User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Dad: "So...how's the book?"
Me: "Hmn. Well, I like the first two thirds or so, that's all survivalist nerd stuff. But after that, it kind of turns into caveman porn."
(Later that week...)
Dad: "So...I borrowed your book."
Me: "...Oh."
(Uncomfortable silence)
Me: "So...what did you think of it?"
Dad: "Well, you were right, the first two thirds is for survival nerds. After that, though..."
(Uncomfortable silence)
Me: "Caveman porn?"
Dad: "Not just that. *Bad* caveman porn!"
Rating: really liked it
I've never seen a series take such a downturn so fast!
When we last saw Ayla in The Clan of the Cave Bear, she had been banished, sentenced to death by the clan leader, Broud, who hated her.
The Valley of the Horses takes place immediately after, as Ayla begins to wander the steppes in pursuit of her people. Eventually, she settles in a valley populated with horses. While she is there, she befriends a horse and ekes out a living.
Oh.
My.
God.
I don't think I've ever seen a series shoot itself in the foot so early on. I've seen series suffer burnout, the author tossing up his or her hands and saying "I just don't give a damn anymore", but usually this occurs, oh, say, six books in the series after he or she has drug the main characters all over the universe to death and back again. At this point, I figure the author is thinking, "Looks like I can't write anything but another teenaged emosparklyvampire series, might as well milk this one as best as I can before I hit the unemployment line". (I know Frank L. Baum of the Oz series would agree with me if he were alive.)
The Valley of the Horses should be the sixth book in the series by that reckoning. The amount of WTF in this book is near critical levels. Characters bounce all over the place, problems that were hinted at in the first book appear here 10X worse, and generally the story stops being about the person I became invested in: it stopped being about Ayla.
Now, that's not to say there aren't good parts. Sure, you might need a electron microscope in order to find them, but they are still there. The Ayla sections of the first half are excellent, exactly what we've come to expect and love from
The Clan of the Cave Bear. Ayla journeys across the steppes, Ayla must try to fend for herself, to find food and clothing and shelter. Sure, she has started accumulating a rather eye-brow raising list of inventions (the calendar, horseback riding, animal domestication, flint, reproduction--did you know it was Broud's organ that created her son, Durk?), but you know what? Even that I could buy. She is by herself, she must invent or die. She loves animals and has been tending them since she was a child, so it isn't unexpected for her to continue this into her adulthood. The calendar thing is also hinted at back in the first book, when Ayla peppers Creb with questions about days and counting. Yes, Ayla is getting close to Mary Sue territory, but this is her story. I'll believe it.
UNTIL Auel adds Jondalar. Who is Jondalar? Let me introduce you to him:
Meet Jondalar:
Jondalar is the most attractive, strong, intelligent, sexy, wonderful, skilled, muscular, thoughtful, generous, kind man you will EVER meet. He is MINDBLOWING in the sack (but WATCH OUT! Most women can't take it ALL *eyebrow wiggle* if you know what I mean!). His blue eyes are enough to make the cave panties wet. He is the BEST toolmaker EVER (and NO, I do NOT mean that kind of tool!). HE LOVE SO MUCH AND SO HARD THAT NO ONE CAN ENDURE IT. Jondalar is freakin' God incarnate.
And THAT is the beginning of what kills the story. THAT is what makes this book, which could have been interesting, absolutely dreadful. Because once Jondalar walks onto the set, the story ceases to be about Ayla and instead becomes about Jondalar.
(Hey, I don't know if I've mentioned it...did you know that Broud's organ created Durk? The Clan believed it was a battle between totems, but Ayla is pretty sure it's a man's organ that creates babies.)
I don't mind Ayla finding companionship. I don't mind her finding love. I DO mind it when the whole story's emphasis is on a man we've only just met and have no real reason to like. I NEVER liked Jondalar. EVER. The author tries to sell me on how wonderful he is by having EVERYONE gush about him (and trust me, EVERYONE does), but I went into convulsions every time I had to hear all the "wonderful" things about this tool. And *this* is the man Ayla ends up with? I would ask for an exchange!
