The Plains of Passage: Earth's Children, Book 4

It is not hard to visualize the story as it is read. The characters become old friends. This is the second time reading this series and am enjoying it more tham the first.

this is perhaps the best of the earth's children series, a great road movie as jondalar and ayla move from the edge of the ice-caps down to the danube delta on the black sea and the follow the river all the way back to the dordogne. the pleasure is of course meeting the various peoples along the way, at least one of which are very strange, a kind of feminism gone bad, in which wolf is finally allowed to do his wolf thing. of course, some of the pleasure is the reversal of the trip jondalar and his brother took in the valley of horses. once again, auel's description of landscape, flora and fauna is the best part of the book, showing us that, despite the fictional story and ayla's super-woman abilities and the too-frequent sex, scenes i automatically skip over when rereading the books, this six-volume series is probably still the best description of our ancestors 30,000 years ago and the more-than-abundant world they inhabited. of course, the racist flathead issue remains at center. here recent research seems to undercut auel's story. it doesn't seem likely, tho possible, that the cro-magnons killed off the neanderthals, albeit their superior culture might very well have led to neanderthal extinction. recent genetic research seems to show that there was very little overlap, much less interaction, between the two types of homonids, tho the evidence is still being studied. it is well known how 19th-century french anthropology and archeology postulated a very germanophile notion of the cro-magnons as tall, blond, blue-eyed and the opposite of the far more simian neanderthals, one of the ideological notions that fed into the so-called scientific racism that became so virulent in the 20th century. auel uses this conflict to provide background for her story and ayla is of course as much neanderthal as anyone could be, given her unique story. but one of the main problems of prehistoric representation is the extrapolation of our own violence back into earlier times. we recognize that there were 'times of trouble' in prehistory, conflicts and destructions that arose between different ethnic groups, but the sort of genocide postulated in some quarters as the reason for the abrupt disappearance of the very successful neanderthal species in europe and the middle east after 200,000 years or more is surely more our problem than theirs. too many visions of the distant past, like quest for fire or 10,000 BC, envision a kind of southern california gangland setting with continual strife and murder. auel's great accomplishment is to show us, that while there was trouble at times, it was mostly intramural and didn't involve tribal warfare for the most part. and, while she is surely a kind of feminist, she is by no means rigid; her rather reasonable vision of the great mother goddess is temperate and quite possibly true as far as it goes, even if it's most famous advocate, robert graves, has been widely criticized over the years for fudging his scholarship and drawing overly quick conclusions from surmises that may or may not be true.i have been rereading her books recently after buying the final one and wanting to reread the others. so far i have reread them all except the clan of the cave bear but will perhaps get to it in time. finally, if nothing else, auel's vision of neanderthals is wholly absorbing. the idea of total memories is fascinating, if unprovable; the winter-counts of native americans that go back to athapascans when they hadn't yet left siberia to cross over into alaska seem similar, as does the kind of dream-time of the australian aborigines.in any case, auel is well worth reading, or even, in my case, rereading. and this travelogue, along with valley of horses, is perhaps one of the best of the lot.

Ayla struggles to be accepted and in the end realizes that her own acceptance come from within. Great story and Ms. Auel brought to life a tme before records. I was there with Ayla and Jondalar. Thank you!!!

