The tale of Ala and Jondalar is well written and well worth it. Their prehistoric surroundings and the struggle for survival adds to the exciteme..Show More »nt of their meeting and romance. From the second chapter where Jondalar is introduced I couldn't wait for them to get together, but when they finally did, toward the end of part 2, human foibles kept their romance on the brink and the story rolling.
You can tell that Jean Auel put a lot of research into her work. It shows in the long, detailed descriptions of flora and fauna. While I appreciate the detail of their daily lives, I often felt that complete descriptions of how to nap flint, dry herbs, and of the wide steppes and the numerous animals found there could have been edited out. More often than not I was wishing I could just skip this section and move back to the people and what they were doing.
As mentioned in previous reviews the narrator is a bit speedy and "flashbacks" are disconcerting in their presentation (as if we suddenly are listening to an old time radio show).
This book has a great story, exciting romance, interesting surroundings and people you can believe really existed. Despite the cons, there are more than enough pros to warrant giving this book a solid four stars.



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This book has alot of fasanating historic information and some fun and entertaining adventures. Unfortunately it is hard to stay focused with all of t..Show More »he explanations of oral sex and giant memberss that only one chosen by the cave lion could fully handle. The charactors become riduiculouslsy stupid in the ways of the heart and communication, and the author uses this to write endlessly of inter-racial sex, general bone-headed main charactors, and rexplaning everything from books 1 & 2. This is where I stop listening to these books. I have an internet full of porn if I want sex, sex, sex. I was really enjoying the first books, but this is just silly.

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I read the first book in this series shortly after it first came out and was captivated by the story and the setting. Auel had an excellent idea for a..Show More » story and did a bang up job of telling it. The next four books in this series I grabbed as soon as they were released. When these books became available as audio books on cassette I bought them and listened to them again and again over the years. Now I have the entire series again through Audible. Good investment in money and great investment in time. Personally I think Sandra Burr does a good job with the series. My only complaint is that it has been 31 years since the first book in the series came out and Auel said at that time it would be a six book series. For anyone that's interested book 6 'Land of Painted Caves' will finally be released in book stores on March 29, 2011. I hope Audible makes it available then as well I've been waiting on for 31 years. Actually the five books of this series that have already been published read more like one exceptionally long book. I know a lot of people don???t care for the detail that Auel goes into but I like it. I will admit that this book does get a little slow at times, but not bad.

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NOTHING NEW happens in this part of the series. I am not exaggerating: Jondalar and Ayla repeat their adventures from the previous books over and over..Show More » again to every person they meet and sometimes even to each other! There is absolutely nothing going in this part that can possibly constitute a new book. There's no purpose to the book: it could never stand on its own to spark interest in those who had not read the previous installments, nor could it possibly hold any interest in those who are familiar with the story. The author should have been ashamed to cheat like this, and the editors never should have agreed to publish it.

And yes, the newly added accent is annoying.

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Repetitious, tedious and quite disappointing. This book is but a weak echo of the previous books. And just like an echo it repeats itself over and ove..Show More »r again. If you buy this be prepared listen to a dreary amount of ???mother songs???, explanations of what happened in previous books and descriptions of cave paintings. I do not mind listening to Auel describing them going about their business and doing everyday things like drinking herb tea and weaving baskets, in fact I quite like it. But really, what is the plot here? Where are we going with this? At the end of the book there is an attempt at a romantic twist that is once again but a weak echo of something that happened in one of the previous books. We briefly meet some cavemen criminals, but it is handled so fast and is such random part of the story that it might as well have been left out. I guess you could say that Aylas education to becoming a shaman is the plot here, but then why is her touring the painted caves the only part of it we really hear about?

There seems to be two narrations available. This one is very well done, but since the narrator strikes me as an elderly British woman I was deathly afraid of the explicit sex scenes I have come to expect from Auel. Thankfully there were fewer than usual.


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