I started this book during the Read-a-Thon, and thanks to all the reading time I got on RAT weekend, I was able to finish the book last night. That's pretty good, as my copy was 741 pages long! Usually, that would take me a good month to finish. The copy I read was one that I Mooched several years ago. It was a big, heavy hardback, and I've been carrying it around in my purse, so I was very happy to finish it in about a week.
While I've really enjoyed reading this series, this wasn't one of my favorites. Ayla and Jondalar have finally reached Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii, in the far west of the country. This book details Ayla's introductions, not only to Jondalar's immediate family in the Ninth Cave, but to the rest of the people in other Caves, as well, through the Summer Meeting. I'm not sure what it was about this one, but it kind of bored me. Maybe it was that they were no longer traveling, or that not much really seemed to happen in this one (ah, those days of domestic tranquility), but I was not as captivated by the story as I have been in the past. While I've complained in the past about a bit of repetitiveness in the writing, it seemed more obvious than before in this book. Auel would explain something, have a character TALK about what she JUST EXPLAINED and then reference it again a few pages later. And, while the research she puts into these novels is more than apparent, sometimes I feel like we get a big infodump with paragraphs and paragraphs of lectures on prehistoric science or biology.
This one, unfortunately, only gets 3.5 out of 5 Whatevers. It's a good one if you're following the series, but not even the birth of Ayla's child at the end of the book could spice it up for me.
2012-19
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