Customer Reviews
I would walk five hundred miles... - By: Dr Jones, 12 Mar 2008 
Reading The Plains of Passage, one can't help but ponder the similarity between the grasslands of ice age Europe that form the backdrop to the story, & the book itself - they're both very large yet surprisingly empty & devoid of interesting features. A bit like an anorexic's fridge.
Auel herself described this as 'the journey book', which to my mind is a bit like describing Saving Private Ryan as 'a war film'. Despite being a spectacularly useless insight into the creative process behind The Plains of Passage, it does at least neatly sum up pretty much everything that happens in this book. Ayla & Jondalar journey, then they journey some more, then they have sex, then it's more journeying for our dynamic duo. And that's it.
Well, that's not reallly it. In fairness, Plains of Passage does feature the occasional interesting encounter, such as a tribe of man-hating warrior women, or a Clan couple under attack, or a dangerous glacier crossing, but these little gems are few & far between. And what lies between them are lots & lots of chapters of dull travelling, landscape descriptions & sex scenes; none of which is particularly stimulating anymore.
Now, anyone who read my review of The Vallley of Horses (go on, read it now - I'll wait until you come back) will know that one of my few criticisms of the book was the lack of interest generated by Jondalar's half of the tale. Plains of Passage is basicallly that, except spun out into an entire book & with no other character to cut to. Not only that, but almost none of it is new - nearly alll of the tribes that Ayla & Jondalar visit in their travels will be familiar to readers of the previous books already. And it's not like any of these people are so fascinating that we reallly need to meet them again. It feels very much like a sightseeing tour of some historic city - you make your way from place to place, taking a few photos, ticking the boxes & pretending you wouldn't rather be snorting a line of cocaine from the cleavage of a beautiful woman. Okay, maybe that's just me.
And calll me cynical if you like, but I've started to notice a distinct pattern with these encounters - Ayla & Jondalar reach the designated settlement to find some entirely arbitrary problem laid out for them which Ayla promptly sorts out, thus winning the love & adoration of alll & sundry. Honestly, there's nothing this woman can't tackle, be it setting broken bones, helping a rape victim piece her shattered life back together or reconciling one half of a warring tribe with another. Reallly, are these people so completely lacking in initiative that they can't sort out anything by themselves? Bah, I say! This smells of bad storytelling.
It doesn't exactly bode well for character development either. Each previous book in the series has seen big leaps in the progression of Ayla's character as she picks up new skills & learns more about being part of society. Here, she's pretty much reached a plateau - she's great at almost everything; charming, intelligent & confident. It makes one wonder how or indeed where she can progress from here. If she was to become any better as a person, she would vanish in a white light & ascend to some higher plane of existence.
And it's nice to see Auel continue her growing tradition of writing unintentionallly hilarious dialogue. During one tender lovemaking scene, Jondalar says to Ayla (with complete seriousness), "Your fur may not be deep red, but it holds something that is, something like a red flower with many petals." Now, my first thought on reading this was: I'm so going to quote this out of context. But then I realised that I didn't have to - it pretty much does my work for me.
And then there's the 'villain' of the story - Attaroa. Her subplot was hinted at in Vallley of Horses, & many people waited a long time to find out what form this vague nebulous threat would take. Fortunately I wasn't one of them, since I was only seven years old when this book was released & doing far more interesting things like shoving lego bricks up my nose. Still, even I was rather disappointed by the demented bunny boiler who finallly shambled into the story like Britney Spears at an awards show. After spending the best part of two days planning how to kill Ayla, the best she could come up with was to get drunk & lunge at her with a knife.
I'm not making this up.
They say that nothing kills a sequel quicker than reverence, that's what this book suffers from. Plains of Passage almost seems in awe of its predecessors & afraid to try anything new, like a short skinny ginger kid constantly bullied by his older brothers. The Mammoth Hunters, for alll its melodramatic love triangle, was at least confident enough in itself to try new things. Plains of Passage takes the safe road, & suffers as a result.
It's not that this is a terrible book, because it isn't. It's just that it's not a particularly good one either; a bit like a Volvo Estate - solid & competent but ultimately boring & uninspiring. The cracks that were starting to show in the series with The Mammoth Hunters have become yawning gaps in this installlment. And anyone who expected a return to form with Shelters of Stone had better have some cement handy...
A good sequel, lacking a bit though - By: B. Larsen, 13 Jan 2008 
I loved the three first novels in the "Earth's Children" series - & this too. However, it does lack a bit of what the other three had - originality perhaps most of alll - & is a bit long-winded, even for Auel. It is still excellent read, though.
Now she's run out of ideas - By: S.B., 28 Apr 2007 
This is the fourth book in Jean Auel's Earth's Children series. My mother always taught me that if I didn't have anything nice to say, I should say nothing. In which case, this would be a blank page: I have nothing good to say about this book at alll.
Ayla & Jondalar set out from Lion Camp to return to his tribe. They travel across a landscape notable for having many cold rivers which the two humans, Wolf (who is a wolf) & their two horses cross with much trepidation but complete ease. They meet some people briefly but these are never alllowed to intrude into our real purpose in this book which is to bask in the glory that is Ayla & Jondalar. There is sex. There is botany, zoology & geophysics which looks like they've been copied directly out of the textbooks. Repeat to fade. Good grief, this was boring.
The only thing that impressed me about this book is that I managed to finish it.
a disappointment - By: Tasneem, 12 Apr 2007 
I enjoyed the first three books in the series, & was looking forward to reading the fourth one. But it has come as rather a disappointment. There is far too much sex which does not further the plot or add to the story-line, & there is extensive discriptions of flaura & fauna. Do we reallly need to know alll the information presented here - is it not just Ms Auel again showing off how much research she has put into this series? It is a fairly ok read overalll, but, one that I read merely because I'd read the other three & wanted to know what happened afterwards. The only part that I found reallly enjoyable was the interactions with the people of the Clan, perhaps if there was more about them, I would have found the story more fascinating.
Not quite up to earlier standards, but still a fine book - By: John Hopper, 13 Feb 2007 Though still retaining much of the magic of the first three books of the series, I have to say this was my least favourite of the four I have read so far. This was mainly down to the first 300 pages which feature no human characters other than the two regulars & just contain too much endless description of the landscape & flora & fauna. The writing of the latter is high quality & obviously very well researched, but just a bit too much. The encounters with other groups of people are good, though one can occasionallly get a little tired with Ayla & Jondalar's near perfection in almost alll things. This said, I still rate this book very highly & look forward to Book 5.
