I think I’ll let it lie on the shelf for a while.
Did she ever really have it? CoTCB was mildly interesting soft porn. Everything else was much less interesting.
Er, which parts of Clan of the Cave Bear do you consider soft porn? As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the only significant sex I can recall in that novel is the rape of the heroine, and I don’t think Auel intended anyone to find that titillating.
Clan of the Cave Bear was not porn. I wonder why she went in that direction later with Long Dong Jondalar, whose dick can only fit fully inside Ayla. Luckily those Neanderthals had invented birth control.
Yeah, especially since the heroine was about eleven years old.
I finally gave in and read the 6th (and thankfully final) book. If it hadn’t been a library book I would have preferred to read it with a black marker pen in my hand to delete more than half of the book. First 3 were ok, although they got progressively more bodice ripping. But the last 3 definitely needed the black marker. Where was her editor? What was he/she thinking? And did anyone notice that Ayla had an accent?
So, Jondalar was the Sonny Carleone of his time. And Ayla was Connie’s bridesmaid.
Have to agree. I know this comes close to thread-shitting, but, wow, I hated that book. The business about the Neanderthals having hereditary memory was so absurd, it overwhelmed most of the other absurdities in the story.
Yep. That troubled me too. There seemed to be a lot of racism bubbling just under the surface. This carried over in ways that are absurd: Ayla was always clean, and the Neanderthals were always dirty and smelly.
Also, the ending was a nasty bit of futility. “They all died, the end.” I know a lot of people who loved that book, but it creeped me out, big time.
Ah yes, the very first SDMB thread I ever posted in. Nice to see it back.
I read the first 5 books, and skimmed through the 6th. Too many comma splices in the fifth book, it was annoying, there was a comma splice on nearly every page. 
What? Ayla became pregnant with a Neanderthal child in the first book.
Yes, but she specifically was not using birth control.
However, along her way through the series, she seems to have invented just about everything except the computer and open heart surgery.
The book remains sitting on my shelf. At this point, I doubt I’ll ever crack it open.
Iza teaches her the medicine after she has Durc. Iza had previously been using it to spite an abusive husband, so as not to give him children. Her explanation was that it kept their spirits from mixing to form offspring because they still hadn’t figured out the biological aspect, though Ayla figured it out later. Ayla used it the whole journey to Jondalar’s home, and stopped right before they arrived, conveniently getting herself pregnant again.
A warning, I just signed up to this board solely to rant about this.
I loved the first book. I’m not blind to its flaws, but I loved it. I found it extremely interesting, I thought Ayla was a fairly poor main character, but she really only existed to describe the world and society around her. I like reading about ‘domestic history’ in general ; even if a lot of it was speculative or later proven to be outright wrong, I felt that the way of going about everyday tasks described like hunting, knapping and foraging were believable. I do realise it wasn’t especially well-written, and I do realise that most of the characters were fairly shallow and one-dimensional, but it wasn’t appealing to me because of the characters or the plot. It was the world that was interesting, and the depictions of how people lived and how they got stuff done.
The second book had me rolling my eyes in parts, mainly due to the amount of stuff Ayla invents when she should, realistically, have died alone in the cave. But I still enjoyed it, quite a lot ; especially after I realised that yes, it’s ridiculous, but if I imagine each invention-scene is the story of some totally different random person from halfway across the world inventing something, then it’s a fairly convincing and believable depiction of how that thing might have been discovered or invented. I didn’t mind the introduction of Longdong Jondolar solely because it provided an interesting cultural exchange between the neanderthal outcast and a proper human from human society. That said, he’s as worthless a character as Ayla. His only characteristics, repeated ad nauseum, are his handsomeness, his taste for deflowering virgins, his skill at flintknapping, and his massively oversized dong. Well, whatever. He was still better than his brother, whose only quality whatsoever seemed to be that he could straighten spears really really good, and he shared a mother with the great longdong. Naturally, I felt no empathy for any of the characters whatsoever (“Woe is me, my brother died. I’ll miss those really straight spears. He could straighten spears really well. That’s my brother, who died, and who was really good at straightening spears.”)
