fantastic book

easy to follow, it pulls you along at a fast pace. I loved it and cannot wait for the next book.

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Getting a bit repetitive!

After listening with such pleasure to all these books,(I still have 1 to go) I'm finding the love scenes too repetitive, and some of the landscapes repetitive also. To the point that I run the book forward at times, and am not as keen to start the next one. Such a shame because I think the stories are brilliant and wonderfully descriptive. Just feel they are being padded out to justify another book!

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More of a dissertation than a novel!

The prolific Ms Auel comes across like a frustrated University lecturer here. She has obviously done an enormous amount of research and doesn't want to waste a single job or tittle of it. The result is part 4 in the series about the life of Ice Age Ayla - an incredibly, tediously, obsessively detailed account of the botany, wildlife and people of Ice age Europe. Yes Ms Auel, we really need to know about every stripe on every prehistoric horse leg, we hunger to hear about about every blade of steppe grass and how it changes with the seasons, every tuft of medicinal plant life, and we need to know how Jondalar and Ayla single-handedly invented all the adaptations to ancient weaponry found in museums today.
She also never misses an opportunity to lecture us about our failure to take care of the Earth Mother today and the retribution she will exact for our neglect.
Oh wait, there is supposed to be a storyline as well! it does somehow get a little lost among all the pages and pages of obsessive landscape detail.
Yes of course, the subject of this story is a continent-wide journey across Ice Age Europe, so a little detail would be fine and expected. But seriously... this is extreme autistic-style OCD-level detail!! I wonder what dire consequences would result if Ms. Auel didn't list every single species of flora and fauna prevalent at the time? Maybe the gremlins would get her.
The best part of this chapter of the saga is where Ayla and Jondalar meet a Clan couple, bringing us back to Ayla's childhood where she lived among the Neanderthal Clan. The worst parts are the endless repetition, sometimes word for word, of the previous three books. I mean honestly, she treats us like dementia patients. For a start, who begins a 6-part series on book 4? And if you're following the series, one would expect that you would remember certain key details that really do not need to be rehashed word for word all over again! This book could be half the length if the repetition alone was omitted, and it could be halved again if all the unnecessary details were edited out. Obviously Ms Auel is her own editor and would never accept suggestions from anyone else!

having said all that, Rowena Cooper, the narrator, is very expressive and articulate, and although she doesn't vary her vocal style very much (so that every character has basically the same voice) she does manage, in her own genteel fashion, to express all the many and varied emotions and situations involved in the story. (it is amusing to hear her uppercrust accent describing in intimate detail the texture of Jondalar's hard manly shaft!) She has ironed out most of her mispronunciations found in the first three books: "withes" are now correctly pronounced "withees" rather than "wyths" and "travois" has thankfully lost its "s" - although the stress is still on the "trav" rather than the "oi". "Flaccid" is still irritatingly pronounced "flacksid" though.
Something that does stick out a little is the fact that a very upper class British narrator is reading what does seem to be an American book, what with all the 'creeks' 'alfaffa' and other American words. Although on balance, as a Brit, I much prefer a British narrator.
In general, this series is a very absorbing saga that I have admittedly read and listened to again and again over the years. The ending to the series is extremely disappointing however, and I warn you now, at no point does the author take the opportunity to let us know how Durc fared. He's mentioned in every chapter, the son Ayla lost. He's on her mind constantly, so you would really think that the author had some vested interest in letting us know how he's getting on, even if Ayla never finds out? maybe the point is that Ayla never finds out, so why should we get a peek? but I can't help feeling that it would have been so easy to just have him standing on a distant mountain at any point in the story, looking down on Ayla and Jon as he led the clan to their destiny... or something??? They even pass within reaching distance of the peninsula where the Clan lived. Surely a sighting of a distant hunting party (perhaps led by Durc and Brac) might be a possibility? But no, this is a huge disappointment as it never happens. Ayla never gets closure about her son and neither do we.
Spoiler alert: at the very end of the story, she has a daughter, who we never get to know either because there are no details about her other than she falls asleep at regular intervals. Another massively missed opportunity. But then obviously it was much more important to Ms Auel to go into another OCD-fuelled rant about every stroke and every line of the cave paintings and endless repetition of her wretched 27 verse Mother's Song briefly alluded to in this book. Ooh boy, you're in for a treat. If you get that far, I wish you luck.

