The Land of Painted Caves

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Ayla struggles to find a balance between her duties as a new mother and her training to become a Zelandoni -- one of the Ninth Cave community's spiritual leaders and healers.

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tedious submitted by unknown on April 24, 2011, 9:09am This is the last of the fantastic series - did the author run out of ideas? It was tedious reading.

Enjoyable submitted by alarkin on July 6, 2011, 3:59pm I had a hard time putting it down - the descriptions of how the characters live and the environment they live in is fascinating, and I thought it was a nice wrap up to this series.

Great submitted by ldupuis44 on July 19, 2011, 7:09am I love this series so very much. I love the material and the characters are very endearing.

OK submitted by chrisp35aa on June 21, 2012, 10:25pm Disappointing, especially since this is the last book in a great series.

Lackluster Conclusion submitted by semartin on August 2, 2013, 9:51pm I was a huge fan of the rest of this series, and was quite excited to see how it would end. However, I found myself largely disappointed in this installment. The book is broken into three parts. The first isn't bad and has part of the feel of the other books. While reading the second part, I found myself skimming a lot, and was largely disinterested in the events that were occurring. The third part mostly reads like parts of The Mammoth Hunters set in the Zelandonii territory, but wasn't quite as exciting. It is worth reading to finish the series, but as it is long, and very tedious I wouldn't put anything down to read this first.

More of what the rest of the series offered submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on August 26, 2013, 1:11pm If you liked the other books in this series, then I think you'll like this one.

My problem is that my expectations and preferences when I was in seventh grade and started reading the Earth's Children series are quite different from my expectations and style at age 40.

As always, the author paints an incredibly detailed picture of the world and culture at the time of the early homo sapiens. In fact, she does so at innnnnncredible length. Be prepared to read a couple hundred pages (in this one) of detailed descriptions of each and every animal painted in those "painted caves" of the title. You can tell she does her research, and in what other series will you learn the ins and outs of flint knapping?

But what I really mind is the in-your-face leave-nothing-for-the-reader storytelling. There was one particular passage when the author started a paragraph with "The First felt this way...." and the end of the SAME paragraph finished with "Ayla could tell from X, Y, and Z that the First must be feeling...." Rather than letting the actions of the characters inform the reader, the author feels she must tell us everything.

As I said, my expectations have grown since when I started reading the series. I'm not sad I read it, just because after five 700 page books I feel invested in the storyline, but I'm also not sorry I'm done

A little disappointing submitted by gjwilson on July 24, 2018, 10:36pm I felt the characters didn't quite hold up to their personalities from the previous books in the series.