The Land of the Painted Caves

The final chapter of Jean Auel's Earth's children saga and what a disappointment ! The author has literally lost the plot.

There is so much repetition, not just in this volume but also from previous books - instance cattails, Mother's song , foreign, exotic. There is no plot as such until the last third of the book until Jondalar, thoroughly out of character, and out of the blue, has sex with a previous lover, and even the consequent reconciliation is unsatisfactory.

What I missed was development - quite early on we jump four years, and nothing has changed; surely someone else would have tried taming a wolf or, given the demonstrated usefulness of the horse, captured and tamed one ? Although we do meet some earlier characters again, it is perfunctory. Hopes were raised, by reference to her difference from the people she now lives with, that some search for her own tribe might ensue, but no. Worst of all for me was that there was no further contact with the flatheads, a passing reference to their also using one of caves was all there was. What of her son Durc, the bully Broud, of a possible change in attitude, of living side by side - is there no evidence that this might have happened ?

It appears that the author got bogged down in her own research into the painted caves - perhaps she should have written a book on these, and then, having got it out of her system, returned to Earth's children.