Subject: The fourth is definitely my favorite so far!
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Posted on: 2025-09-11 02:57:52 UTC
You may recall Ayla met her boyfriend Jondalar because he had been traveling across the continent. Book three is them spending the winter with a tribe of mammoth-hunters, and book four sees the winter starting to warm, so Jondalar can finally make the trip to his original tribe. Since he's bringing Ayla and her animal friends along, this means we have a traveling party of:
-only two humans
-the only two tame horses on the planet
-the only tame wolf on the planet
Five compa— Sorry, sorry. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed reading about the social dynamics and technology of the Clan/Neanderthal in the first book, and of the mammoth-hunting Cro-Magnon in the third, book four is where prehistoric Europe itself really takes center stage in the narrative. The terrain, the weather, the water bodies, the biomes, the plants, the animals . . . Ayla and Jondalar are literally backpacking across Europe, and there are no roads or sidewalks. Book four is all about the scale of the world early humanity occupied, and how little power they wielded to survive in it. My favorite scene is when the party travels through a forest, which was a rarity in Europe during the Ice Ages. The humans and horses had spent most of their active hours in the wide open plains of the era, so even though the narrative description of this forest was recognizable as an ordinary forest, the feelings it evoked in the characters almost felt like a scene from a modern horror story: the shadows everywhere, the lack of visibility providing cover for potential predators, the subsequent lack of straightforward escape pathways if the horses needed to bolt. It was a really interesting way of communicating to the reader how this familiar landscape from modern times became an unfamiliar and terrifying threat for these early humans unused to the experience of walking between many trees.
But yeah, Ayla and Jondalar are still going at each other every two or three chapters. (Also a pair of mammoths got a turn early on, if I'm thinking of the right book.) That's what I have to power my way through to get to my cool scary forest scenes! For me, it's worth it; I just love imagining all that pristine wilderness, and the simple people and other organisms that strived and grew there and then. And no currency! (From a purely Watsonian perspective, I understand all the . . . "sharing pleasures." They're early modern man, they don't have books or computers or roller blades or tabletop role-playing modules to occupy their time. So once all the food is preserved, the tools and knapped, and the horses are brushed, what are they supposed to do for the rest of the day? I know the series is ultimately prehistory fanfiction, but the frequency of sharing pleasures is likely pretty accurate . . . but that doesn't necessarily mean that the frequency serves much of a narrative use! They just feel like they slow things down, and I would rather read about new tools being developed, and their beliefs in a spirit world, rather than have to sit through what are ultimately pretty similar scenes every time. (Except for the mammoths breeding, that was pretty different, but somehow a lot grodier than with the humans? Blech . . .))
It's funny, I'm usually ravenous to finish a series once I get into it, but I think Earth's Children is the first time I find myself not rushing to get to the last two books, just because I want to keep the feeling of exploring that ancient, untamed continent in my head longer. I still want there to be new things to discover there, and not turn the last page . . .
Anyway, there's a couple of big paragraphs to answer your five-word question. I'm sure you'll never ask me anything again! : )
—doctorlit, of the Clan of the Giant Cave Hamster Cuddlers