The Land of Painted Caves
-
-
4.1 • 156 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
The triumphant finale in the Earth's Children series, Jean M. Auel's internationally bestselling reconstruction of pre-historic life, when two kinds of human beings, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, shared the earth.
Ayla, Jondalar, and their little daughter, Jonayla are home. Yet Ayla struggles to find a balance between her duties as a new mother and her training to become a Zelandoni - one of the Ninth Cave community's spiritual leaders and healers.
Once again, Jean M. Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived thousands of years ago, rendering the terrain, dwelling places, longings, beliefs, creativity and daily lives of Ice Age Europeans as real to the reader as today's news.
Set 25,000 years in the past, yet utterly relatable today, The Land of Painted Caves is an epic tale of love, identity and the struggle to survive, rich in detail of language, culture, myth and ritual.
Praise for Jean M. Auel
'Beautiful, exciting, imaginative' New York Times
'A major bestseller . . . A remarkable work of imagination' Daily Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thirty thousand years in the making and 31 years in the writing, Auel's overlong and underplotted sixth and final volume in the Earth's Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear; etc.) finds Cro-Magnon Ayla; her mate, Jondalar; and their infant daughter, Jonayla, settling in with the clan of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonaii. Animal whisperer and medicine woman Ayla is an acolyte in training to become a full-fledged Zelandoni (shaman) of the clan, but all is not rosy in this Ice Age setting; there are wild animals to face and earthquakes to survive, as well as a hunter named Balderan, who has targeted Ayla for death, and a potential cave-wrecker named Marona. While gazing on an elaborate cave painting (presumably, the Lascaux caverns in France), Ayla has an epiphany and invents the concept of art appreciation, and after she overdoses on a hallucinogenic root, Ayla and Jondalar come to understand how much they mean to one another, thus giving birth to another concept monogamy. Otherwise, not much of dramatic interest happens, and Ayla, for all her superwomanish ways, remains unfortunately flat. Nevertheless, readers who enjoyed the previous volumes will relish the opportunity to re-enter pre-history one last time.
Customer Reviews
Meh
Not as good as her other books, very repetitive story line and a lot of waffling. Although there were some good parts, it wasn't until the last few chapters that it really got interesting.
Why does this have such a high rating?
Literally ruined a whole amazing series. I beg you, if you loved the first 6 books, do not read this. Act like the series ended on the last one. Trust me. Save yourself the heartache of going through this stupid excuse for a novel. I don’t know what happened to this author or her editors to allow this.
WHY !!!
The taint this book puts on one of my favourite fantasy couples is so upsetting. I wish you had left it at book 5 where I could have imagined a happily ever after.