Yikes, this book was hard to get through. Super-Cro Magnons Ayla and Jondalar leave their happy situation with the Mamutoi in quest of Jondalar's people, the Zelandoni, which involves traveling all across prehistoric Europe. If you don't understand what I just said, you are obviously not familiar with the series at all and should stop reading this review, since it is about book 5 in a long long series. If an epic journey across ice-age Europe sounds like an interesting novel, look elsewhere or write your own. This one is pretty terrible. Anyways, continuing with the synopsis, since Ayla and Jondalar are super, they have tamed horses, can heal all wounds with plants, and make great time. This is really wonderful since they need to cross a glacier before spring! If they don't get there in time, they might have to resort to..... staying in a comfortable cave until next winter with friends. And Jondalar Really Wants to Get Home!Reaching the glacier is the main source of tension of the novel, coupled with the fact that people might not welcome Ayla and Jondalar with their flathead-friendly ways and their scary abilities to ride horses and tame animals. Flatheads, of course, are Neanderthals - the people who raised Ayla when she was abandoned as a child. Also, what if Ayla gets pregnant? Oh wait, of course she knows what plants to eat to avoid pregnancy. Phew! Oh no - now Jondalar thinks he is not man enough to make a baby with Ayla, but she can't tell him about her medicine because of reasons.The problem with the book, besides contrived and stupid drama that occasionally bubbles up btw the happy couple, is that it is slow slow slow. They travel, observe animals and the landscape, they meet people, people realize how awesome Ayla is and want to adopt her and Jondalar. The flathead discrimination always dissolves before it can be an issue. Ayla and Jondalar never stay, though Ayla really wants to stop travelling. Everybody reacts the same way to A+J and they tell their story so often it is like Groundhog Day turned into a novel. Same Same Same. Un-sexy sex is had many times. The plants are described many times. Can you possibly imagine how many uses their are for cattails? Have you ever wanted to make a parfleche out of rawhide? Do you really want to read in excruciating detail how to bang flint rocks together to make tools? Perhaps you are interested in the ecological conditions necessary to create Loess Steppes? If you read the earlier books, you already know, but will get to read over and over again here.There is one delightfully ridiculous interlude, involving a woman-ran group of prehistoric people. This group is imprisoning men, treating them terribly, and keeping women far away from the imprisoned men. Auel's prehistoric people for some reason all don't realize babies are made via the act of sex. They all believe it is due to swallowing spirits. Of course, super-Ayla is starting to put two-and-two together on this one, but no one else seems to have even thought of it. This crazy tribe decides to have an all-female society by isolating the men from the women. Thus only woman-spirits will be floating around to be swallowed, and only girl babies will be born. Of course Ayla, with a little help from Jondalar, solves all of their problems before rushing away to get to that glacier, but this is a nice divergence from the main story.Sadly this book is a masterwork of plot structure compared to the next TWO novels in this series. I recommend readers of this series stop here and read no further. The first book is charming, but the series does not live up to the beginning.

Marvelous book. I have enjoyed them all. Ayla and jondalar finally finish their journey to jondalars home. Highly recommended. Ready to begin the next in the series. I’m surprised at how much I have learned about flowers herbs and customs of the Stone Age people.

The first three books in this series are solid, excellent books. Jean Auel is a good writer but a much better researcher, and now that it's come to the 4th installment of the series, it really shows. The hunting, toolmaking, and survival skills are all fascinating and well-described, you can tell Auel really tried some of things out for herself, but the plot, unfortunately, isn't as strong.It's one thing to have put in some backstory from the previous novels in a series to reacquaint people with the setting and characters, but the entire plot of this book feels like nothing BUT backstory (that is if Ayla and Jondalar aren't having Pleasures all over the continent). It's pretty much just the two main characters retelling their stories over and over again, even to each other. I think the only people who might fully enjoy it are those who haven't read the first 3 books in the series, which kind of defeats the purpose. But it is tolerable enough if you can skim through the story to get to the rest of it, which is why I gave it 3 stars.

This review is for the seller.Excellent book condition, wrapped and sent in good packaging. Really appreciate.This is my 3rd edition of this book, i love the entire series so much, i have read ut multiple times. The plains of passage is my favorite due to the descriptions of vivid imagery.

livre de poche anglophone (couverture souple, papier recyclé) ancien (1987/1984) quatrième tome de la série "Les enfanfs de la terre" correspondant aux titres en français "Le grand voyage" et "Le retour d'Ayla"dans cette suite de "Les chasseurs de mammouths", l'auteur nous fait suivre nos deux héros dans leur traversée du continent européen depuis le territoire des Mamutoi corresondant à l'Ukraine actuelle puis la remontée de la grande rivière mère (le Danube) depuis son delta jusqu'à sa source, le passage du glacier joignant les Alpes et les Vosges, avant de rejoindre la tribu de Jondalar au niveau du Périgord actuel ;cette épopée préhistorique passionnante très bien documentée sur le plan scientifique ravira tous les amateurs de préhistoire sans rebuter les spécialistes:l'anglais de Jean Auel est de type américain parfaitement accessible avec un dictionnaire papier ou en ligne pour vérifier certains points:cette ancienne édition poche Coronet de qualité perfectible (les pages ont tendance à se détacher avec le temps) suffira largement en attendant de trouver une édition reliée plus solide;si ce commentaire vous a paru utile, merci de cliquer ci-dessous:

Interesante saga lo único es que se repite parte de la historia de los personajes y se hace un poco pesado. Supongo que la autora decide hacer algo así por si el lector no ha leído los tres anteriores. Por tanto, el que más me gustó fue el primero.

It's an excellent travel book, in that, it is about travel as well. Maybe a bit wordy compared to get previous offerings, but very rich and vivid. A good read.

The whole series of Earth's Children books are simply unputdownable. There is never a slow moment as every page is action packed. One piece of advice - buy all the books and start at the beginning of Ayla's incredible story - you will be blown away.