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

pink_siamese January 3 2011, 20:07:54 UTC

The clearest thing I remember about these books is how Jondalar had this huge dick, and that it was a source of great sadness to him because while he was humping his way across the Stone Age landscape he had yet to fall in love. In his case, a large part of falling in love meant finding a beautiful fur-clad lady with---wait for it---a deep enough vagina to accommodate his massive manly manhood.

Then he meets Ayla, who is not only stunningly beautiful (but doesn't know it, so, you know, she's not uppity or anything, the way the beautiful women in his past have been) and good-natured (in Auel-land, the cro-magnon folks were goddess worshipers and female centric; the Clan was male-centric, with the pleasant side effect of conditioning Ayla into a soothing sort of subservience) and intelligent, but---lo! Her womanhood is deeper than that of other women!

I read these books in junior high, and even back then I was eye-rolling.

harumi January 3 2011, 20:17:21 UTC

I love that word. Lo. So simple, and yet so packed filled over-the-top drama.

pink_siamese January 3 2011, 22:10:37 UTC

It gets the job done. ;-)

linda_lupos January 3 2011, 22:02:56 UTC

Don't forget the healing sex, or Ayla being a virgin-but-without-a-virgin's-body, to even better accomodate Little Jondalar.

... yeah. First book was the best.

Thread 19

spessartine January 3 2011, 21:06:33 UTC

Oh god, these books. I found the research kind of fascinating (and useful in case of zombie apocalypse), so I didn't mind that so much - even if it really didn't belong in the books at ALL. But the sex scenes were what got to me. I felt like I was skipping ten of every twenty pages while she got it on with Jondalar of the Massive Manhood.

captaintwinings January 4 2011, 00:46:08 UTC

I liked the research, too. I feel it really added to my survival skills, and I would much rather read prehistoric hunting tips than the saga of Ayla Sue, Savior of Man, Loved by All, Deep of Vagina and Turgid of Breast.

That's why I had to stop reading the books. If I had to read the phrase "turgid breasts" one more time, I was afraid I might hurt myself. Well, that and I was offended by the scene in which Ayla saves the men from marauding prehistoric lesbians.

gehayi January 4 2011, 21:05:23 UTC

TURGID: -adjective
1. swollen; distended; tumid.
2. inflated, overblown, or pompous; bombastic.

I know that Auel is talking about Ayla's breasts being large and/or filled with milk...but I just love the idea of them being pompous.

captaintwinings January 5 2011, 00:05:55 UTC

Ha! They're blowhards.

I always associate "turgid" with a stream overflowing its banks with the first snowmelt of spring. So I thought of every one of those tedious sex scenes as very cold and wet.

Thread 7