A review by chirson
The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel
3.0
My wife does not understand my enjoyment of these books. I know they're objectively bad in some ways - this volume in particular is both not greatly paced and underedited, with multiple instances of annoying repetitions. Jondalar's asshole behaviour continues - he's frequently immature and his attitude towards Ayla is annoying but his relative disregard for the horses and Wolf is at times horrible. Then there's the "evil misandrist woman" storyline, and the fact that even as Jondalar and Ayla cross the vast plains of relatively sparsely Cro-Magnon-inhabited Europe, they somehow manage to run into someone they know/know of, by accident, not once but twice in the story.
But I really like how unapologetically this is really a book about two things - the biodiversity of flora and fauna of the period (and the way in which humans interacted with them) and Ayla's emotional journey. Ayla may be written with superhuman qualities, but there is something compelling in the fantasy of her competence and bravery. I re-read this to de-stress from remote work pressures and the like, and it was just right for that.
(I really loved how every human settlement that met Wolf immediately wanted to keep Wolf forever and wondered about domesticating more wolves because of how good he was with children.)
(I did not love Jondalar. Ayla deserves better.)
(A lot of rape storylines in this volume again, reader beware. And a story about violence against a possibly queer child; there are probably different ways to read it, but there's a dead gender non-conforming character.)
But I really like how unapologetically this is really a book about two things - the biodiversity of flora and fauna of the period (and the way in which humans interacted with them) and Ayla's emotional journey. Ayla may be written with superhuman qualities, but there is something compelling in the fantasy of her competence and bravery. I re-read this to de-stress from remote work pressures and the like, and it was just right for that.
(I really loved how every human settlement that met Wolf immediately wanted to keep Wolf forever and wondered about domesticating more wolves because of how good he was with children.)
(I did not love Jondalar. Ayla deserves better.)
(A lot of rape storylines in this volume again, reader beware. And a story about violence against a possibly queer child; there are probably different ways to read it, but there's a dead gender non-conforming character.)