So while Ayla is busy trying to survive, I get stuck listening to Jondalar and his doofus brother doing stupid and pointless things on their spiritual journey. I get to hear a bajillion arguments the two of them have about where they should go ("No, Jondalar, let's go to the mountains!" "No, Thonalan, we should head to the river!" "Let's stay with these people!" "No, we need to move on!"), how awesome Jondalar is, and how much they want to bonk women. Oh, and as if the latter weren't enough, I get TWO fairly graphic sex scenes of Jondalar with some chick on her First Rites and Serenio (or some other woman whose purpose was only to provide another sex scene to show Jondalar's Mad Skilz in the cave bedroom) and Thonalan falls into insta-lust with some woman whom he can't even converse with for several pages.
(BTW, I have to mention it, but there is a horse sex scene in this book. Yes, a horse sex scene. And it turns Ayla on. And Ayla, being so bright and intelligent, doesn't know WHY she feels all horny-like.)
None of this ends up mattering because a plot contrivance sends Thonalan and Jondalar back into the wild and completely negating the last billion pages Caveman Time Wasting. Thonalan is an idiot and tries to chase after some meat that a cave lion stole (REALLY!?!?!) and is killed. Ayla comes to the rescue and FINALLY, FINALLY after nearly 3/4 of the book, Ayla and Jondalar meet.
At this point, I was actually pumped. FINALLY, there was a point to Jondalar! Finally, we would get around to what has been alluded to since the first book. But NO! Instead, now we get hastily contrived resolutions to the language barrier (Creb comes to Ayla in a dream and POW! she speaks Jondalar's language!), Jondalar getting a hard on nearly every other time he sees Ayla (along with groin pains, which tells me he needs to see someone about his urinary tract infection), Ayla wanting Jondalar to sex her up, but Jondalar not doing so because he thinks she is in healing training. Or something. Oh, yeah, and also during this whole time, Jondalar hardly talks about his dead brother and when he finds out it was Ayla's cave lion that killed Thonalan (and she chased the cave lion away), he is like, "Wow, you must be a spirit to have such control over animals".
(Did you know that Broud's organ created Durk? Ayla isn't totally sure, but she thinks it is a man's organ that makes a baby, not a fight between totems.)
When the two FINALLY talk it over, Jondalar initially can't get past his "Ew, she had sex with a flathead! Flathead cooties!" But this doesn't last too long...Ayla is the PERFECT woman, with the perfect breasts, perfect lips, perfect hair, perfect ba-donka-donk. Jondalar is pretty sure we wouldn't remember this or figure it out for ourselves, so he makes sure to remind us. OFTEN.
After a few more sex scenes that get repetitive to the max (which is NUTS, yes, there have been about 6 in this book, but I wouldn't think the sex would get repetitive THAT fast), Jondalar says he is going away...and a dream changes his mind. He declares his TWOO LURVE to Ayla, and Ayla reciprocates. They talk endlessly about wanting to pleasure each other, Ayla suddenly learns how to deep throat, and the book ends with a hint about meeting the Mammoth Hunters.
The Clan of the Cave Bear was unique, interesting, and captivating. The characters were well created, the story was fantastic, the setting filled with great details (although at times, these got to be a little excessive). It's become one of my favorite books.
THIS book, however, is a disgrace. It took all the things I loved about
The Clan of the Cave Bear, set them on fire, and chucked them over a cliff. The characters become obnoxious, the story becomes a standard, not well-written or interesting romance, research is presented for the sake of research, and sex replaces good character moments and character growth. The best parts of this book are the Ayla chapters in the first half. They are solid, well-constructed and bear the most similarity to the first book. Once Jondalar enters the story full-time, the story's quality drops drastically.
