Book Review: Jean M. Auel's The Land of Painted Caves

I was so thrilled so see this book coming out this year and was eager to read it. Although it is quite lengthy it is a fairly quick read due to a fast pace and easily understandable sentence structure. The last in the series, I was a bit disappointed it seemed as though that author sort of ran out of steam. Much of the first part of the book I found difficult to plod through as the exploration and description of cave after cave I found not exciting enough to maintain my attention. After the first part the book is significantly more interesting. Unfortunately the author continued to focus heavily on her main character and many of the other characters that seemed interesting suffered from lack of character development. I would loved to see the main character's daughter come into her own as a character and source of plot development, but the daughter often seemed to be an after thought. The main character's impressive list of accomplishments became increasingly difficult to believe. I think it would have been sufficient for the character to be present for many of these historical events as an observer rather than an active and often key participant. This final book was not quite as good as the first few in this series but that may be in part now that I am old enough to notice the repetitive plot elements and be bored by them.