What a waste of money, I think Jean Auel has forgotten how to write and the publisher just cobbled something together from the previous five books.
SPOILERS AHEAD
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Having spent the first couple hundred pages carefully giving us the background on every character we meet and Ayla occasionally going off in a daydream and recants in detail, something from a previous book on PAGE 269 it jumps forward FOUR YEARS making the first 268 pages completely pointless.
Ayla now listens so much to the First. On page 284 we meet a young woman whom is in agony with her teeth. Ayla asks to treat her. 'No' says the patient. The First says 'fair enough we are off to our meeting' and says in passing to Ayla, 'shame that woman will die young'. Ayla agrees and off they tromp to their next cave. No attempt to help her. Very out of character for Ayla.
Many description of caves with no explanations just blob here, line there...boring. One exception to this is the big most sacred cave visit on P411. If you read a bit, you can track the real pictures here. I liked doing that..Kindle one hand and phone/laptop in the other.
Page 412 we get yet another rendition of the Mothers Song. I can honestly say start reading at this point and you would miss nothing...nothing. If you intend on reading this novel start on page 412. Trust me.
First mention of the clan people is when we read on Page 425 that they sneak into the big sacred cave from time to time and the modern humans let them be (like animals) had big hopes that Ayla might meet up with the clan, teach the Watcher et al more about them and have a chat set up some trading or something...nope never mentioned again in the book. Just a few references to mixed race people and Ayla's clan experiences.
Another out of character moment is on page 484, Ayla intends to leave a stressed out heavily pregnant mother who has miscarriaged several times without medical care, so she can pop along to the Summar camp and make another baby with Jondalar.
Jondalar might have his good points but nearly killing a man for the second time in his life FFS, due to his uncontrollable temper. Loads of 'he can't help it, he never learnt to control himself' tripe from other people. Yet by Page 581 Ayla has convinced herself that it is all her fault. Get a grip woman. She is really coming across as a wimp in this book.
By page 608 Jondalar has such an arrogant attitude, I want to close the book but I forced myself to finish it.
What a waste, the earlier books had some good ideas, storylines and overall were very enjoyable. I really think this book need rewriting as it really spoils an otherwise very interesting series.
Liked the additional verse to the mothers song and the talks about what that meant to the culture, could of been explored more I feel.
General Points
No one else has any horses or wolves to try to tame. Why not. After 6 years of watching Ayla say how easy it is, no one else has tried to catch a horse ? Surely that would of made an interesting off shoot, catching and taming horses.
Jondalar's punishment for nearly killing a man, is look after the beaten man's mate and children. Not much punishment as early in the book it said that the oldest daughter and her mate had adopted the children and was already raising them ! (see Pages 550 and 656)
PS. Kindle is very fun way to read books. Enables me to make brief notes of interesting stuff as I read through and quickly look up / search things. Kindles rock :) , this book didn't :(