The Mammoth Hunters is where it started to turn for the worse. I can’t really say why, because I don’t remember too much of it. I’d say it was easily the most forgettable of the series, which makes it far superior to any of the books that follow. I do remember that I liked the depictions of the mammoth-hunting people, their way of life, and their methods for hunting mammoth, although I had to roll my eyes a little at the inclusion of Generic Token Black Character, since I couldn’t quite shake the idea that he was shoehorned in because people might have complained about the perceived racism of the blue eyes = human, brown eyes = neanderthal stuff from the last two books. And relatively speaking, he wasn’t a bad character. He enjoyed carving figurines, seducing women and talking about how black his skin is. That’s still two more character traits than most people get in this series, though. Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe I only hate him because the whole high-school-drama-love-triangle-soap-opera was so ridiculously painful to slog through, and he was a part of it. But still, he was easily the least awful third of that triangle.
The Plains of Passage… this was just an abrupt drop into absolute irredeemable garbage. There might have been a noticeable decrease in quality over the previous two books, but this plummeted so low that it’s utterly indefensible. Ayla makes a soup out of various herbs. The herbs are described in copious detail and their medicinal qualities listed. Ayla has a porntastic roll in the hay with Longdong Silver. Ayla meets a tribe of uninteresting indistinguishable humans, and describes each of her inventions from the previous books, in great detail. Ayla makes a soup out of various herbs, most of which are the same herbs from last time… etc, etc. It felt like the author was writing on a Rohypnol Loop, while masturbating furiously the whole while. It was padded, bloated, boring garbage. The sex scenes were tedious. In fact, every scene was tedious. If it was fanfiction written by a 13-year-old girl, I’d call it unimpressive. The fact that it’s a bestseller just makes me wonder why nobody’s offered to publish my used toilet paper yet. I think this is also the one with the tribe who enslaves all of their menfolk. I’m guessing that entire encounter was Auel trying to establish that despite modelling her universe after the academically-derided Global Matriarchal Society theory, she’s not a naively-idealistic feminist of the “If women ruled the world, there’d be no wars” variety. Honestly though, all she managed to establish was that her villains are just as one-dimensional and badly-written as Ayla Sue and Jondolar the Walking-Penis-Life-Support-System.
Next up, the Shelters of Stone. This is where tedious and repetitive turns into tedious and repetitive and written so badly that each sentence has to be re-read several times. Nothing flows. There are run-on sentences that take up half a page. At this point, I think even her editors couldn’t force themselves to read the monstrous thing. But every second page we’ve still got a sex scene identical to every other sex scene since the second book. And hell, let’s just copy-paste every single explanation of every single invention from the entire series. First, we’ll explain in the narrative how the spear-sling works. Then, we’ll have Ayla explain through expositionary dialogue how the spear-sling works, to an excited villager. Then let’s have some more villagers crowd around so Ayla can repeat her explanation. Then, we’ll describe how Ayla physically demonstrates the use of the spear sling. Then we’ll describe how some of the tribesmen try out the spear sling. What’s this, Longdong Jondolar’s arrived with a couple of friends? Time for them to explain how the spear sling works, in great detail, again. It only takes up fifteen or twenty pages all-up, but not to worry ; they’ve still got everything short of flux capacitors to explain to the entire population of Paleolithic Eurasia. One person at a time.
Painted Caves has one thing going for it, in that it’s supposedly the last one to be written. I said Mammoth Hunters was the most forgettable, but I was wrong. It’s this one. I couldn’t so much as tell you a damn thing that happens in it. Badly written sex scenes on every page and thirty more reminders that Wolf won’t attack children, for wolves are very gentle around pups, I’d guess. I read it, the whole thing, but I suspect my subconscious was filtering it out as I read, in a futile attempt to protect me from myself. Even now, I can’t tell you why I kept reading after Plains of Passage. The only way you’ll get anything positive out of reading this book is if you’re preparing for a long stay in prison ; it settles into a boring mind-numbing routine early on, it forces you to reflect on the poor decision making that got you into the situation in the first place, and the sexual encounters are near-constant, but always unwelcome.
