The Land of Painted Caves: A Review

After waiting almost 9 long years for the sixth and final book in the Earth Children's Series to be written and released, it ended up being exactly what I expected it to be.

A complete disappointment.

I doubt that anyone who has read the entire series is surprised by that. Jean Auel's early books are among my all time favorites, with interesting, well-developed characters. But as the series continued, Ms. Auel seemed to lose all interest in the people in her books and began concentrating on long descriptive chapters of the land they were living on, hunting techniques and herbs. Information about Ayla and Jondalar became nothing more than recaps of all the things they has done and invented in previous books.

It only got worse in The Land of Painted Caves.

There are so many things that I wanted to see happen in this final book, and virtually none of them did. We learned nothing about the Clan that she left behind and her son Durc. Despite extensive travels, and discussions in The Shelters of Stone about trading with local Clans, there were no meetings with any members of any Clans at all. There were no additional children for Jondalar and Ayla, and we really spent very little time with Jonayla. There was really no development of any of the characters we have met so far, though many new ones were introduced, pretty much in name only, for no real reason. In fact, on a long list of things I was hoping for, only one of them happened in any way, shape or form, with the appearance of visitors from Ayla and Jondalar's past around page 550.

What we do get is endless repetition of the Mother's Song, endless descriptions of boring caves, endless recaps of things that have happened in previous books, and, strangely, numerous re-tellings of things that happened earlier in this book itself. The small amount of new stuff is largely unsatisfying and, in some cases, the development seems completely out of character for the people involved.

So, should you buy this book? Well, if you own the whole series, it is the final book end for your collection on the book shelf to make a pretty collection. Don't pay full price for it, and don't expect much from reading it though. In fact, if you're looking for a satisfying conclusion to the series, I would recommend checking out some of the fan fiction that is available on the internet. At least it's interesting.