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danilanglie 's review for:
The Mammoth Hunters
by Jean M. Auel
Okay. So here comes the "getting much worse" part of things. The enormously frustrating thing is that there are so many good elements to this novel. Jondalar and Ayla end up meeting and staying with a group of people called the Mamutoi, and Ayla is adopted by them. Ayla meets Ranec, a handsome man who falls for her and wants to mate her. All of the stuff about Mamutoi customs is quite interesting, even though it is riddled with some of the same problems of the previous two books - namely, Auel uses clinical language to teach us all about the cool research she did to write the book. It totally ruins the tone. But setting that aside, this book might have been okay.
Cue the dreaded "misunderstanding" plot. UGH. Basically, Ayla and Jondalar spend the majority of the novel whining and complaining about each other. Ayla thinks Jondalar doesn't love her anymore, and Jondalar thinks the same of Ayla. The Mamutoi, who are said to be very honest and straight-forward, know exactly what is going on and why the misunderstanding happened, and yet they don't say anything to help their new friends. And so we must endure HUNDREDS OF PAGES of whiny Ayla and whiny Jondalar, two people who are supposed to be awesome and brilliant at everything, failing to actually have a simple conversation that would have erased all of their problems.
I don't even have the energy to rant at this as much as I want to. It's stupid, it detracts from any goodness this book might have provided in the form of rich world-building. From here, I was extra afraid to venture on into the fourth book. And yet...
Cue the dreaded "misunderstanding" plot. UGH. Basically, Ayla and Jondalar spend the majority of the novel whining and complaining about each other. Ayla thinks Jondalar doesn't love her anymore, and Jondalar thinks the same of Ayla. The Mamutoi, who are said to be very honest and straight-forward, know exactly what is going on and why the misunderstanding happened, and yet they don't say anything to help their new friends. And so we must endure HUNDREDS OF PAGES of whiny Ayla and whiny Jondalar, two people who are supposed to be awesome and brilliant at everything, failing to actually have a simple conversation that would have erased all of their problems.
I don't even have the energy to rant at this as much as I want to. It's stupid, it detracts from any goodness this book might have provided in the form of rich world-building. From here, I was extra afraid to venture on into the fourth book. And yet...