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Good, but not her best.

I loved the first two books in this series. This one is a good story, but padded out with too much description and repetition. Some is enjoyable and sometimes necessary, but not to the extent in this story. Also the rather too frequent description of sexual experiences add nothing to the story and leave nothing to the imagination.

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the saga of the Iceage

this 4th book in the series about Ayla contains unnecessary repetitions of the sexual act. The tale and the research of the conditions of the era is well written and there is nothing like it edited . I am rereading the series about 20 years after it"s first edition and I think it has a lot to tell us about the human condition and the social complications of being a foreigner.I warmly recommend the series even if this book could be much shortter

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Repetitive!!

Book 4 in the ice age love story about the adventures of Ayla and Jondalar, this time the account of their journey home. The story depicts various misadventures, mishaps, near-escapes and meetings with all kinds of others along the way back to Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii. Including nearly dying of hypothermia trying to cross a huge, icy river and getting up the next day perfectly fine without catching even a slight cold, and going straight into a superhumanly passionate lovemaking session (come on!!! Reality? They would need a few days at least to recover and would surely catch pneumonia?!!)
Throughout the journey, Ayla has a recurring dream about Creb leading her to a cave with a strange rock formation (which as it turns out, is Jondalar's home). This is repeated in almost every chapter. I get that the spirit of Creb is guiding her, which is really sweet and saves their lives on occasion, but it is repeated so often that it gets quite tiresome (oh no, not that bloody dream AGAIN ) and rather over-eggs the pudding.
The dream isn't the only thing oft-repeated. Surely nobody begins reading book 4 in a series and needs the entire contents of the 3 preceding books rehashed? This book was made far longer that need be by all the endless repetition of previous events. How many times do we need to hear again about Ayla's childhood events, Creb's favourite ptarmigan recipe ("the fat birds with the feathered feet") And Ayla's instinctive posture-directed control of her horse and speech abnormality which is "not unattractive but unusual" ?
Auel also doesn't lose an opportunity to lecture us, the modern reader, on the dangers of ignoring/plundering/polluting the Great Earth Mother at our peril!

Rowena, the narrator, in her very precise, plummy Queen's English, has expressive reading but sticks to several main voice tones : the lecturing tone she adopts when describing the landscape and natural history, the very repetitive slightly reproving, cautionary schoolma'am tone, the mildly encouraging tone used for describing events, the excited shocked/slightly disapproving tone for when a character shows wonder, and the slightly raised, mildly upset tone that does duty for every other emotional disturbance, from fury to despair. I have had to repeatedly imagine to myself what a character crying hysterically or furiously angry would ACTUALLY sound like.

I was also driven to distraction by the ENDLESS recounting of the exact, detailed habits and appearance of every single animal, every stripe on every horse's leg, every blade of grass and bend in the river, the exact appearance and use of every type of plant, every habitat detail, every migration pattern and ecological niche of every species, every mammoth penis... even every time the 2 travellers piss on the ground! - which, though giving background knowledge, tended to interrupt the flow of the story unecessarily with repetitive and far too lengthy natural history lectures (showing off Auel's extensive research so as not to waste it) that had me fast forwarding 10 minutes at a time.
Even when Ayla falls down a crevasse in the ice and is left precariously clinging to a ledge, we have to immediately endure a long geology lecture about the process of ice cave and moraine formation. OK, I get it! You did shedloads of research, great! That's what makes the story realistic and believable. But I don't need every last detail of it regurgitated every few minutes. I just want to enjoy the bloody STORY!!
This book comes across rather as if the "story" is just a veneer to give an excuse to spout on about Ice Age history.

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enjoyed the whole book

loved it, completely captivating, looking forward to the next book to see what happens next

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excellent as always in this series

excellent I await listening to last book in the Cave series. ...... ....... ....... .......

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good stuff

I enjoyed this story better than the last book lots more action . more interesting

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Repetitive

I’ve been enjoying these books, but they are getting rather repetitive now. If you’re this far into the series, chances are you know about her upbringing, we don’t need reminding all the time. Also, can’t believe I’m saying this, but even the sex is getting in my nerves now! Will finish the series out of curiosity, but I feel like the quality has gone down with each book.

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3 people found this helpful