Normally, I would give up on this series right here, but I have a death wish. This book has, oddly enough, been a delight to listen to, mostly because of the heaps of WTFery in it. Therefore, I am going to continue my journey with
The Mammoth Hunters and keep my fingers crossed that it is better (and secretly hope it is not!).
ADDENDUM: I've rated this three stars, mostly because I want to see how "The Mammoth Hunters" is before putting a solid rating in place...and YOU thought I was going to take this time and tell you how it was Broud's organ that created Durk! HAH!
Rating: really liked it
I changed my original from 5 star and favorites to a 3 and I’ve decided to trade in my beautiful mass market paperbacks. I’ve had them for a few years now and I’ve decided I’m not interested in finishing the series and if I change my mind I’ll do it through the library. I still love the animals and Ayla, I’m just not into it anymore. I don’t want to read about certain things.
The end ….
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Rating: really liked it
She walks away alone a figure in the vast, savage, uncaring, desolate almost empty region of what is now the Ukraine, expelled by her adopted Neanderthal cave dwelling band Ayla at 14, is forced to leaves her small beloved child Durc, behind cursed by the only people the Cro -Magnon girl can remember into the unknown, what the young fearful woman, believes will be a final, fatal, fleeting journey. With a few belongings the prehistoric teenager has, told by the female who raised her to find her own kind the "Others", and advised to go north but the scattered tribes are so rare that it is almost impossible to encounter them. An unseen spot in the steppes, the object slowly travels in the glacial cold for weeks, then a blizzard strikes hard the despairing human almost welcomes the freezing end...Yet somehow Ayla survives, but it doesn't matter her destruction is near predators roam by looking for a kill until finding salvation, a beautiful hidden valley that protects the wanderer from most of the deadly elements and feeds the girl, plants, trees, fruit, game, fish, the experienced, able hunter will not starve and a herd of gentle magnificent horses, already live there, their running about is thrilling in this paradise, a river meanders by its sparkling waters beckons and a safe place discovered, a small cozy cave above the stream a hole -in -the -wall, that a warm fire will make habitable, reached by climbing a steep slope...Survival is not living though, the abandoned girl has many dreams and nightmares, she needs human companionship but her only friends are a mare she raised from a foal Whinney, ( how she got her name is obvious) and a Cave Lion cub Baby, (why that alias is easy also to understand) the animal eventually will grow to be a gigantic male 800 lbs. Years pass, Ayla, prospers all the tools, clothes, shelter and food she wants are available, still not quite happy, the now woman will have to leave her safe, comfortable home to meet her own species if the sad girl can ever get out into the hostile world, and take a big chance but her pet friends have grown, left to follow their new mates, seldom come back to visit... Two devoted brothers with the same mother, but not father, unexpectedly arrive in the area from a faraway cave to the west, the adventurous men, went in a primitive boat down to the sea, on The Great Mother River, ( the Danube) a hazardous lengthy trip, just to see where it concludes... Jondalar 21, at six feet, six inches tall towers over everyone, blond hair blue eyes, handsome face women are always looking up to and falling in love with, and a few inches shorter Thonolan, 18, different color eyes and hair, still almost equal to his sibling in charm and features, the now morose man has suffered a devastating loss...Ayla and Jondalar , have great feelings for each other when they meet yet hide them, showing little apparent emotion, not trusting, both recently acquainted, strangers really ....The second in the very popular, Earth's Children series, is almost as good as the first The Clan of the Cave Bear, while the magic cannot quite duplicate the level of the original, because of its unique aspects, this one does deliver what fans of these books want, entertainment in an exotic setting a place and time that no one today will ever experience, or maybe even wish to either.
Rating: really liked it
Ouch. I’ve never known a series to go so downhill in the second book!
When I read The Clan of the Cave Bear I was swept up into a prehistoric world filled with spirits, survival and a wonderfully intricate belief system. After the end of that book Ayla is out on her own, battling the elements, wild animals and her own loneliness. It sounded so promising.
