I first got a copy of one of the books in Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series as a
free gift for spending more than $50 at the bookstore. It hung around my room for awhile and finally
I was bored and decided to try it. To my
surprise, I ended up really enjoying it.
For those who haven’t read it, it’s set in Europe during the last
Neolithic Ice Age, about 20,000 to 25,000 years ago.
It was the fourth book in the series and I hurried out and
grabbed the first three to find out the backstory. I enjoyed them, too. One of my favourite things was that Auel had
created what felt like an alien culture.
This wasn’t thinly disguised modern cultures superimposed on the
past. The culture of the Neanderthals
felt like something real but totally removed from ours. Even the Homo Sapien Neolithic cultures had
that alien feel, although there were some familiar elements. It made sense to me. Cultures change dramatically over time and
this was before several major revolutions in our thinking, so it should be
alien to us.
I also enjoyed the bits of archaeological reference that
were thrown in, although I thought the descriptions of the plant and animal
life of the Ice Age went on far too long.
But, hey, I’ve plowed through Tolkien’s descriptions to get to the great
story behind them and I was willing to do the same again. I was impressed by the level of research Auel
must have done. The background was very
realistic.
Cue the twelve year wait for the next book.
It wasn’t the first time an author has stopped a series I
was really into. I accept that sometimes
the story just isn’t coming for you or you get other interests. As a reader, I find it frustrating and wish
authors who don’t want to continue their series would allow other authors to
give it a shot. But that’s a separate
issue.
To my surprise, eventually the fifth book in Earth’s
Children did come out. I got it as soon
as I realized and settled down to read.
Only to be somewhat disappointed.
The descriptions of plant and animal life were longer than
ever, and no longer justified by the plot.
In the fourth book, they were travelling across Europe, so describing
the changing environment made sense. For
the first three, the descriptions were usually tied into something the
characters were doing: hunting or looking for herbs and foods. Now they just seemed to stretch on
forever. However the plot was still
interesting and Auel seemed to be setting up for something big. Something that never quite arrived but there
was a note promising a conclusion in the next book.
Ten years later . . .
The conclusion.
Excitement mixed with trepidation.
Would it be good?
Sadly, not so much.
Auel’s Neolithic culture started to sound exactly like
modern day Western culture. The plot was
weak and mostly concentrated in the last hundred pages or so (in a nearly 700
page book). Most of the conflicts were
the exact same conflicts from earlier without any development from the
characters. At this point, I’m going to
go into specifics so if you don’t want to know, don’t read further.
Ayla, her heroine, discovers that men are equally
responsible for conception. This is a
huge revelation and I have no doubt it revolutionized the Neolithic world. However, I doubt it changed things literally
overnight as the book suggests. But my
major frustration was when she has her hero, Jondalar, engage in extra-marital
sex with another woman and the community as a whole conspires to keep Ayla from
finding out. Now, I didn’t think the
affair was particularly believable but that wasn’t what annoyed me. In the culture Auel created, fidelity is not
important. Frankly, without
understanding the male role in procreation, it likely wasn’t considered
important. People have sex with people
other than their mates and there are even community festivals which are
designed to encourage this. It’s not
considered a big deal.
So why is everyone keeping it a secret?
If it’s not a big deal, then there should have been no
problem bringing it up. In fact, it
likely would have been brought up to avoid surprising Ayla. If it is considered to be a problem, then why
would the community be set up to sanction and encourage it? It’s the lack of consistency that bothers
me. The attitude of the community is
closer to the modern (or at least fifty years ago) view where male infidelity is not encouraged
but considered almost inevitable and it is lack of discretion which is the
greater sin. This makes no sense in a
culture where women are venerated as the Image of God and tend to hold the
greater social power. If anything, it
should be the other way around. If Ayla
had an affair, I could see the community overlooking it to avoid upsetting her
mate. If it was going to be a single-sex
privilege, it makes much more sense for it to be a woman’s prerogative, given
the culture Auel created. After all,
the idea of men as more sexually excited is something that’s only existed in
the last two hundred years. Before that,
women were the more carnal sex for almost all of recorded history.
As you’ve probably guessed, I was disappointed. I suspect there was just too great a gap
between the first and final books.
Perspectives change, ideas change, values change and I can see how it
would be difficult for an author to recapture their original voice. I’m a little sad that the characters were
given such a rushed ending after so much careful preparation. I would certainly recommend the first three
books to anyone but the second three, not so much.
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