Review of The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel

It’s been thirty-one years since the adventures of Ayla first hit bookshelves. It was hard not to become a fan. The first three books of the planned six-book series were engrossing reads that transported the audience to neolithic Europe. The fourth book, while having its moments, was plodding. The long-delayed fifth book underwhelmed. Where does the newly released sixth, and presumably final, book rate?

Warning: obviously there are going to be some mentions of events that take place in the novel. I will also be referencing events from the previous novels. If you don’t want to experience even mild spoilers, then read the book first. I’ll wait.

In a nutshell, The Land of Painted Caves (LoPC) follows the trend of the later books in having the elements of a good story but lacking the discipline (either by the author or her editor) to make it a peer of the first three. I’m not saying that it’s a bad book, but neither am I saying that it’s a good one.

Long-time readers will find much that is familiar–which is a lot of this novel’s problem. Readers of The Plains of Passage (PoP, book 4) endured page after page of Ayla and her mate, Jondalar, journeying as they trekked toward his home. The general feeling was that much of that trip (maybe half the book) could have been cut without having much of an effect on the actually entertaining parts.

A large part of LoPC features a long journey, though with a small group instead of just Alya and Jondalar. The purpose of this journey is to visit the sacred sites, i.e. caves with cave paintings. Much of this reads as if you are being led on a tour of cave painting sites in France…with about as much plot and character development. In fact, several of the visits actually have our merry band being given a tour of the caves by a guide. While somewhat interesting in the book, I strongly recommend that the reader also be near a computer so they can search the ‘net and see the actual paintings they are talking about (there’s a convenient reference of the place names at the front of the book). Seeing them in context really helps. An example:

There were four horse heads, painted in perspective, one on top of another, but the wall behind them had been scraped clean, which gave the artist the opportunity to show the detail, and the individual differences of each animal. The distinctive stand-up mane, the line of the jaw, the shape of the muzzle, and open or closed mouth, a flaring nostril, all were depicted with such accuracy, they seemed real.

–Jean M. Auel, The Land of Painted Caves p.489, 2011, Crown Publishers

Not bad. You probably aren’t picturing it in your head like how it is in actuality, but it isn’t a bad description. On the other hand, if you also augment the text with a visual from the cave, it might be clearer:

Given the number of images that get described from the tour, I have no doubt that taking the time to search for them on the Internet will greatly enhance the experience. It certainly won’t take you out of the story, since the protracted tour is largely devoid of anything significantly touching on plot. Still, to be fair, it isn’t quite as mind-numbing as parts of PoP had been.

One of the aspects of the series that first hooked readers was how Auel would carefully describe plants and processes that Ayla was having to learn. That continues here as well. Unfortunately, something’s off. It seems more workmanlike instead of artistic. It’s subtle, but the words don’t flow as easily to paint the picture as they once did.

PoP isn’t the only inspiration drawn by this novel. If you’ve read The Mammoth Hunters (MH, book 3), the final third of the story will seem very familiar. Once again we have Ayla and Jondalar mis-communicating because they blame themselves out of proportion to actual events. While it’s great to see some familiar faces, the sad truth is that many secondary characters are left one dimension short of three.

In many ways, this pastiche of earlier stories reads like a cut-and-paste job. With 757 pages (hardback), or in the neighborhood of about 350,000 words, the tale could have been so much more…but I don’t think the long-time fans still remaining were expecting a return to the glory days of the series. The fact is that this is the logical follow-on to the perceived decline in quality (or perhaps interest) by the author. The sacrifice made to give us the lengthy paleoanthropological art tour is an all but non-existent plot and marginal character development.

If you’ve been with the series since the beginning, you’ll want to read this either out of loyalty or to find out the few plot threads from The Shelters of Stone that almost sort of, kind of get resolved. If this is the first book of the series you read, maybe you’ll perceive it better. There is enough rehashing to fill in any necessary blanks. Then, if you are so motivated, you can go back to the earlier books and see what all the excitement was about.

And thus we draw to a close the “Earth’s Children” series. As with Star Wars, the first three produced are definitely superior to the second three. That isn’t to say that I don’t still read all the books. It’s mostly that I skip the boring/tedious stuff (there are only so many times I’m willing to read the complete “Mother’s Song”…that would be 1, fortunately it’s set off in italics which makes it easy to skip over). While I consider LoPC to be the weakest of the stories, there are still parts of the book that I’ll be re-visiting. I do really like these characters and their world. I just wish they’d been treated a little bit better at the end of their run.