But parallel to following Ayla, we also follow two men - Jondalar and his brother Thonolan, unsure of how they will fit in to Ayla’s tale.
What disappointed me with this sequel were two main things:
1. Nothing happens. Seriously. It’s over 500 pages and all we really see is Ayla’s preparation for season after season alone in her cave, and her adoption of a couple of wild animals. Alongside this Jondalar and Thonolan are travelling - coming across tribe after tribe, once again with no real purpose or anything to add to the overall plot.
2. So many sex scenes! Now - I’m not a prude, and I can enjoy a good sex scene when it is relevant to the story. But they are everywhere in this book! Jondalar sleeps with numerous women on his travels with his brother and then at least 5 times when he meets Ayla! I mean this is fine - have as much sex as you want; but I don’t need an in depth description every time the characters are feeling a bit horny! I’ll also briefly mention the part when Ayla actually gets turned on while watching 2 horses mate - and also has a flashback to these horses while she is getting jiggy with Jondalar.
I know right! No further comment.
I was so disappointed in this sequel - though I’d love to see how Ayla’s story pans out - there’s no way I could battle through 4 more books like this.
Rating: really liked it
I didn’t mind that it devolved (devolved, get it? hehehe) anyway, I didn't mind that the book turned out to be porn-for-women-who-pretend-they-don’t-like-that-sort-of-thing-because-its-soooo-low-brow, but what I DID mind was that it became CLICHÉ porn.
Oooo he’s a man whose been with tons of women but never felt True Love!
Oooo she’s a woman who’s been raped in a way sanctioned by her culture and never had an orgasm!
Ahhhhh he’s a man who yearns to love a woman who is his equal!
Ahhh she’s a woman who is good at everything but good sex!
Oooooh he teaches her what real sex feels like and gets her off on the first round!
Oooooh they have simultaneous orgasms the first time they Make Love!
Ahhhh he’s so big! He hurts women with his hugeness and always has to hold back!
Ahhhh she’s the only woman who can totally fit his huge manhood!
Oooohh Aaahhhhh Oooooohh! Aahhhhhhh! YES! YES! YES!
YEEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEES!
...
...
...
Christ, someone get me a cigarette.
...I had
way too much fun writing this...
Rating: really liked it
This book will forever be in my heart.
I wish I could read it again for the first time.
UNFORGETABLE
Rating: really liked it
What in the __ was I thinking reading this series? First book was boring and now this was doubly worse... (Julie Grippo- you warned me!!) I did skim more than 60% of the book....
The whole book was porn. Good porn? Nope! Bad caveman porn! Just lots of "wetness between the slit..." barf!
There are so many things wrong with this book I'd have the longest review ever... Horrible plot. Didn't get to the point. Who were the cavemen? Who wasn't a caveman? So confused.
Burn it for firewood, throw it at someone you hate, use it for self defense, use it as a step stool, use it as a life preserver.... Just forget about using it to actually read.
Rating: really liked it
This one goes down as my all time, #1, best read. I learned
SO many things and gained more strength and independence than I though possible. The story is this, Ayla is cast out from her family, leaving behind her only son, to survive in the ice age and the wilderness alone. She has the knowledge of a medicine woman, and the skills of a sling to assist her survival. But the greatest challenge is the loneliness. She teaches herself to hunt with spears, to make knives, baskets, and implements for cooking. And along with her, I learned how to do all of these things. How to test plant foods for nutritional or medicinal properties. How to survive. She adopts a horse foal after killing her dam and then adopts a baby cave lion. The three of them make a family, and they give her the only companionship the empty icy world has to offer. Until finally after 3 years of emptiness, she meets her future mate. This book got me through my divorce, and the first time I ever lived alone. My heart goes out to the Jean M. Auel who reached into my soul and helped me find what moves me.
Rating: really liked it
Ayla’s adventures volume two.
The writing is as bad as it was in volume one (I detailed all the problems I had with it here : http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) with the addition of hackneyed sex scenes. It makes me almost sad that generations of young girls had their introduction to porn literature through this crap. It’s enough to put you off of both, sex and reading.
