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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
After the soap-ish love triangle of the third book I opened this with trepidation but feeling happy that the blurb made it seem more like the first two in the series.
What we have here effectively is a road trip with no roads but a whole lot of tribes, creatures, landscapes, environmental dangers and mobility problems to think about. Some fan reviews I've read state that the heavy description and little action made this dull, I must confess that this for me was amongst the books strengths. I continue to take pleasure in the description and Auel's research even though I concur that there are few actual events. Here we really get to explore a significant part of ice age Europe as they follow the Danube westwards.
Of course there are weaknesses, it is over-written. Conversations covering old ground go on for tens and tens of pages. Every time Ayla wants to stop to collect medicinal plants or they spy a particularly juicy deer, they hold not one but two conferences. The first beforehand to discuss whether they should stop and a second afterwards to discuss what they did and the implications for their journey. This does get tedious and the book could have lost at least 150 pages for the sake of flow.
It doesn't really get interesting until the halfway point so if you are an impatient reader, you won't lose anything in skim-reading the first few hundred pages.
I'm also a little fed up with being told how beautiful and generally awesome the pair are as they travel Europe single-handedly advancing technology to the backward tribes, liberating the oppressed and being begged to stay with everyone they meet. It also gets boring to hear about how sickeningly perfect they are and how perfect for each other they are. Please, just tone it down for the last two books?
With two books to go, I am in no hurry to complete the series but I know I will. Reading it I can't say I found it enjoyable but I can see that Auel put a lot of hard work into it and for that I appreciate it more than The Mammoth Hunters and consider it a more solid work than The Valley of Horses.
See more book reviews at my blog
What we have here effectively is a road trip with no roads but a whole lot of tribes, creatures, landscapes, environmental dangers and mobility problems to think about. Some fan reviews I've read state that the heavy description and little action made this dull, I must confess that this for me was amongst the books strengths. I continue to take pleasure in the description and Auel's research even though I concur that there are few actual events. Here we really get to explore a significant part of ice age Europe as they follow the Danube westwards.
Of course there are weaknesses, it is over-written. Conversations covering old ground go on for tens and tens of pages. Every time Ayla wants to stop to collect medicinal plants or they spy a particularly juicy deer, they hold not one but two conferences. The first beforehand to discuss whether they should stop and a second afterwards to discuss what they did and the implications for their journey. This does get tedious and the book could have lost at least 150 pages for the sake of flow.
It doesn't really get interesting until the halfway point so if you are an impatient reader, you won't lose anything in skim-reading the first few hundred pages.
I'm also a little fed up with being told how beautiful and generally awesome the pair are as they travel Europe single-handedly advancing technology to the backward tribes, liberating the oppressed and being begged to stay with everyone they meet. It also gets boring to hear about how sickeningly perfect they are and how perfect for each other they are. Please, just tone it down for the last two books?
With two books to go, I am in no hurry to complete the series but I know I will. Reading it I can't say I found it enjoyable but I can see that Auel put a lot of hard work into it and for that I appreciate it more than The Mammoth Hunters and consider it a more solid work than The Valley of Horses.
See more book reviews at my blog
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
This is a very long book. You can tell the author has done a great deal of research, but this makes the reading very tedious at points. The very long journey was full of descriptions, of everything, and after crossing the river 3 times, camping multiple times, having trouble with the animals… etc. it became an exercise of reading the same thing with very subtle changes. While I appreciate how detail it was, the multiple repetitions made it skippable. The best moments of the novel was those interactions with other groups. Sure some of these seemed repetitive as well, but most often there were enough differences to make them quite enjoyable.
This was a healing book after Mammoth Hunters. Lets face it, Jealousy is one of the ugliest emotions and putting up with hundreds of pages of it was hard. It detracted from the story, but this is a review of The Plains of Passage. I am glad I plowed through the other book to get to this one... now, that is.
However, in the book Ayla and Jondalar start on the journey home. The encounter the best of humanity and the worst of it too.
I did hear the complaints about the descriptions of wilderness in which they traveled being too boring. On the contrary, I found it interesting and one of the reasons I like historical fiction. If I may make my case, think of the old classics. The book that comes to mind for me is Moby Dick. It was very descriptive about oceanography. However, keep in mind, when the book was written there was no History Channel. People reading the book needed the description to understand what was going on. This may not be the case today, but I did find all the descriptions of what they encountered fascinating.
I appreciated that Ayla and Jondalar worked on there relationship and grew closer as this is also a love story and their antics in the Mammoth Hunters really had me upset. I am a little older and wiser than when I was young and I still see them making relationship mistakes. But lets face it, at the end of their journey Ayla is only 19 and Jondalar is 21 or so... (Can't remember.)
I did find Jean's (the author) use of foreshadowing a little predictable. However, she did leave some of them as surprises.
I'm looking forward to the next book.
However, in the book Ayla and Jondalar start on the journey home. The encounter the best of humanity and the worst of it too.
I did hear the complaints about the descriptions of wilderness in which they traveled being too boring. On the contrary, I found it interesting and one of the reasons I like historical fiction. If I may make my case, think of the old classics. The book that comes to mind for me is Moby Dick. It was very descriptive about oceanography. However, keep in mind, when the book was written there was no History Channel. People reading the book needed the description to understand what was going on. This may not be the case today, but I did find all the descriptions of what they encountered fascinating.
I appreciated that Ayla and Jondalar worked on there relationship and grew closer as this is also a love story and their antics in the Mammoth Hunters really had me upset. I am a little older and wiser than when I was young and I still see them making relationship mistakes. But lets face it, at the end of their journey Ayla is only 19 and Jondalar is 21 or so... (Can't remember.)
I did find Jean's (the author) use of foreshadowing a little predictable. However, she did leave some of them as surprises.
I'm looking forward to the next book.
adventurous
slow-paced
Sometimed it got really boring, but I'm still very fascinated by the setting in the stone age, Iäve never read books taking place in that era before. And I like the characters; even though Ayla and Jondalar are too fantastic to be realistic, I really like them.
adventurous
informative
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
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-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:
No