I’m done. I do feel better. Thank you all.
I’ll start the clapping.
Very well done. If I read past the third book, it has totally leaked out of my brain.
Epic first post. Welcome to the Straight Dope forum Dynastia I think you’ll fit in very well here.
Thank you, Dynastia for bumping this thread.
I’ve read the thread before but not posted to it because Land of Painted Caves has been gathering dust on my bookshelf since the day I bought it. I’ve recently forced myself to read and and I am also glad it’s the last. I admit to skimming over the nth tour of the nth painted cave - even I can take only so much boring narrative.
My copy is still gathering dust. Sounds like it’s time to cut my losses and give it away.
I’m just thinking a thought to myself that I have often thought after arriving at the Straight Dope forums after I was posting in different forums that I posted in before the Straight Dope forum that Ostro Ostrogoth has made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with his warm welcome, which he welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, I feel I should write a message saying so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my enormously oversized throbbing mammoth organ to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out a message saying that I think that the people here have made me feel quite warmly welcomed with their warm welcomes, a thought that I have often had after arriving at the Straight Dope forums.
Ostro Ostrogoth, you have made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with your warm welcome, which you welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, and so I am now telling you so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my glistening male rod of gargantuan size to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out this message, which is a message I have often thought about giving you since arriving here at the Straight Dope forums after posting on other forums before finding the Straight Dope forum.
Now I’m thinking another thought to myself that I have often thought after arriving at the Straight Dope forums after I was posting in different forums that I posted in before the Straight Dope forum that lisiate has made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with his warm welcome, which he welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, I feel I should write a message saying so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my enormously oversized throbbing mammoth organ to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out a message saying that I think that the people here have made me feel quite warmly welcomed with their warm welcomes, a thought that I have often had after arriving at the Straight Dope forums.
lisiate, you have made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with your warm welcome, which you welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, and so I am now telling you so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my glistening male rod of gargantuan size to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out this message, which is a message I have often thought about giving you since arriving here at the Straight Dope forums after posting on other forums before finding the Straight Dope forum.
Now I’m thinking another thought to myself that I have often thought after arriving at the Straight Dope forums after I was posting in different forums that I posted in before the Straight Dope forum that jabiru has made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with his warm welcome, which he welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, I feel I should write a message saying so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my enormously oversized throbbing mammoth organ to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out a message saying that I think that the people here have made me feel quite warmly welcomed with their warm welcomes, a thought that I have often had after arriving at the Straight Dope forums.
jabiru, you have made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with your warm welcome, which you welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, and so I am now telling you so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my glistening male rod of gargantuan size to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out this message, which is a message I have often thought about giving you since arriving here at the Straight Dope forums after posting on other forums before finding the Straight Dope forum.
Now I’m thinking another thought to myself that I have often thought after arriving at the Straight Dope forums after I was posting in different forums that I posted in before the Straight Dope forum that Siam Siam has made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with his warm welcome, which he welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, I feel I should write a message saying so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my enormously oversized throbbing mammoth organ to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out a message saying that I think that the people here have made me feel quite warmly welcomed with their warm welcomes, a thought that I have often had after arriving at the Straight Dope forums.
Siam Siam, you have made me feel quite warmly welcomed here with your warm welcome, which you welcomed me with and made me feel warmly welcomed, and so I am now telling you so by using my keyboard, which is a device of my own invention made from acrylo-nitrile-butadiene-styrene used for registering a sequence of letters by carefully reaching my hands past my glistening male rod of gargantuan size to press keys in the desired sequence to spell out this message, which is a message I have often thought about giving you since arriving here at the Straight Dope forums after posting on other forums before finding the Straight Dope forum.
Would anyone like to join me in another rendition of the Mother’s Song?
The second book of the Bible also has a part where the main character should, realistically, have died alone in a cave. Maybe Auel was trying to replicate the tremendous commercial success that is The Word of God.