You might wonder why I read the second volume when the first volume was so bad. It’s a good question and I’m not sure myself. I ordered it on amazon before I had the time to really think about it. I guess, my favourite parts in the first volume were the survival bits. I liked when Ayla was all alone and had to learn to manage on her own. And since the first volume ends with Ayla being kicked out of the Clan I knew there would be a lot of that there. Also I needed some closure, I needed Ayla to get some good caveman loving at last and I was told there would quite enough of that (whether it was good, however, remains debatable).
In the Valley Of Horses we have two parallel stories. In one we have Ayla who finds a cave, tames a horse, learns horse-riding, tames a cave lion, invents a laptop, basically kills time while waiting for some 350 pages for LL Cool Jondalar to arrive and give it her good.
In the other story we learn about Jondalar, who while on some unspecified self-discovery journey is sexing his way through the prehistorical world. All the ladies love him, which is why it is taking him so long to run into Ayla. He needs to teach a couple of cavewomen “the pleasures of the Mother’s Gift”. This is all to show us that Ayla is in for a treat when LL Cool Jondalar finally finds his way to her. There are some crutch secondary characters that need to die after serving their purpose in moving the plot along so that the main two can finally meet.
Initially Ayla and Jondalar can’t communicate properly due to Ayla only speaking Neanderthal which is more of a sign language really. She eventually picks up a few words and they have very basic troglodyte-like conversations but eventually the author tires of writing it so she makes Ayla have a dream in which she suddenly remembers her original language and from then on she and Jondalar can conversely freely which is pivotal to all the romantic complications they are about to have, like who wanted to have sex with who. Ayla acts so cluelessly it’s baffling – I’d really expected a little more from someone who invented a calendar and tamed a freaking Cave Lion, you know? But all is well that ends well and finally, Jonalar can show Ayla the one skill he truly mastered, and it is not tool-making, but foreplay. They all live happily ever after, or that is until Volume 3 which I started reading and read about 30 pages before I realised what I was doing and stopped myself before I caused some serious damage to my mental health.
Rating: really liked it
Earth's Children is a unique and wonderful series about pre-historic man. The people's who created the famous cave paintings.
Spoilers:
The story starts out with 2 different people in 2 locations. We start out seeing that Ayla was kicked out of the clan. These are another species of people that died out - the Neanderthals. She goes looking for her people and has to find a place to shelter for the winter. She finds a cave and sets up her stores to make it through the long winter on her own. She traps a horse and her foal. The mother dies. She raises the young horse and it helps her. She also tames Wolf, a baby wolf pup she finds. They find living in the valley lovely.
Eventually she finds a lion cub and she then raises that and they make for one unusual family. The lion is a cave lion so Baby gets huge, as big as the horse.
Mixed in with this, we see a village, more advanced of humans over in the region of France. Jondalar and his brother are making a trip across the continent on foot, over to the Ukraine area. The cross glaciers and meet many different tribes.
One day, they run into a cave lion and it's family. Ayla is around and it's Baby, who she let go to make a family. She stops Baby from killing Jondalar, but his brother is killed. She takes the big man home with her and heals his wounds.
Jondalar falls in love with this strange woman who can talk with animals it seems. Everything about her is amazing to him. He can't stay here, so at the end they decide to head back to his village.
There is so much more to this story. I gave the bare bones. There is so much history and how they lived. I love Ayla. There is a lot of sex too, but it's very repetitive and it's okay in this book, but by the time you get to book 4, you never want to read another sex story again. It's all the same. I mean, it feels like the same scene on repeat.
It's a masterful story, but the Mammoth Hunters is my favorite. I love how Ayla deals with life. She is strong and smart and just does what she has too. There is no choice. I would love to be more like her.
