Customer Reviews

The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children, Book Two)

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

After reading Clan of the Cave Bear, of course I had to read The Valley of Horses to find out what happened to Ayla.

Although I felt sometimes reminded of "The Island of The Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell, I found the author's descriptions of Ayla's life in the valley interesting and this is the only reason why I give this book four stars.

The story of Jondalar and his brother was often boring and towards the end of the book, I skip-read most of it. I find Mighty Hung Jon one of the most irritating characters I've ever encountered in a book. It would have done the story a lot of good if he hadn't been created as such a (physically) perfect specimAn.

The book as a whole would have profited from more thorough editing, especially the deletion of unnecessary and boring descriptions (e.g. of boat building). 100 pages less would have made a big difference!

All in all, I found it a nice, easy read for a lazy Saturday. The story is mostly predictable. No challenge whatsoever, except (sometimes) of my patience.

An out and out bad book. The dialogue is corny, and the scenes are quite boring especially those with Jondalar and Thonolan. I skipped a lot of pages because I couldn't bear to read through their dumb scenes. It's supposed to be prehistoric times but these two characters talk like they're in 2002 L.A. with the main goal of scoring on women. Pretty [bad]. How this book ever got good reviews from the critics is beyond me. The only interesting scenes are those with Ayla. Clan of the Cave Bear is really good but don't waste your time on this one.

Ayla's character is still strong and interesting. She survives years on her own in a land of beauty and danger. This part of the book is good, but the rest of the book details the travels of Jondalar, a physically perfect specimen with the mind of a 16-year old. His inner struggle with life-long prejudices and worries over social status become boring. And contrasting with the first book, this second book introduces numerous graphic sexual encounters that add nothing to the story. While the "Clan of the Cave Bears" is a wonderful book for teenagers, this one is definitely not. The best way to read it is to skip every other chapter and just follow the story of Ayla's survival.

I just had to say something about Jean Auels books, after reading the many reviews I've found. I'm just now getting into reading historical fiction. Clan of the Cave Bears really kept my attention, as the author did such a wonderful job of describing Ayla's life as she was raised by the Neanderthal Clan. The final actions taken by the Clan to put the death curse upon her were a litle surprising, but of course without Ayla leaving the clan, there would likely only be one book instead of the 5 in the series. The Valley of the Horses gave an awesome account of the adolescent girl teaching herself about survival skills, which she honed in order to stay in the Valley for 3 years alone. Jondular entering the picture was her first opportunity to see the "Others" that were more like her than the clan was. I did not object at all to the sex scenes. After all, sex is a part of almost everyone's daily life, and like it or not, it's how we all got here! To make it sacred and beautiful made it all the more special And it also lent a sharp contrast to the way the Clan treated sexual activity.
The novel certainly held my interest from beginning to end. Auel's descriptions sometimes do get a little lengthy, but she weaves them into the plot with a great deal of skill and knowledge,making the reader feel like she is part of it all. Spellbinding! Couldn't put it down!

Let me be mild.

This book is bad.

There, I've said just about all you need to know, but for the purposes of explanation, I point to our main character, the oh-so-perfect Ayla, demonstrating all the perfect qualities of modern "liberated" woman, but somehow in prehistoric times. Ayla can do everything- as a metaphor, this is great; for any sense of realism, this is ... For all the botanical and geological details the author throws at us, she seems to love to project her own attitudes onto a totally different time scale where none of this makes sense.

Then, when our two perfect protagonists, the powerful, empowered Ayla and the sensitive, caring, Jondalar, meet up, they mate (in excruicating detail)and I'm sure they produce the most perfect little blue-eyed blonde haired little baby who then spawns a new race of supermen.

As for Ayla's "discoveries", I'm waiting for her to create a supercomputer and start programming artificial intelligence to travel to other planets.

This is an enjoyable book that follows Ayla's life after the Clan. Her relationship to animals is enchanting. I enjoyed the progression of Ayla's relationship to her eventual pets and her unique attitude towards them. I found this to be the most compelling aspect of the story.

If you do not enjoy sex scenes you will not enjoy this novel. There are many.

The story of the new hero Jondahar is enjoyable although he is a bit tired at times.

If your a fan of Ayla and you want to know what happened after she was banished from the clan you will enjoy this book. I can see how it wouldn't appeal to someone not familiar with the heroine.

A solid book.

First, I think that Auel is a fantastic writer. The amount of research that she does for her books, and the rumored number of rewrites that she's done as new information surfaces makes the books in this series very good - you know that when she describes how they hunt that that was how it was done. The characters are great; well developed and likeable people. and the storyline is original (or it was at the time it was written, these days everyone is churning out historial fiction).

With that said, let me say that the book reads like Tami Hoag's first thriller "Lucky's Lady", in that it features a lot of sex for no reason at all. It's obvious that much of the sex in the storyline is gratuitous, almost all of it unnecassry to further along the plotline.

Any books that are sanctioned by Cosmo and Playboy should be a red flag for me, but my 76 year old grandmother raved so much about this series that I thought I should give it a shot. She even gave me the last two books as a bonus, so what the heck.

I am beginning to wonder about granny.

It's difficult to say what genre this series falls into. With the amount of painstaking research Auel put into the story, one would expect more of a historical fiction flavor. Perhaps the first book had more of that, but it's clear that once Auel snagged a readership she jumped ship with a schizophrenic flair and landed smack dab in the middle of a grossly explicit and superficial romanticism that I find unnecessary and distasteful. One should not have to provide page after page of explicit sexual descriptors with phrases such as "throbbing manhood" to give a masculine character dimension... As if a man's reproductive organ and the number of eager devotees it finds is the sum total of his worth. The highly revered and well traveled member (and Jondalar's inability to control it) sorely detracts from what could have been a good character in Jondalar. Not only that, but it relegates sexual intimacy (and I use the word intimacy lightly) to the class of lower functions of "relieving" oneself, no matter how nice he is about it. An odious association at best.

The first book had some believable characters (some with integrity and the seminal buds of good, philosophical questions) and interesting plot twists although Auel does tend toward the pedantic in her overly descriptive divulgence of vast knowledge. I was a little disappointed by her tendency to tell the reader about the story rather than leading her readers to experience the plights of the characters. The overall plot and characterizations of the first book, in addition to the clever religious nuances, made the flaws easy to overlook in most instances, but the second book-though it raises a number of wonderful philosophical and anthropological issues that could have added some real depth to the story and characters-is not as palatable. I have no idea whether I will finish this series.

In summary: If you are looking for a great historical fiction series with exciting, intellectually seductive material, try something by Dorothy Dunnett instead. Dunnett tends toward the sexual in many ways (Esp. in the House of Niccolo series), but the differnce in how she presents the material (mostly by seductive implication) places her characters head and shoulders above Auel.

You always expect less than the first when reviewing the sequel but this one was definitly it's equal. Auel continued to take everything that made the first one great but she added a new emotion to this one which made it wonderful. True love. Sure in the first one Ayla had love for her son and love for her family but it wasn't the same. True love seems to be one of those things that very few are privelaged to find and for someone to put the very emotion of it and prepare it on paper I think is incredible. I'm not a romance buff because I tilt more to the historical books but I think anyone who feels like they have something in their life missing can relate to this story. The story line was completly imaginative and amazing. Because of the way she plays her words I can see the story unfolding in my head. I would even go to be dreaming the story becuase her books just captured my mind. With her details and research...definitly left me impressed once again.

Ayla is alone in the valley, And Jondalar is far away. The moment they meet worths the whole story. It's a great read, you are going to be stunned by the writer's spilling knowledge. I loved this book