What a wonderful ending to a fantastic series. I loved it.

I've put off writing this review for more than a month in order to make sense of my thoughts and feelings about The Land of Painted Caves by Jean Auel. And I think I've finally found the right words to describe how I felt about it.

I think it was always going to be difficult to live up to the high expectations that fans of this series would be expecting. And obviously I include myself in that. Waiting nearly a decade for the final instalment of a much loved series is always going to be hard-going. But while it was comforting to go back to the characters of Ayla and Jondalar and return to their story amongst the Zelandonii, it was also disappointing.

Reading it, it felt as though I were detached from the story and looking at these characters from a distance. It felt as though Auel was trying to show us too much of the history and the lives of Prehistoric people, and especially the artwork and significance of these painted caves dotted around Europe. As a reader, I wanted a more personal story. I wanted to read more of Ayla's struggle with being a mother, a wife, and a zelandoni-in-training rather than reading of her treks to one painted cave after another. I don't recall now if other books in the series had such a shifting perspective, but I'd have expected to have witnessed more of this story from Ayla's perspective.

Much of the story also felt very repititious. There's a great deal that is said over and over as Ayla meets new people, about her accent and her origins that as a fan from the beginning of the series I was already familiar with. I was very weary of reading the same information, and it felt like lazy story-telling. And while I've always enjoyed the many glimpses into the history and social practices and beliefs, it was too much in this book. It was only during the last 100 pages or so, when we see a massive and almost too-sudden problem arise between Ayla and Jondalar that I felt any real emotion for the story or these characters. And all too soon, the book has ended with so many questions unaswered.

I'm glad that I've read the book and learned of the outcome of Ayla and Jondalar, but I wonder if this story became too large in scope for Jean Auel. It feels like a bit of a let-down, and that really is quite disappointing.

At least there was closure. That's pretty much what I'll say about this book. There was some serious dragging.

Very disappointing. For the first three quarters of the book, it seemed like Auel had just taken her travel notebook and replaced "I" with "Ayla". In the final section, she combined some of the worst plot elements of Book 3 and amplified them. Characterizations also seemed rather flat. Perhaps it is just as well that she's not planning to write any more sequels.

My review for Amazon.co.uk:

Like many fans of the `Earth's Children' series, I was really looking forward to `Land of the Painted Caves'. The previous instalment, `Shelters of Stone', had disappointed me with its endless repetition and poorly sketched characters, but I was sure that Jean M Auel wasn't going to fall into that trap again. I was wrong.

`Land of The Painted Caves' is almost 700 pages long and yet for the first 450-odd pages, nothing happens. Instead, we get endless descriptions of caves. Yes, I understand that the book is called `Land of the Painted Caves' but it is after all a novel. It's just not compelling enough to read description of caves - however pretty the paintings are - for several pages at a time; it's rather tedious. If it was a non-fiction book about caves there would be photographs to look at, at least. I don't know if it's just me but personally I find it very very hard to conjure up images of a cave just going by an extremely verbose description.

Plot-wise, the only major event (which I won't describe here to avoid spoiling your reading) is totally implausible for the character involved; I can't believe that the author would build a character across several books and then have them do something totally unlike them given their background story. You need to make readers believe the characters, or all suspension of disbelief will evaporate. Surely that's one of the main rules of novel writing?

Repetition is, alas, rife once again, just like in `Shelters'. Everything is explained over and over again - Ayla's background, Ayla's accent, even Ayla's medicine bag (which was given to her by Iza, as we are repeatedly told) is described on multiple occasions. It's almost as if Auel assumes that her readers not only have not read the prior 5 novels (unlikely: who would pick up a saga by the last instalment), but indeed that they suffer from regular amnesia between chapters, so she `treats' them to a reminder of pretty much everything within the space of a few pages. Why? Why does she do that? Where is her editor? There is no way this kind of sloppiness would make it past an editor's slush pile, but of course by novel no. 6 Auel is the publishing company's cash cow so who cares about patronising her readers and giving them a bunch of pages which should have been cut down by at least a third.

And what about stuffing the novel with several copy-and-paste appearances of `The Mother's Song'! It reminded me of when I was at university and in order to plump up the dreaded word count in my essays I'd paste in quotes from other texts. It's cheating, and it's boring.

In terms of `closure' (this is to be the last book in the series), there isn't any so don't expect any fireworks at the end. We don't even get a shred of an encounter with a member of Clan, which I found extremely disappointing.

The only thing I can say that made me appreciate this book a bit more is the fact that the final cave described in the book is the famous Chauvet Cave in the South of France. By sheer coincidence, the film `Cave of the Forgotten Dreams - 3D' by Werner Herzog had just been released at my local independent cinema and I was lucky enough to go and see it the day before I came across that chapter in the book. It brought everything to life and as well as being an amazing film (go and see it!), it took the dullness away from yet another cave description.

I'm still glad that I read the book - I love the `Clan' universe and I already miss it. But I find it terribly sad that the `final chapter' of Ayla's story turned out to be such a poor effort. Jean M. Auel has really let us down.

I loved each of the prior installments of this series. The finale was nowhere near the quality of the others. It was stilted and short in some places, overly long and overly descriptive in others. It was difficult and not enjoyable to read. The cave descriptions were overdone and verbose. Some more aggressive editing was needed for this book. The plotline added in with Marona was unnecessary and detracted from the previously established magic and power of this series. A disappointing finish to an otherwise beloved series.

What a disappointing ending to what started as a decent series. No compelling story arc, stilted dialogue, way more descriptions of cave paintings than is warranted. If you're new to Jean Auel and the Earth's Children series, read the first 4 then stop. The final two are not worthwhile. This one did get moderately better in the final quarter of the book, but even then was merely derivative of earlier books in the series.

Okay to be real I did a re-read of this whole series but I was Skimming Heavily through the first 5 so just logging this one. For those who haven't had the unique pleasure: ultra-smart cavewoman is raised by Neanderthals, single-handedly discovers the domestication of animals (she tames a cave lion, several horses, and a wolf), then screws her 6'6 Aryan Cro-Magnon prince charming into the sunset. And also becomes the Lisan Al-Gaib of her caveman society. Anyhoo,

This is one of the most bonkers book series I've ever read and it probably did irreperable damage to my psyche when I first read it at age 12. Also fun fact my grandmother took me to a book signing with Jean M. Auel at that age, and JMA was wildly demeaning to me when I asked my question, probably because she was weirded out that this 12 year old had read her batshit crazy lightly smutty caveman romance series that is masquerading as fiction in order to cover up a 500,000 word archaeological essay. Like damn lady we get it! You did Real Research on Cro-Magnon society! If you haven't read these I cannot emphasize enough, it'll be like 2 pages of plot, followed by 6 pages explaining the flora and fauna of the arid steppes in Western Europe twelve thousand years ago. It kind of rules even if your eyes are glazing over.

Anyways, thank you JMA for this deranged, loony treatise on what happens if your self-insert mary sue cavewoman becomes the Messiah of early hominid society. Bless the Mother and her Gifts!

This is nowhere near as good as the others. Still I will keep plugging away at it in between other more interesting books