The Mammoth Hunters [Hardcover]

It's repetitive. In the first two books, we learn a lot. In this one, the third in the series, Auel feels like she needs to teach us everything all over again. While this may be helpful to someone who may not have read one of the other books the fact that she makes these references several times in each books is just annoying.

There's too much sex. Honestly. There's only so much a person can handle when forced to read about "her petal-like folks" and his "throbbing manhood". Granted, some of it was for a reason, such as the beginnings of Ayla's "relationship" with Ranec, but much of it is repetative as Auel's constant references to wolverine fur, the knots in Ayla's herb pouches, and Ayla's menstral cycle.

It's boring. When I get it in my head that I want to read through the series, I will either skip this book entirely, or skip about 400 pages in the middle. The Ayla-Jondalar-Ranec love-triangle in the middle of the story serves no purpose in the plotline. Much of the relationship is based on sex, which just ties into my previous point.

This series definitely shows that Auel has a great mind for researching and remembering facts and information, she is obviously quite a scholar. The idea of writing a novel series about this particular period in time is a great idea and some of the minor details of the world she has created are very clever, however, her ability to craft a believable, stimulating story with deep, believable and multifaceted characters, around the information she presents is highly questionable. Honestly, I cannot believe these books were bestsellers.

My main gripes:

First, the whole relational struggle between Jondalar and Ayla is just plain stupid. They are living with the Mamutoi who are supposedly very open and frank, often times asking terribly personal questions to satisfy curiosities, and yet NO ONE in this unbelievably open society was willing to say anything about a misunderstanding that was so blatant??? Totally inconsistent and annoying. The way Auel resolves relational conflict of any kind is extremely evasive. The relational struggles of the Mamutoi before the summer meeting and then during are always resolved by Ayla displaying some sort of superiority to the others and they are simply marveled into quiet idolatry. Voila! Conflict resolved. Not exactly what I would call realistic. And the lion shows up at just the right time. How convenient. Not only that, but the way she eventually resolves the ultimate conflict between Ayla and Jondalar is so anticlimactic that you wonder why she spent 600 pages building up to it. While it's true that individuals outside of a collective are often times more creative and innovative in some ways out of necessity, and quick to break cultural molds that may inspire awe in those more ingrained in a strict social structure, Auel takes this concept to an unbelievable extreme.

Second, the animal behavior is just ridiculous and probably the most fictitious part of the story. Wolves and dogs are as different behaviorally as dogs and cats are. While it *may* be true that dogs evolved from domesticated wolves, Auel takes thousands of years of evolutionary leaps in one fell swoop and suddenly our "Wolf" is wriggling and waging his tail, drooling no doubt, and playing fetch with the children. Ayla must have special powers indeed! What an amazing woman! Granted, not everyone has had the opportunity to raise a wolf pup to adulthood, but I can tell you from experience that Auel's Wolf doesn't act like a wolf. Especially in his interactions with Ayla-particularly when scolded-who is the alpha female.

Lastly...

Pedantry. Ugh. The thing that made this book most unbearable is the fact that Auel underestimates her readers in the extreme. Instead of making a point A and then moving, at a later time in the story, to a logical point B and letting the reader fill in the blanks, she presents all of the background information with the new point, again and again and again to make sure you get it. Every time she introduces a new part of the logical progression she gives you A, B, and then C. Next time, it's A, B, C and then D. No jumping just to D. No, we must first endure paragraph after paragraph (and some times page after page) of the same material, with almost identical phrasings to the previous diatribe, before she gets to the next point. For example (only one of many), we are all acutely aware of the issues with clan women hunting and how Ayla felt about that. It was THE issue in the first book. It was discussed thoroughly in the second book. Why must we hear it again and again and again every time a new hunting situation comes up???? Surely a person of average intelligence can connect the dots! This quality of her storytelling gets really, really, really old after a very short time.