Releasing at Canberra meetup 24/10/2009

Picked up at the October Canberra BookCrossers get-together at King O'Malley's last Saturday. (Sorry forgot to journal.)

I have just received no.1 in the series as an RABCK, so this was a huge coincidence to turn up on the table.

Picked up at our monthly BookCrossing meet held this time at King O'Malley's Pub in Civic, ACT. Thank you Elddau1 and Hotfrog.
I have read the two previous books in this series and although I thought them overly written and in need of a major edit, I want to read Ayla's continuing story.

The short rundown:
A page turner, as in: Pedantic description – turn page. Tell not show – turn page. Angst and more angst – turn page. Repeat history (telling) again and again and – turn page. Describe all actions in minute detail – turn page. Another long description of “pleasures” – turn pages.

The longer rundown:
All actions ‘must’ be described in mind numbing detail. Ditto descriptions, feelings, etc. AND then repeated later. Does anyone actually read these stories word by word by word, or do they, like me, skim large angst/description ridden sections? And that takes up a lot of the book.
I hear often that authors should show, not tell, and after reading this book, glazing over and page turning past large sections of telling (often repeating what has been told before) I fully appreciate that advice. We did not need to be told about things that were not relevant to the story. An example: Telling how wolves would be selected for pets because they had different features to the norm. Smaller, a different colour, etc. Yes eventually becoming pet dogs of different breeds, but telling this as part of the story was unnecessary, because it is NOT part of this story.
The magical colds are back again. The tribe meets no-one, but they catch colds. Obviously the people in Ayla’s time did not need to catch a virus. Their colds are magic spells brought by evil spirits or something. Someone please tell the author a cold is caused by a virus and they need to catch the virus from another person who has it or carries it. The tribe doesn’t meet anyone else to catch it from.
Ayla and Jondalar not talking about their feelings to each other for months, each thinking the other doesn’t love them. Please spare me; this was unbelievable and even corny, and it’s so overdone.
This is the third book in this series I have read. I really would like to follow Ayla’s journey across prehistoric Europe, but with the extreme overwriting and the author’s habit of telling rather than showing, I’m not sure I can face another of her books. But time will tell. This book is just short of 800 pages, but the story could have been told in 200 pages and been far the better for it.

Returned book to Elddau1 at the BC meetup at Adoretea café, Federation Square, Nicholls, ACT. Thank you for the read.

Back home again.