A Little Something To Say About A Book I Just Read

Remember Clan Of The Cave Bear? I do. I saw it on TV years ago and that's what turned me on to this series. I loved it. Then Valley Of The Horses came out and I loved that one too. Then out came The Mamoth Hunters and I figured I had found the best writer of all time. All great books. That's where it ends. The series steadily went downhill from there. The last installment of these books just came out and even though I've been disappointed in the last two I decided I'd give it a read and see if it had improved and returned to the awesome writing of the first three. NOT! OMG this was worse still. While J.M.A. is got great ability to describe that does not make a writer. Her plot line never really got started until the last two hundred pages. I slogged through the first part of the book in the hopes that at some time the story would actually start. It did but I was so disappointed with it when it finally did that I kept thinking that no wonder there will be no more in this series. As I turned the last pages I just sat there and thought, "well that was pointless."  If you are thinking about reading it.... well I'm not one to tell you what to do but I'll say this... find a better book because almost anything would be better.

It's almost as if J.M.A. started writing the books because she had a lovely trip to France to see the caves that she describes in the book and then decided I had better write a story around my descriptions. Problems is she didn't seem to be able to bring the story together. Instead of spending so much time on descriptions she should have paid some attention to the actual story. 1000 pages of description of cave art while very enlightening and is cool, but it makes more for a text book rather than a novel. The main characters story lines were .... well, quite honestly lame. The ideas behind them were excellent... but J.M.A. just couldn't pull them off. The story lines were pathetic and contrived. I realize that a novel is a contrived thing but the story lines at least should seem realistic or at least explained for the time and cultural conditions... but they weren't.  I really don't want to give away any story lines because I know that there will be a bunch of you who will want to read it no matter what. But sadly I do have to say that it was a big disappointment. I kept thinking, well that was stupid! When Ayla received her call, it was ok... but then she confronted Jondalar when she found out he was cheating and that was pathetic. There was very little emphasis put on the relationship between Ayla and her Daughter, and then J.M. A. dragged in some characters from previous books which had no real reason for being there. Their story lines kind of just drifted off. Then there was a scene where Ayla was convinced to consume a root for the purposes of experimentation. It turned out to be life threatening and there was a whole vision scene which never got talked about again but it would have been nice if J.M. A. had expanded on that a bit. Then there was the whole knight in shining armour thing when Jondalar came rushing to Ayla's rescue which was more than lame. There was no real reason for her to come back from the brink of death since Ayla's and Jondalar's relationship hadn't even been resolved at that point.

I'm sorry to say that I don't recommend this book... spend your time more wisely... it's just not worth reading, unless you like long winded descriptions of pre-historic cave art.