Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Vuurmeisje.
Another prehistoric ice age human book, because I thought it'd be interesting to read more of those outside of Earth's Children. Spoilers ahead.
We meet Steen (Stone) and his clan in the recent ice age, where struggling to find food and fighting for your life is a regular occurrence. Steen is a young hunter and one day his clan raids another, leaving behind a young woman who is able to make fire. Steen calls her "Vuurmeisje" (Fire Girl) and eventually takes her on as his mate. But life in the clan is still full of troubles, especially once struggles for leadership start to happen.
Out of the three caveman-based books I recently borrowed from the library, this one is probably the best. One of them was so bland and unmemorable I ended up not even bothering to review it, the other was a bit of a slog, and this one was okay. Decent. Serviceable. Not my favorite by a long shot, but also not bad.
What I mostly liked about this book was the character-writing and world-building. The cavemen had an interesting clan system with its own unique rules, and Steen was legit a likable though flawed character to follow. I also really enjoyed Eenarm (One-arm) as a good mentor figure and old friend of Steen.
As for the titular Vuurmeisje...this is kind-of where the book falls flat because she doesn't even do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Even with the book being named after her, she's just another member of the tribe (who happens to be Steen's mate) and she's not even the main character; Steen is. Nor is this her story told form Steen's POV. It's very clearly his story, showing how he went from being an inexperienced young hunter to being a loving father and dedicated leader of his people.
Vuurmeisje is just kind of there and despite going through some awful shit (her old group being murdered and her being somewhat unwillingly taken in by Steen's clan) she barely really protests against anything. Remember, it was Steen's clan who murdered hers, so she's basically being taken captive by her clan's enemies and she stomachs it pretty easily. She grieves for a moment but soon comes around and learns the ways of Steen's clan and becomes his devoted mate. Like, wouldn't it have been more interesting if Vuurmeisje didn't just blindly go along with things and actually protested? It would've given her more agency as a character, made her more interesting and realistic and it'd probably made her name being the title feel a little bit more justified. But right now she's just Steen's wife who does very little. Has a child, meets up with her old people after a while, but not much more to her outside of that an the ability to make fire.
Also, one thing I'm starting to notice in the ice age cavemen books that I'm kind of getting stick of at this point is the sexism. I don't know if there's any basis for this realistically (since I don't know a lot about real-life prehistoric hunter-gatherers), but so far pretty much every book surrounding prehistoric men has had quite a bit of misogyny and sexism where the women aren't allowed to hunt and sometimes even directly treated as inferior. I don't know, it's starting to get old and I haven't even read that much books in this genre. It'd be a bit more fun and unique if there was a society where women did participate more and it wasn't treated as unusual. It's just starting to become a common trope I do not like.
Overall not a bad book but also left quite a bit to be desired. I liked the characters such as Steen and Eenarm, but Vuurmeisje isn't much of a character, and I thought the main villain was somewhat weak and the sexism in these types of books is starting to be rather jarring.
Rating: 3/5
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