Author: Bonnye Matthews
Publisher: Publication Consultants
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
This is a Clan of the Cave Bear kind of a story, about primitive people in prehistory, based almost entirely on speculation. It sounded interesting initially, although I've actually never read any such stories before, but unfortunately I started having grave doubts about it right from page one (or in this case, page nine). The writing was awful, and offered nothing to hold my interest. Worse than this, nothing noteworthy happened in the entire first chapter, which I had to struggle to finish. The dialog was just ridiculous.
As I indicated, the page numbering is non-standard in this novel, with the cover actually being labeled as page one, so the novel itself doesn't begin until page nine, and the first ten pages or so consists of a huge info-dump with character after character not so much introduced as listed. It was way too much. There was no reason to get interested in any character because I had no chance to get to know them before the next character in line - quite literally in this case - was dumped on me.
This info-dump relates that the tribe, known as the People, was migrating from the threat of an erupting volcano towards a large cave where they figured they would be safe. The author seems unduly obsessed with describing every single person's hair. I have no idea why, because it contributed nothing to the story. The only real point of interest is that one of the tribe members (not Ki'ti) is a girl who looks unlike the others. Clearly the tribe is supposed to be Neanderthal, whereas she's supposedly Cro-Magnon, but how she came to be with them isn’t explored at that point. Nor is there any explanation offered as to why the Neanderthals are apparently peopling the US, when no Neanderthal fossils have ever been found in the Americas! Or maybe that's not the case. As I said, I quit after the first chapter because I couldn't stand to read any more of this.
The biggest problem was the language used, particularly in dialog. It's completely modern, with no attempt to try and evoke prehistory. While I appreciate an approach which doesn’t involve people burbling words like "Ugh", or speaking pigeon English, I also felt a loss of credibility when reading of Neanderthals chatting like two business people on the subway. For example, at one point (p19), one of the characters says, "I worry about our long-term survival" which just seemed downright weird to me.
The sentences employed too many modern terms, and seemed way too wordy and way too sophisticated for 75,000 or so years ago. This seemed particularly absurd given that these same people had no words for numbers, being forced to show one or more fingers to indicate quantities. I didn’t get the rationale behind that at all because there seemed to be none. You can't have these people presented as having this level of sophistication, yet remaining beyond primitive in such a crucial matter as enumeration.
In the introduction, which I wouldn't normally read, but which I did on this occasion, there appears the phrase: "…hundreds of thousands of geologic years…." This makes no sense! A year is a year. It isn't any longer in geology than it is in every day life. Neither did this term make any sense: "…digit of his forefinger…" Your forefinger is a digit. I think what the author meant was something like "to the depth of the first knuckle of his forefinger" so it didn't help my confidence in this novel to be hit with so many issues in so few pages.
The basic story is that of the peopling of the Americas, and this is intended to be a series (the second volume is already out). The author's premise is that this took place not by the recognized route of a northern land bridge opening up between Russia and the USA as the ocean levels dipped during an ice age, but by some other means and at a much earlier date. There's little undisputed supportive evidence for this. The best understanding - although it is disputed by some - is that the Clovis people were the first colonizers, and indeed, 80% of native Americans are descended from the Clovis people. The rest are a mixture of later immigrants, so 75,000BC as a time of colonization isn't looking good right now!
But the bottom line is that the story was beyond boring, the dialog was sorry, and the events non-eventful. I struggled even to finish chapter one and I cannot in good conscience recommend this novel.
