[book review] The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel

[aijou_aibou]

(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

Comments

[hello203]

Oh god, this series.
I read book one and thought it was pretty good. A few months later, I read Valley of the Horses. I was 11, and therefore got scarred for life. (My parents read the books after me and went like ''...Oh. Whoopsie?'' XD
I started book 3 a few years ago, but never finished it. I just went 'meh' about halfway through it and never picked it up again. And I'm definitely not reading it after this review. -__-'
It was pretty good, and the gifs made it pretty epic. 8D

[aijou_aibou]

I agree with Sebastian and Ciel's faces. =|

I think I was around that age too when I read it, and yeah, Valley of the Horses, when suddenly there started being all these sex scenes I was like, "whoa, what?" xDDD Be thankful you never read the fourth book, like 50% of it was smut! That was the scarring one for me, I'm still drinking brain bleach from it. X___x

[momduels]

You totally rock! I love your comments on the book much better than the book itself. You covered it in all of it's horrible story lines and I loved the gifs inserted for emphasis. I have read the entire series and expected much better for the last book as well - too bad Auel took the easy way out and cut and pasted old stories from past books. She would have been better off not writing the final book if this was as good as she could do.

[darleenk]

i'm sorry to be a creeper and leave a random stranger comment, but i stumbled here from google whilst looking for the perfect book review to describe my feelings and HERE IT IS.

seriously, i just, i kinda love you for this. first 450 pages were just unreadable. cave paintings and ayla foisting her child off to all and sunday. then suddenly, we have the mammoth hunters all over again. i just thank god i no longer have to justify why i've always hated that childish fuck jondalar. and THANK YOU FOR FEELING SORRY FOR MARONA AS WELL, NOBODY ELSE SEEMS TO. she was caught up in his bullshit as much as ayla, thinking he cared about her. >:(

anyway, thanks for writing this, it was a joy to read! indeed, a far bigger joy than reading the land of painted caves. that one is remaining firmly on the shelf for fucking ever.

[aijou_aibou]

It's all right, I appreciate all comments, even creeper ones! ^^

You said it. I've hated Jondalar pretty much the whole series, and this book just gave me ten million more reasons to despise him. How anyone can still like him is beyond me. >_< I truly do feel sorry for Marona, and I'm glad I'm not the only one! He completely used her, poor gal. =| Besides that Auel set her up so obviously to be the bitch character that I just want to give Marona a hug.

Thanks, I'm glad it entertained you! I agree, I may re-read CotCB as a stand-alone someday, but I'm never picking this one up again.

[darleenk]

all and sundry* omg ide.

it's been a steady decline since the clan of the cave bear. i've heard that auel is considering writing another book but from durc's pov, and idk how to feel about that. i'm desperate to know, and the clan are infinitely more interesting than the others, but i don't want her to fuck up his story as well as ayla's. blah.

[aijou_aibou]

Really? Yeah, mixed feelings there...on one hand his story is surely MUCH more interesting than the perfect life of the Zelandoni, (and I'm dying to know what happened to him) but with how bad her writing has become, I'm afraid she would mess it up. =/

[spiletta42]

I'm another random stranger wandering in from google. I just finished the book, and was looking for reactions beyond my own boredom and annoyance. The best part was that wonderful blank white space on page 757, when I was finally free of reading the freaking thing.

The only thing I disagree with you on is the necessity of the wolf poop -- I suspect that bit is based on some fossilized wolf poop Auel personally stared at in a cave in France, which we still wouldn't need to know about, I suppose, but it used to be fun to match up her ramblings with actual field reports, back when I had more time on my hands. So I guess what I'm saying is that a wolf pooping in a cave was the most exciting event in the novel. Okay, that's just depressing.

Thanks for your review, the snark improved my mood considerably.

[aijou_aibou]

I'm sorry I'm so late in replying to this. OTL But I didn't even think of the possibility of her having Wolf poop in the cave because here in modern day ancient wolf poo was found there. That's actually a pretty legitimate detail when I look at it that way. Thanks for pointing it out to me, at least that's one minor thing I can now respect about the book. ^^;;