Rating: really liked it
4.0 StarsI loved the continuation of this story, particularly the expansion of the worldbuilding. This series has a strong emphasis on sex, which develops into a major romance subplot in this second book. Normally, romance turns me off, but I enjoyed this one, especially the steamy scenes.
Rating: really liked it
If you skip every page that mentions Jondalar, this is the best book ever!
Minus one star for Jondalar's existence.
Rating: really liked it
This second installment of Auel's massive prehistoric saga has many of the same strengths and weaknesses, IMO, as the series opener The Clan of the Cave Bear; my review of that one (www.goodreads.com/review/show/15569300 ), similarly, has content that's relevant here, and might be worth reading first. The books are definitely intended to be read in order; I'm assuming that most people reading this review have read the first book, and both this review and the pretty accurate Goodreads description may/will have spoilers
vis a vis the first one.
Ayla remains the strong, intelligent, capable, and good-hearted young woman readers fell in love with in the first book. Here, however, Auel takes her out of the Clan (Neanderthal) context, and puts her on her own on the steppes of the Ice Age Ukraine. (This edition has a helpful map.) That means her major challenge is physical survival without any help, using the skills she's previously learned or observed. If you like tales of man (or in this case woman) vs. nature, this theme is handled very well. An alternating plot strand follows two young Cro-Magnon men, Jondalar and Thonolan, brothers from what is today France, traveling eastward on their Journey, a kind of cultural rite of passage similar to the walk-about of the Australian aborigines. When we first meet them, they're in the Danube area. (view spoiler)
[Thonolan won't survive to actually meet Ayla. (hide spoiler)] Once they leave the habitations of other Cro-Magnon tribes behind (and that's not relatively far into the book, considering that it's pretty thick), there aren't any other human characters in the novel; so Auel doesn't have as large a cast of characters here to develop with her usual vivid brush (though a few of the Sharamudoi people are vividly drawn). We're also not much in the realm of large group interactions; our cross-cultural interactions are basically between the Clan-raised Ayla and Jondalar, who's prejudiced (like the rest of his people) against the "Flatheads." The exploration of that theme isn't less strong here; it's just put on a one-on-one basis.
As always, Auel's research is solid (and as usual, sometimes too much on display). One aspect of Cro-Magnon archaeology that she puts to use is the fact that in sites all across Ice Age Europe, from the Urals to the Atlantic, we find essentially identical figurines of a stylized pregnant female with the sexual features emphasized. From this basis, Auel infers a continent-wide shared cult of the Mother goddess, in which sex (in or out of marriage) is seen as a sacramental act that honors her. The inference, as far as it goes, is plausible; but all fertility cults actually known to anthropology connect sex with pregnancy (DUH!) In Auel's world, however, neither Neanderthals nor Cro-Magnons have figured out that connection. This is one part of her world-building that I personally consider implausible; without going into a long digression on this subject, I don't believe there ever was a human culture that was unaware of this (I've heard the claim on one TV documentary that some Australian aborigines don't know this, but I find that dubious), and I don't believe a primitive Mother goddess cult would regard sex as sacramental without that connection. But this is a key concept here and in the rest of the series.
The point above relates to two other differences from the first book. Here, Ayla gets a love interest, and he and she happen to be the only two humans around for most of the book. So romance will play a big role in the plot, though not the only one. And (both before and after Ayla and Jondalar get together) there's a LOT of explicit unmarried sex here. Like the natural history lectures, those parts can be skipped over with no loss of narrative coherence (and that's what my wife and I did), but they're a drag on the story-telling. As my four-star rating indicates, this wasn't a deal-breaker (but it cost the book a fifth star). Apart from the overly descriptive aspects, and the lack of sex-pregnancy connection awareness, though, Auel's characters are believably trying to figure out for themselves what love and commitment actually means, in the context of a culture that has no real concept of either and that glorifies sexual looseness. In that respect, they're very much like a great many modern people, which is why many modern readers probably find them so easy to relate to.
