Read: 13 July, 2010Leaving the valley, Ayla and Jondalar decide to spend the winter with the mammoth hunters, the Mamutoi. During the long winter, they are estranged and Ayla encounters a strange man with dark skin. The tribe's shaman, Mamut, recognizes power in Ayla and adopts her into his hearth to begin her training.
Ayla has been something of a Mary Sue from the beginning, but it really comes out in this book. She has everything - the ability to hunt, the ability to be a shaman, perfect beauty, great strength, etc. She and Jondalar seem to be single-handedly responsible for inventing far more than seems plausible for just two people.
Ayla and Jondalar refuse to communicate, preferring instead to simply assume what the other must be thinking. As a result, they spend most of the winter angry at each other and wondering if the other still loves them. I find this kind of romance to be incredibly frustrating to read, because the obstacles are purely of their own making.
It was also a little disconcerting when Jondalar rapes Ayla, but we're supposed to continue thinking of him as a good character because he only did it because he really really loves her and it's okay anyway because she wanted it. Somehow, this makes it okay (even though she never consented and he believed, at the time, that he was raping her). Bit of a skewed moral sense there.
The book wasn't totally bad. Learning about the Mamutoi was interesting, and Ayla's interaction with Rydag (a half-Clan half-Other child) was excellent to read.
Other books in the Earth's Children series:
- The Clan of the Cave Bear
- The Valley of Horses
- The Mammoth Hunters
- The Plains of Passage
- The Shelters of Stone
- The Land of Painted Caves
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