I fell in love with Clan of the Cave Bear when I was a young teenager (as I'm sure many people did). Brilliantly researched, very interesting hypotheses/explanations, all in all the best Stone Age fiction I've ever read. The drama was realistic and the characters felt human.

The Valley of Horses was also pretty great, although it dragged on in parts, I always felt Ayla's loneliness was palpable. The sex scenes were pretty hot even! And everything once again seemed believable enough, even if Ayla's Mary-Sue-esque character development started to show through.

The Mammoth Hunters was good aside from the central drama of the story (Ranec, Ayla, and Jondalar's love triangle), which was pretty stupid considering it could have been solved through just a LITTLE communication. But I liked the introduction on how Cro-Magnon people may have lived and worked together at the end of the last ice age.

The Plains of Passage is where I noticed a steep drop-off in writing quality. It had some intriguing/exciting moments, but it just dragged on and on about the landscape and plant life and animal life.

The Shelters of Stone... Okay, this is where things get dark. Rambling bullshit, unbelievable characters and circumstances, Ayla is in full-on Mary-Sue mode. What the fuck even happened in this novel I cannot say. Like seriously, the whole thing escapes me. She had her second kid I guess? Got settled amongst Jondalar's people, sorta? Becomes the most amazing woman of all time who everyone loves and admires? And then we get to the final book...

The Land of Painted Caves. The title is intriguing enough, and honestly the sites that Auel refers to are interesting places for a setting, but does nothing with it. Lots of chanting and ceremony, Ayla gets really high at one point, Jondalar gets jealous/distant and once again they have the whole song and dance of absolutely NO communication, Jondalar becomes a bitter asshole, Ayla is apparently off in her own little world. There is no plot. There is no resolution of any of the foreshadowing in the previous books, I mean the BIG QUESTIONS that the earlier books pondered are not even addressed except the whole sex makes babies thing. And who gives a fuck, really? In the end, the pinnacle of Ayla's enlightenment amounts to maybe people should be monogamous if paternity is a thing.

So what happened with the story? I can accept that Auel got bored with the series, but I mean she showed her prowess as a writer, surely she and her editors/publishers could come up with a better idea?! Like why not just address all the unresolved plot threads instead of rambling around the countryside oohing and ahhing over flora and fauna? None of the philosophy was good, the characters were flat, everything lost it's intrigue. How did Auel shit the bed as hard as she did? It has THE lowest rating on Goodreads that I've ever seen and it was a NY Times Bestseller.

Any ideas/commiseration?