illulinn 's review for:

The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel

3.0

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At this point I have this love - hate relationship going with the earth children series. I find that the books are unnecessarily long and ridiculously repetitive and that basically half could be taken out without any loss of the story. And then again I want to know more. I really just can't stop until I know what happens to Ayla. Maybe this ridiculous repetition has made me feel closer to the character - I'm not sure what does it, but I do want to keep on reading, even though I tell myself that I'm not really a fan of the books. I think for this one in particular ("The mammoth hunters"), I was a bit taken back by what I find as a steady degrade of character development. As a resolution of the book Jondalar did come a long way, but it really did take a LONG time for him to get there, even though it seams pretty simple. Ayla seams to be exactly the same, though a lot less scared of people. The whole "rape" incident that wasn't rape was super annoying and I was scratching my head just thinking can they for the love of God just talk to one another so that we can move on with the plot. 400 pages later they decided to talk and all is good. An entire book later we are pretty much back to exactly where we started: Ayla and Jondalar are on the way back to find his people together and they love each other. I can't give it less than three stars and still read the next book, so three stars it is for that reason mostly.