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Title: Where's the beef?
Review: Somewhere along the way, Jean Auel forgot that a novel is supposed to have a story. The latest installment in the Earth's Children's Series drags along on "Ayla and Jondalar get married and have a baby," surrounded by hundreds of pages of obviously well-researched but often tedious details more suited to a taped narration in a natural history museum.Characterization is often reduced to caricature. Ayla, the prehistoric superwoman, is the first human being to domesticate animals and to discover the fire-starting properties of iron pyrite. Ludicrously, she also becomes the first to realize that pregnancy results from sexual intercourse.In short, this is not a novel; it's a National Geographic special.
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