The Land of Painted Caves (Earth's Children #6) Book

I won't go too much into detail as other reviewers have exhaustively explained why this book sucks donkey arse, but essentially:

1. Auel likes to repeat things. A lot. What I meant to say is that Auel likes to repeat things. A lot.

2. Auel really digs caves. No, really. Ayla spends 2/3 of the book shuffling through caves, peeing in caves, knocking the ash off her torch in caves, and scrutinizing all of the art in caves. What a cavewoman. (snicker)

3. Ayla and Jondalar's interactions consist of, "Why don't you take Jonayla for a while, Jondalar? I need to go and do something esoteric with Zelandoni that involves lots of celibacy."

4. Jondalar: "Okay."

5. Jondalar thinks about this for a while, and says to himself, "Not okay." It turns out he has spent most of the book bonking the shit out of Marona, though in secret, except since it is a small cave in which they live (god, we can't get away from the fucking caves here, can we?), everyone knows about their incessant bonking except for, naturally, Ayla.

6. Ayla finds out about Jondalar's quasi-infidelity (we have to remember that although up to this point, Jondalar & Ayla have been monogamous, they nonetheless live in a polyamorous society) a week after having miscarried her baby while being called to the Zelandonia via - you guessed it - herbs. She discovers this infidelity by watching Marona slurp on Jondalar's...

7. Well, at least this book went easy on the porn.

8. Jondalar and Ayla act like lovelorn middle schoolers. "She hates me!" "He hates me!" Jonayla cries a lot.

9. As though Auel realised toward the end what a stinking pile of shit this book is, she decided to revive it by making Ayla carry out what consists of an intentional suicide attempt by trying out the Clan roots used by the Clan Mog-urs - and drinking nearly the entire contents of the bowl, after letting Zelandoni have the tiniest of sips. Ayla nearly dies, and is called back to life by a contrite and suddenly passionately loving Jondalar.

10. Ayla reveals to this cave-dwelling society that it isn't spirits that make babies, it's sex. Good, old-fashioned sex. Which is ironic, since we don't see a lot of sex in this book.

11. The Goddess society is now on the decline, thanks to Ayla and her goddamned interfering.

12. This book contradicts a lot of what is said in earlier books, especially in Shelters of Stone - in that book, Ayla asks Jondalar what datura is called in Zelandoni, and he answers, "Foxglove." In this book, Ayla has absolutely no idea what the plant is called in Zelandoni, and has to describe it to Zelandoni, who has never seen the plant, which leads one to wonder how the hell a Zelandoni word for it ever existed in the first place.

13. There is no character development. Ever. At all.

Important Note: You will cry once you've shlogged through your fortieth cave, complete with exhaustive descriptions of the cave's art and its physical structure, and you find that you still have forty more caves for Ayla to explore.

Oh, and I have to warn you that you might just laugh until you cry when Jondalar beats the shit out of Laramar, who is bonking Ayla at a Mother Festival, while screaming in a high-pitched falsetto, "He's making my baby!" You see, Ayla has just announced prior to the Mother Festival (great timing, naturally, since I'm sure all the guys will be wanting their women to conceive by other dudes) that men's "essence" creates babies. So perhaps this pile of shit was worth digging through just so we could hear Jondalar screaming, "He's making my baby!"

All in all, drivel. Complete drivel. It's as though Auel looked at her body of work thus far, realised she still had to write one last book, said "DAMN!" to herself, and told the characters, "Frankly, my cavepeople, I don't give a damn" and proceeded to write plastic people who could have substituted for one another without any of our noticing.