Comments | bookfails: Good Plot, Bad Author: Jean M. Auel

caitak in bookfails

Good Plot, Bad Author: Jean M. Auel

Jan 03, 2011 18:28

When I was about eighteen and riding high on a wave of Tolkien epic fantasy type books, my Grampy lent me his copy of The Clan of the Cave Bear. I really enjoyed it, but never got very far with the sequel (The Valley of the Horses ( Read more... )

good plot gone wrong, theme days, like watching paint dry, sex scene failure

Comments 36

daystarsearcher January 3 2011, 18:41:50 UTC

You've put your finger exactly on the problem. Those books just slowly lost more and more plot as time went on, until it was just alternating sex scenes and research.

I'm still amused that our high school library carried these with no protest from anyone, while books like "Harry Potter" were controversial.

tatjna January 3 2011, 18:53:47 UTC

Never mind the 'Ayla becomes a superhero and invents everything ever while saving the world' theme. I did a bookfail about The Plains of Passage a while ago because wtf? Could have been so good, instead was ridiculous.

chaosmyth January 3 2011, 19:36:24 UTC

AMEN. This aspect and the 2378463242648273 superfluous sex scenes is what bothered me the most about the last books of the series :|

ryl January 3 2011, 23:36:00 UTC

I got real tired of the Ayla Invents Everything* trope very quickly. I could almost forgive it in Valley of Horses because she was on her own and had to find a way to survive, but even then it started to get ridiculous.

*Except the spear thrower. She graciously allowed Jondalar to invent that in between THE EXACT SAME SEX SCENE EVERY OTHER CHAPTER.

natureboy87 January 4 2011, 19:40:55 UTC

Didn't you hear? Ayla is the Forest Gump of prehistory!

Thread 6

anghara January 3 2011, 19:41:50 UTC

I once described the books to a friend, in a bookstore, as "sex and shopping in the Stone Age". A bookstore employee happened to overhear this, choked back a fit of the giggles, and then asked if he could use that to tag those shelves...

yukinoomoni January 3 2011, 19:51:27 UTC

I found that the series dragged on, and the time spent going on and on (and on and on) about historical facts and fictions got really boring after a while. It would have been better to just show, not tell, all o that. While the series had some truly interesting moments, as a whole it was a bit disappointing, especially with Ayla and her "never-do-wrong" disposition, as well as Jondalar's magical healing dick.

dis_inclined January 3 2011, 19:53:16 UTC

I could not agree more. The idea is a good one, and the first book is enjoyable. As others have mentioned in their comments, though, what bothered me more was that Ayla appears to invent EVERYTHING THAT MODERN MAN CAN DO. She can heal anything, speak to animals, make fire, ride horses, blah blah blah. And of course, the "pleasures" on every other page (or for twenty or so pages at a time) did get very annoying after five books... I can't imagine how she's managed to write another book in the series (out very soon I believe).