The last of the Clan of the Cave Bear series, this novel is another example of how a popular and best-selling author goes so far astray because she begins to believe that she is above the need for a decent editor. This book is full of digression, info dump, and character betrayal. I envision that Jean Auel did a ton of research on cave paintings and could not bear to leave a word of it out. But she should have. Her main character, Ayla, visits cave after cave, and she and other medicine women and spiritual leaders talk about the paintings. And talk about them. For pages and pages, and chapters and chapters. Nothing much else happens for a long, long time.
Near the end, perhaps realizing that she doesn't have much of a plot, so she changes Jondalar into a completely different person, one who apparently has changed from a man who desperately loves Ayla into one who has casual sex with a former girlfriend because he gets bored because Ayla is busy looking at paintings in caves. Really, when will he get up in the morning and put his head on backwards? When does Wolf do a jitterbug and the horses fly and we all find out that this is a history of Mars?
Obviously, I have contempt for someone who has written a six-book series that ends with such a weak effort.
My advice is to read the first two books (Clan of the Cave Bear & The Valley of the Horses) and forget the rest. It's all downhill from there.
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