Rambling, duplicative, clunky, not much plot. Honestly, a half-decent fanfic writer could have done a better job with this! Is she paid by the letter or something? Or was she just obligated to churn something out to meet a contract? Is there any need to repeat the multi-page mother song or Ayla's list of titles over and over again? I still finished it, though. At least I didn't pay for it.

I just wanted this to be so much better than it was.

Lazy... that's the only word I know to describe the book. 2/3 of it is mainly endless repetitions of the Song of the Mother (after one time I know what it's about, I don't need to read it fully 10 or more times...), incredibly detailed descriptions of caves and their paintings, and in some cases even twice, because... well, why not? The story only started playing out in the last few pages, but even that was repetative... most of it we've seen in the Mammoth Hunters already and it feels lazy to repeat it again, like there hasn't been any character development at all. Pity, I had wanted a better ending for a book series I really liked and started out so strong with the first two books.

Needed a stronger hand in the editing department. So much unnecessary repetition. I was listening to the audio version, so it was harder to skip over repeats.

This is such a wasted opportunity. Given over six hundred pages to wrap up an incredibly popular series, the author wastes most of those pages on unnecessary detail, peripheral characters and unimportant occurances that have no relevance to forwarding the plot. I was bored. Major plot strands were thrown in with no subtlety and an amazing lack of skill or apparent interest, and the ending was hamfisted and cobbled together in the worst way. A disastrous ending to a great series.

I think I'm going to travel to the past, go inside a cave and start painting the walls, so that people in the future think about what I was trying to say, and more people get inspired to write another incredible book like this one.

Ugh! Repetitive and a whole bunch of nothing. What a disappointing ending to a series that started out so well and seemed to diminish with every new book.

Ugh, finally finished this monster. Only because I read the other ones. They all went seriously downhill after 1.5 books, but I do love me some historical fiction, and Auel is a great researcher. However, this book should've been called, "I went on a bunch of field trips to see cave paintings and all my readers got was this lousy book."

All in all it was adequate, but this book could have been cut down by 200 pages just by eliminating the constant repetition! I felt very let down by the ending though - everything seems to turn out "happily every after", but given everything that came before it's not likely to end up that way.

Personally I'll be looking forward to any fan-fiction to continue building on the series and the ending that "should have been".

I heart these stories. I understand all the research Auel does to make them authentic, but she got a little too descriptive in this one again. I like the human side of the stories. Not so much every little detail of cave and drawings. Still, glad I found this series now, when this one was out, rather than having to wait 30 years. hehe

How bout no. Just don't read it. Trust me. You will only be able to keep on loving the series if you never read this one. And if you really want to keep that shine high you might wanna quit right after the first book alltogether. Treat it as an open ending and fantasize your own ending to the series/Ayla's story, because as it stands it's just nightmarishly bad.

I know certain series go downhill after a while (Wheel of time anyone?), but this one takes the proverbial cake. It's majestic in its failure. It's a sprawling mess of repetition and the worst plot developement, and plot period, I've encountered to date. I read 300 pages, after which I hurled the book across the room and read the plot synopsis. I've read fanfic, no crackfic with plots that were better planned out and paced than this one.

Run for the hills and do not buy this thing.