Idealistic but highly enjoyable

The story sometimes gets a little too like a Disney film. But the characters are on the whole believable and engaging.

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what is a Great Audiobook?

It has to be a a great story! Read by Great narrator who can inflect the right nuances into the story. Aand it has to seemthe right length. Best bit is when Woolf catches Joondaloor.
All these are present in this book

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inventions and customs

Jean Auel's knowledge of the challenges facing people in the ice age so believable it's almost non- fiction

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Amazing book!

I love all the Earths Children series...was hooked since the 1st page of Clan of the Cave Bear...but this has always been my favourite! I'll tell uou how good this book is...I must have read and listened to it over 30 times and I still have an emotional response to it. I laugh every time, shout at various characters and ball my eyes out!

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not as good as first or second but still very good

There were moments when I was thinking "how much more sophisticated will this cavemen get?" Story is definitely less interesting than first two parts or perhaps just different and less to my liking. Performance still very good.

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Engaging

Interesting take on the development of Europeans. I have followed the series from the first book. Beautiful reading. The depiction of Raneke is good without the usual racist undertones. However the notion of blonde hair and blue eyes signifying super intelligence and beauty is hard to ignore.

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Half way through the series

Not my favourite of the series because Jondalar is such an idiot in it. Comes to his senses in the end though :)

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getting repetitive

So, this has some good points to it but I got rather bored of the filler material; repeating things learnt in book 1 & 2 then the sex scenes that are increasing in quantity to the point of "here we go again" . It started to feel like the quality story telling was being padded too much with both repetition of information & sex. If you want a romance/sex book great but it started to grate as did the obvious ending that was coming.
Otherwise, it was a good story.
Forewarning: I actually returned book 4, the first time I've ever done so having read others in the same series, I listened to 8 hours of absolutely nothing happening other than constant sex & repetition & others I noticed mentioned similar issues of frustration with padding. Its such a shame that Jean M. Auel got lazy in her writing from what was an amazing series.

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An intersting reconstruction of pre-historic times

What made the experience of listening to The Mammoth Hunters the most enjoyable?

I have read the two previous stories in this series and found the author's attempt to describe the life of cro-magnon pre-humans most interesting. While much of the material discussed has been drawn from (probably) controversial findings, all the cultural aspects of the story has to have been extrapolated from other cultures. Whether or not cro-magnon were capable of such sophisticated interpretations of their environment and self knowledge is surely conjectural, but they are combined in an interesting story involving a gifted girl who undertakes a saga of a journey.

What other book might you compare The Mammoth Hunters to, and why?

The other books in this series. I have not read/listened to other stories of this genre.

What about Rowena Cooper’s performance did you like?

Cooper does a nice job of voicing the various major characters. As the character list is very large, there is obviously little or no difference between some of the minor players, but the major ones are well differentiated and believable.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No, just admiration at the author's imagination and her ability to describe what are technical points in the story with interesting description.

Any additional comments?

I'm certainly going to complete this series. The heroine's, like others', saga will be difficult and interesting.

What I did find detracting was the very graphic sex scenes. The descriptions given are tantamount to a sex manual. This degree of explicitness adds nothing to the story, and to my mind quite distracting from the otherwise quite excellent main theme. Luckily, I am using a decent audiobook player that allows me to jump forward over these (many) scenes - hearing just two was more than enough.

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Mamut

the love story drives me crazy and are being drawn out far to long. But overall is a great book.

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