Disappointment, thy name is Jean M. Auel

When I was a Freshman in high school, I took Anthropology. At some point during this class, we watched "The Clan of the Cave Bear," starring Darryl Hannah as a Cro-Magnon(pronounced in Mr. Langnehs' style as Crow-Manyon) and a bunch of people in really bad Neanderthal (Knee-and-dur-tall) makeup. Mr. Langnehs offered extra credit to anyone who read the book. I don't recall a report being required, but since I was/am a generally honest little Snarky, I read the whole book.

And I fell in love. The writing, the characters...everything was just so perfect about that book. I even persuaded my mother to buy the other three books out in the series at that time, "The Valley of Horses," "The Mammoth Hunters" and "The Plains of Passage," sight unseen. I knew I would love them that much. And I did. I read them so much they fell apart and I had to buy a whole new set.

Like other Auel fans, I waited impatiently for the fifth book in the series, which did not come out until 2002. At first, I was rather disappointed in this book, "The Shelters of Stone." The Zelandonii people seemed like a generally nasty, mean-spirited bunch and the usual depth of writing just wasn't there. However, it's grown on me to the point of "it'll do."

Nine years later we have another book, "The Land of Painted Caves." This is supposedly the last book in the series, so it's really, really good, right? Wrong. I could NOT be more disappointed with this book and I really wish I'd never read it. Had I known the series finale would be this bad, I wouldn't even have read SoS and stuck instead with books 1-4 only.

Too much of the book was spent on descriptions of the scenery and painted caves. I know Auel visits these places and does all this research but dang. Character development, which was lacking in SoS, is nearly absent in TLoPC. The book covers hardly any time at all. Events that were foreshadowed strongly never took place. Jondalar and Ayla engage in absolutely RIDICULOUS behavior for their characters that almost made me throw the damn book across the room. Inconsistencies and spelling variations and errors abound, so it looks like no one even edited the book at all. If Auel was this tired of the characters, she should have left it at 4 books.

I am not the only one who feels this way. It's a sad thing when a book released on March 29 has 15 used copies for sale on Amazon already on April 10. And it is a LONG book, 750+ hardback-sized pages, so I'd bet many people that bought it the day it came out just haven't gotten all the way through it yet. 219 reviews so far with a 2-star rating. My review gave it 1 star. And that was being nice.

I'll stick with books 1-4 from here on out, although after this it may be a while before I can even pick them up again. I may rarely read book 5. Book 6 sucks and has no place on my Earth's Children shelf. I already told my mom not to buy the paperback for me when it comes out, as she did with SoS so my set would match. I'm just glad I didn't pay full retail for this paperweight.