. However I did really enjoy the Summer Meeting that took up a large bit of the book, so I’d rate this one lower than Book 3, but not as bad as 4.
What I wanted was for Book 6 to bring me back into the series with a bang. I was hoping Auel would pull something epic out. We’ve spent five books learning about the cultures and plants and flowers. I thought Book 6 was going to be chock full of stuff about the people. I wanted Ayla to be a healer and use her medicine skills, NOT her whistling skills. I wanted to learn tons more about the side characters. I wanted excitement and suspense and plot, damn it. When I heard about the "sickness" outbreak and the band of rapists, I was so excited. A band of rapists lurking around while Ayla is desperately trying to avert a plague? Talk about excitement! I even, as much as I hated him, hoped Jondalar would redeem himself and become a character I could respect, or if not, died heroically helping people in the plague or fighting off the gang to protect his daughter or something.
Instead we get this: five hundred pages of set-up and another 300 or so pages of contrived, stupid plot that belong in a bad romance novel or a fanfiction. I barely respect any of the characters anymore, even the ones that I used to.
But the worst part…the worst part, I think, was that I never forgot I was reading a book. I could practically see the strings on the characters that Auel was using to manipulate them. The plot hinged on stupid, out-of-character things, (Ayla messing up the tea, Jondalar cheating, the whole fight at the Mother Festival, etc.) and plot devices we’ve already seen, (the whole roots scene.) Never once was I swept up in the story. Every time I nearly was, something stupid happened and reminded me these characters weren’t at the wheel, an author was. An author who did a disservice to the world and characters she created.
As much as I loved the first book and wanted to defend the whole series, I can’t deny it: this book deserves the two-star Amazon rating it has. And to see a series with such a great start go out with a sad fizzle is just depressing.
If you haven't read the whole series yet, read Clan of the Cave Bear and Ayla’s chapters of Valley of the Horses, and then stop right when she meets Jondalar and imagine your own ending to the story. If it's too late, read this book if you must know the canon ending, but I'd suggest reading a synopsis (one with less rambling than mine. xD) and then, again, making up your own ending instead. I’m pretty sure your version will be better.