Compared to the first book, some reviewers have complained that this book doesn't convey as strong a sense of prehistoric culture, that the characters are too modern. That's true, but I think it's an inevitable result of the fact that human nature is the same today and in the Ice Age; what differentiates us is our various cultural factors, and here Ayla and Jondalar are outside their cultural contexts, except for what baggage they have in their heads. (And Cro-Magnons are inherently more modern-like, in any era, than the backward-looking, Memories-dominated Clan.) Also, some have felt that crediting Ayla with both discovering that fire can be produced by striking rock with flint AND domesticating a horse is too much, and that her recovery of her childhood memory of verbal speech being triggered by a dream is too facile. Personally, though, I didn't have a problem with those aspects. Both of the first two achievements were the result of fortuitous accident --and believable accident, in the circumstances, IMO-- rather than Edison-like research. And nothing is ever forgotten by the subconscious, which comes out to play in dreams; being exposed to verbal speech again after so long (Clan language, in Auel's world, is mostly a matter of hand signs), to me, would seem like a very plausible trigger for such a dream. I do, however, have a degree of sympathy with critics who find Jondalar less than ideal. He's well-drawn, and he's got his good points; and he grows in the series. But he's got his flaws; there are times when I'd like to clout him upside of the head, and Auel's evident fascination with his sexual prowess can be eye-roll inducing.
A word about the rest of the series might be in order (since it's taken me this long to actually review just the first two books). The third book, The Mammoth Hunters, would get five stars from me. (That's probably a minority view.) Its sequel, The Plains of Passage, would be lucky to get two. IMO, it should have been reduced by 80% and incorporated into the following book (and probably would have been, if the publisher hadn't wanted to sell another doorstop-sized book). The Shelters of Stone, the fifth book, would have made a fine conclusion to the series. My wife read the actual concluding sixth volume, The Land of Painted Caves and almost didn't finish it, though she did and finally allowed that it was okay, though not up to standard. From her feedback, I'm not interested in reading it!
Rating: really liked it
I am reading this series for the second time now. It has been something like 8-9 years since I last read
The Valley of Horses, and I still love it. I am an earth scientist by education (geologist) and profession (water resources/environmental), and I just love Ms. Auel's attention to detail when it comes to botany, animals, and the ecology of the environments that she writes about. Additionally, she is very well versed in the latest advances in anthropology, archaeology, human evolution, paleo-climatology, paleontology, and so forth. Some may find the novel's descriptions of the ice-age environments, Ayla's interest in plants, etc. to border on minutiae; but not me. I am truly fascinated with this stuff!
Reading each of these books has caused me to sit back and reflect on our own human origins. How did we actually become the species that we are today? Ms. Auel, to her great credit, gives us a 'field guide,' if you will, for a period of human history in what is now western Russia and Europe that is as plausible as any that I'm aware of.
It is not so much that you have to suspend belief and accept that her protagonists, Ayla and Jondalar, discovered everything and rewrote the course of human history; you just have to realize that the narrative that Ms. Auel has constructed is comprised of a series of monumental events that allowed anatomically modern humans to be successful; much of which has been validated through advances in archaeology and anthropological research. Her characters, Ayla, Jondalar, and others are merely representatives of those nameless individuals that did so much to ensure the survival of the human race. Someone during that period of time invented the spear-thrower (atlatl); someone probably did begin to domesticate animals like wolves or horses. Bands of humans did live together on the Ukrainian and Russian steppes hunting the great migratory herds of animals; developing sophisticated cultures and societies whilst scratching out a living in incredibly harsh conditions.
These stories that Ms. Auel has fashioned into her five novels (so far) almost have the feel of being one the great mythologies that have been handed down over time. The amazing story of young Ayla's lonely journey to her valley, her survival, her domestication of 'Whinny,' and her eventual meeting of Jondalar is just wonderful and thought-provoking; and a story that resonates and has meaning for all humans today. It is worth realizing, every once in a while, that we all, every living thing on the planet, really are the 'Earth's Children.'
