Book Review: The Land of Painted Caves

Alright, not what I have been planning to write about, but still something that needs to be written. Finally got through the last book in the Earth's Children series. And I've spent the day trying to figure out how to put it into words.

Jean Auel's Earth's Children has been a favourite series of mine since I first read "Clan of the Cave Bear" in 8th grade. That was a while back. The concept captured my imagination, and the storytelling was beautiful. Ayla was a wonderful character, the Clan was amazing, Jondalar was a role model, and the Mamutoi were fascinating. I loved pretty much everything about the first 3 books. The 4th book was enjoyable, but retraced the steps of the 2nd book. And then it really started going downhill. The 5th book finally had Ayla with Jondalar's people, and it was such a letdown. Conflicts weren't fulfilled, tension wasn't built, and it was generally a boring book.

The latest book, "The Land of Painted Caves" continued the downhill trend. And I really hate to say that. There were some really amazing ideas that got completely lost in the rambling of the first half of the book. Characters that were half remembered got more time and random thoughts than the main characters, flashes of tension were simply glazed over and some completely forgotten about, and the first 300 pages took me a month to get through. Yes, I was doing other things too, but stil, if it had been entertaining, then I would have read more and faster.

The second half of the book was a bit better. I really loved the descriptions of some of the cave paintings, especially Chaveaux, but even some of those seemed halfway done and not fully fleshed out. When the novel actually starts to have conflict that is cared about, things happen so quickly especially compared to how slow the first half of the book was. There were parts where I was on edge, nail biting because of how wonderfully written parts were. If the whole book had been like this, then I would have been raving about this book as opposed to pointing out its weaknesses.

The ending though felt rushed and incomplete. I had thought that this would be the last book, but if it isn't, then I do hope the wait for the next isn't as long and it isn't as much of a letdown.

Coming up will be a blog about the news stories of the past few weeks. I'm prepared to be hated.