Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

Ayla l'Enfant de la Terre by Jean M. Auel

12 reviews

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

In some ways, this surprised me. I never had quite the pull to read it and only knew about it because it was my mom's favorite books series when she was in her twenties. I picked it up on a whim from the library and didn't put it down until it was done. 
   I think beyond the world building and insane amounts of detail about Neanderthal lifestyles, I really liked the writing style. I've noticed in some of the other older fantasies that I've read, like The Blue Sword, the authors will just head hop into multiple characters in literally the same paragraph. However, the reason it works for me is because they do it purposefully and not by accident. They use it to build out the other characters and in turn the main character, and overall, it keeps the story moving with momentum and expands the world in a way that makes it feel fleshed out. Genuinely, I need this style of writing to make a comeback in fantasy stories today. 
   There are a lot of characters followed, and every single one is fleshed out and consistent throughout it all. The way Broud's hatred progressively grows is so realistic and, in a way, satisfying seeing every piece fall into place as the story goes. He is one of the most annoying, and probably more evil antagonists I've read in a long time just by how common his attitude is. 
   Also, soooooo much happens in these 500 pages, like more plot than most modern day books can dream of. I guarantee if this were written today, the first book would've stopped when Ayla got back from the death curse, and they also would've dragged out most of the plot points two-fold. I appreciate how much ground is covered in one book.
  It is kind of hard reading about the super strict patriarchy, but it helps that Ayla constantly chafes against it. It also helps that there are some really decent characters who are not a-holes that we follow (in all actuality, there's only one a-hole and his name is Broud). 

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adventurous challenging dark informative reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I have a lot of interest in the stone age and was really stoked to pick this one up. In the end, I was more than a little let down.

The book has two modes: either it is providing rich descriptions of reconstructed Neanderthal life (for which the author did a truly impressive amount of research and filled in the gaps very believably), or it's advancing the story of Ayla, Cro-Magnon who finds herself adopted by her cousin species after an earthquake kills her family, and struggles with her differences as she ages into adulthood.

The novel's age makes it hard to read as a straightforward educational text. Even if I assume the writer did her research, anything I read will necessarily reflect the scientific consensus of fourty-five years ago - for all I know, half the things I read haven't been taken seriously by paleontologists for all of the current millennium. Having to constantly second-guess the things I was reading really took away from this part of the work.

Ayla's own story is... slow, mostly. Entire pages are devoted to our heroine's positively glacial thought process (when they're not being interrupted by more scenes of plant-gathering), a small crowd of several dozen characters fights for their own spotlight time, and as if that doesn't sound bad enough already, the novel eschews timeskips in favor of telling us, year by year, of how the found five-year-old grows into a teenager.

Then there's the B-plot, which I found extremely uncomfortable because it amounts to "Isn't it so sad how these evolutionarily stagnant but deeply spiritual people are doomed to be replaced by a fitter, smarter, better branch of humanity, who are anachronistically blond btw". One significant character's entire arc resolves around his people's inevitable doom, and I kept just waiting for those scenes to be over whenever they popped up.
 
Still, the book has its virtues. The worldbuilding is incredibly believable and very evocative, the character work is competent, and the ending wrapped everything up very nicely. The Clan of the Cave Bear isn't always perfect, but at least it's interesting.




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adventurous dark hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Top tier world building and information overload!! Once you get into the thralls of the story, it hooks you. 

The MC is a source of inspiration and courage. đŸ˜ŒđŸ€ŒđŸ»

Don't let anyone, define who are you and set your limits.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous challenging emotional tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Clan of the Cave Bear follows Ayla, a Cro-Magnon girl who is adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals following an earthquake. I liked the characters, but the character list at the beginning spoils what will happen with Broud and Ayla resulting in Durc.
It’s clear he will rape her and Durc will be their son with Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal traits.
It was only helpful in letting me know Creb and Mog-Ur were the same person. For someone who sounds like a textbook, Auel wasn’t super clear that it was a title and not a name. 

Some of my fellow reviewers mentioned Auel’s writing style. I found it interesting as an imagining of life in pre-history, but yes some of the flower and plant descriptions were a bit much and comes off as textbook-like. I can see that putting off some readers. It also does start off slow and only picks up later. 

Once the story does pick up, I was deeply invested in the characters, especially Iza, Creb, Uba, and Ayla. Brun is a good leader character and our antagonist Broud is positively loathsome, even before
he raped Ayla. But Durc is adorable. There is the bit where Ayla is excited to have a baby to help her cope with the rape. I understand this can be off-putting, but to me it is how she copes. She wants a baby and rejects the idea Broud helped make him. It isn’t a consolation prize to her for putting up with him, but a miracle.
Twenty-six is elderly for these people so they grow up much faster. We get to see their daily lives and traditions, which were interesting. I loved the totems and how they conceptualized spirits. The curses, the gatherings every seven years, the hearths, all of it and lore makes the clan feel very realistic. One very embarrassing review is kind of upset sexism exists as if it isn’t the oldest form of bigotry ever. The tribe’s sexism is hard to read about and deeply upsetting, but it’s supposed to make you uncomfortable. Ayla is able to do things that go against it by thinking it’s what her Cave Lion totem wants. The reader will think about how “civilized” and egalitarian we are, but then will thousands of years from we be looked upon as backwards and cruel? (Assuming progress is mainly linear of course since we seem to be going backwards as I type this). 

Another embarrassing review mentions no LGBT characters. As a homosexual, true homosexuality is very rare. Did you read this and wish some poor homosexual were in this story being raped? Did you read Creb being described as not a true man for being disabled and agree? Would him being “not a man” have made the story better? It betrays a total lack of understanding of the true purpose of “third genders”—to other homosexual or otherwise “abnormal” men. No woman would be allowed to opt out of her sex based role. 

The story could be better and I agree the ending is very much for a sequel.
If Auel ended the book well, Broud would have died at the cave-in and Ayla would have been able to stay to raise her son.
But then apparently we wouldn’t get the next book, which is a sex-fest? Auel, I don’t want to know what your sex life is lacking. I’m sad about it, but I guess I won’t be reading the next book even if I enjoyed this one despite its flaws. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous emotional slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings