Then the Zelandoni beat them to death in an instance of mob justice. They grab her and Jondalar somehow miraculously goes from in front of the evil band of rapist men to behind them, breaks the leather-thong assisted choke-hold the dude has on Ayla, and saves her from them.

We have foreshadowing multiple times that something bad is going to happen to Ayla, particularly that a band of evil bad rapist men are going to kidnap her and drag her off. This traveling could possibly be interesting. Do you know what Ayla’s Donier tour is? Going around Zelandonii territory to look at MORE CAVES. Instead, we get to jump ahead four years and go on Ayla’s Donier tour. Then we have the second section which mysteriously jumps forward four years in Ayla’s acolyte training because for some reason we couldn’t possibly be interested in that, oh no, there’s nothing interesting about ceremonies or studies.

These people are worshiping in sacred vaginas. Because they’re supposedly the vagina of the Earth Mother. It’s like Auel thought about putting action in, but then decided it’d be way easier to talk more about the badly painted and scratched in horses in these caves that for some reason the Zelandonii think are so incredibly sacred. If the caves had anything particularly unique about them or anything exciting happened in the caves or if we weren’t told repeatedly “here’s a horse painting, here’s a cave lion painting, here are dots that mean something to the Zelandoni but I won’t ever tell you what they mean because where would the fun in that be?” Oh sure, there are hints that something more exciting might happen, but nothing ever does. The first section is entirely Ayla wandering around looking at caves with Zelandoni. So, be warned, this whole post is going to contain spoilers, because there is just no way I can possibly not talk about everything that went horribly awry here.įirst there is the incredibly huge issue of plot.

In this final entry in the Earth’s Children series we witness her transformation from Ayla to Zelandoni shaman of the Zelandonii.Īs a fan of the Earth’s Children series since the age of 15, there is just no way I can review this epically disappointing, long-awaited finale to the series without spoilers. All of Ayla’s unique life situations–from being adopted by the Clan to living in a valley by herself to her long Journey with Jondalar–have been combining to make her into a great, powerful woman.

The painted caves by jean auel