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carlyoc 's review for:
The Land of Painted Caves
by Jean M. Auel
It took me almost 5 years but I finally finished this dang book. I'm so angry at the author for the way she ended this series.
A lot of my frustration has to do with events in my personal life that were echoed a little too closely by a certain major betrayal between characters. I had to set the book aside for multiple years before I could come back to it without relating the anguish and despair of the characters to my own experience. I could see a resolution coming that made my blood boil, and it was so hard to keep reading knowing that a character would get away with hurting another without any consequences.
On the other hand, there is some stuff towards the end that I found objectively objectionable. For example: promoting rape culture. Two characters sleep with each other who should not have done so, and the whole community and the narrator blame the woman because she made it "too easy" for the man. Of course, he could not be expected to resist. It pretty much boiled down to "boys will be boys" logic. That sort of implication and double standard regarding men and women's sexuality permeates throughout the book.
I had to know how the series ended after investing so much time and effort in the first five and a half books but honestly, I could have just abandoned it completely five years ago. I don't think I gained anything other than rant-material from the last 100 pages.
A lot of my frustration has to do with events in my personal life that were echoed a little too closely by a certain major betrayal between characters. I had to set the book aside for multiple years before I could come back to it without relating the anguish and despair of the characters to my own experience. I could see a resolution coming that made my blood boil, and it was so hard to keep reading knowing that a character would get away with hurting another without any consequences.
On the other hand, there is some stuff towards the end that I found objectively objectionable. For example: promoting rape culture. Two characters sleep with each other who should not have done so, and the whole community and the narrator blame the woman because she made it "too easy" for the man. Of course, he could not be expected to resist. It pretty much boiled down to "boys will be boys" logic. That sort of implication and double standard regarding men and women's sexuality permeates throughout the book.
I had to know how the series ended after investing so much time and effort in the first five and a half books but honestly, I could have just abandoned it completely five years ago. I don't think I gained anything other than rant-material from the last 100 pages.