The third book in the series. Will it be better than The Valley of Horses? Hopefully so, though I doubt it. Spoilers ahead.
Now having left Ayla's peaceful valley, she and Jondalar meet up with the Mamutoi, a mammoth-hunting people. Ayla gets adopted as the successor of the Mamut, a spiritual leader, and catches the eye of the often-desired Ranec. She now has to choose between her new people and her love for Jondalar.
Wow, things sure went downhill fast. Like, Valley of Horses wasn't perfect, but it has a lot of enjoyable scenes, primarily those with Ayla alone. Now what do we get here? None of that.
First of all, there's no plot. Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of Horses weren't plot-heavy either, but the characters were at least good enough to carry a lot of the story. In this book, there's literally no plot. It's just caveman drama.
At first I thought it would be interesting seeing Ayla assimilate to this culture and learning how to interact with this many of her kind, but it soon grew stale. I didn't particularly care for how her spiritual journey went, and while some of her relationships with some of the characters were enjoyable, most of these side characters (e.g. Deegie) had too little presence or personality to make a really lasting impact.
Then there's the love triangle. Dear god, the love triangle. Think having over 700 pages with boring caveman interactions and no plot is bad? Then get a load of this. In the Mamutoi tribe, Ayla meets up with Ranec, a dark-skinned man who instantly makes it known that he has the hots for her. Ayla is confused about her feelings for him, but due to her upbringing doesn't think to turn him down at first. Jondalar, being the jealous ass that he is, instantly grows bitter when he sees Ayla interacting with Ranec and does pretty much nothing the entire book but complain to himself how much he loathes her being with another man. As if this wasn't bad enough, there's also just the fact that this love triangle, the closest thing to a central conflict we have in this book, could easily be solved if these characters just bothered to bloody communicate with one another?
But they don't. Ayla just is confused about Jondalar, but she never really talks to him about it. Jondalar starts treating her bitterly without being clear as to why without even bringing his feelings up with her. Ranec hardly even interacts with Jondalar, yet all he does is constantly go after Ayla. If Ayla and Jondalar had just taken a moment to sit down and calmly talk through all of this, it would've been clear to both of them that Ayla and Jondalar still loved one another and preferred each other's company over Ranec's. But instead, the conflict starts pretty much in chapter 1, and isn't solved until the final chapter. So we get this ridiculous love triangle dragged out over so many pages that it just feels dreadfully boring and frustrating because these characters just do. Not. Communicate.
The dry sex scenes? Yeah, there's more of them. They're completely tasteless and I hate them, and they don't add anything to the story. They're also getting more frequent, which isn't a good sign of things to come.
Ayla is treated by nearly all characters as if she is some higher being or at least above them for her healing skills and her having pets. This also grows tiresome really quickly. I feel like this is the book where she really segments her position as a Mary Sue character.
There's really no enjoyable characters in this book, and, like said before, the ones that are mildly entertaining leave such a little impact that they may as well not exist. The only exception to this was Rydag, a half-Neanderthal child. He was just a real dear and seeing him communicate with someone as Ayla teaches him Clan sign language was really sweet. But of course even that had to be ruined and he dies. Way to kill off the only likable character in your entire lineup, Auel.
Ayla also tames a wolf in this book. Which I guess is supposed to be the basis for pet dogs. Even though horses were domesticated way later than dogs, whereas this book makes it seem like they were made into pets within a lifetime. Anyways, remember how Whinney, Baby and Racer all have fun backstories to their names and all seem unique with their personalities? Yeah, this wolf is literally called Wolf and as far as we get into it in this book it's just basically a pet dog. The animal has no personality to speak of, of course. Very boring and so far a pointless addition to our lineup of animal characters.
There's also the joyful fact that Ranec gets constantly exotified because of his dark skin. He is the only mixed race character we get discounting Rydag in this book (though Ranec is still full Cro Magnon, just with a darker skin color, unlike Rydag who is half Neanderthal), and he's constantly mentioned as having a different skin color. I get it that they'd describe him with his brown skin at first, since he's the first mixed-race Cro Magnon person Ayla comes across, but after that it really shouldn't be a big deal and there's no need to keep pointing it out like he's some kind of anomaly. It just really rubbed me the wrong way the way Auel kept bringing up how his skin was "different" and shit, and how he is seen as "exotic" for it. Just, yikes.
This is just the book in the series that made me so angry and was so bad. The lack of a plot, the pointless love triangle, the lackluster characters, it just made this a very unpleasant experience to sit through. It's definitely not making me look forward to The Plains of Passage, that's for sure.
Rating: 2/5
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