Customer Reviews

The Last Mammoth

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It does not matter which. I found the book to be very interesting and enjoyable. I have read all the books in this trilogy and could not wait for the next one to come out. I am only sorry that there were only 3. The book held my attention and allowed me to escape into the time of the last mammoth. As for it being accurate who cares and even better still who knows. Certainly not those who study it. Those anthropologist that I have known can't even agree amoung themselves. That's why it's called pre-history.

This would be a better book if it didn't supposedly take place in prehistoric America. As a fantasy it might work, but not as history. There are things in the book that just don't work anthropologically. For example, in one tribe the women are totally oppressed by the men. That just doesn't happen in hunting and gathering cultures. Also, near the end it seems to try to follow the gospel passion narratives. If you can get past these things, the actual story is all right. It just requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.

The title made me think that it would be a grittily realistic quest sort of novel, as a band of Native Americans from 12,000 years ago goes in search of the last living Mammoth on Earth, perhaps learning about themselves in the midst of the cold uncaring wilderness. Nope. Instead we get lots of pages of two horny teenagers constantly having sex as they do absolutely nothing of consequence. The "last" mammoth is [SPOILER] actually just a metaphor, as the protagonists at last realize that the megafauna must die for the future good of humanity-that's it, that's how it ends. When no desperate quest was forthcoming, I felt very cheated. And instead of coined vocabulary (a la Tolkien) for the ancient language the characters speak, I was incessantly subjected to the constant use of modern slang which often threw me right out of the story.