Isn't Ayla THE single most attractive, intelligent, subtly funny, and above all else PERFECT person you've ever met? What? You don't know her, well let me go into a lengthy description of her backstory...I am only being somewhat facetious. This books is 80% regurgitation of what loyal readers already know. Last installment I fell out of like with Jondalar. This one I fall seriously out of like with Ayla. Does she ever make mistakes? No. Must everyone like her? Yes. Except J's bitchy ex and the local drunk, everyone falls in love with her and finds her exotically beautiful. Whilst commenting on her strange accent. I was thrilled when I found out the Zelandonii were squabbling with Clan members, because I thought we might at least touch on some of the themes in the first book, but alas, no.

Loyal fans of the series who have an unfounded and illogical desire to know what else can happen next.

Um...I'll get back to you

Ayla. She is a perfect example of how an author falls so far in love with their own character that they cannot bear for said character to be insufficient in any way. The Zelandonii are by far the least interesting group of people in the whole saga. I repeatedly longed to find out what happened to Broud's Clan, and wished that A & J would have stayed with the Mamutoi.

Apply for position as editor, as apparently you can leave in weird comma splices and various other strange grammatical problems and still have a job...if this was a work by a first-time author, it never would have made it past the query stage.

Okay, they name the kid Jonayla. Need I say more?

Is seriously in love with Ayla.

I wish I had a better reason than 'if you read the first book, you just want to know how it all turns out'. But I don't.

Perfection is exactly as boring as it seems. The characters are all flat, one-dimensional. Perhaps this is the author's critique of cro-magnon society being inferior and shallow compared to their Clan counterparts, as Clan characters had their flaws and seemed human. The Zelandonii remind me of cardboard cutouts stuck in at intervals where they seem appropriate. Actions and reactions are as predictable as any soap opera.

I wanted so much to love it. It is better than Plains of Passage, but that's because we're in a set place now (and would you believe it, it's the site of those infamous cave drawings...if Ayla becomes the greatest cave-painting artist in the next book I swear I will light the pages on fire) and that takes a lot of possibility for describing flora and fauna out of the author's hands.

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Created Jul 10, 2007 at 1:29pm • Submit your own review...