Bantam, $7.99, ISBN 0-553-25053-1
Historical Fiction, 1982
If there is one book you have to read from Jean “She’s not dead, because there’s a new book coming out later this year!” M Auel’s overwrought, badly written, Barbie-esque Earth’s Children series, it’s book two – The Valley of Horses. This book, my friends, is the perfect Barbarian Porn Show. The sex alone is worth plonking down the $7.99 price – okay, I paid $5.99 for it back in the 1990s – to enjoy. Low, down and dirty, and oh so disgustingly Barbarella-esque, it’s sleazy dirty no-good fun that ranks down there with your mother warning you that doing that will make you go blind.
The Earth’s Children series is richly detailed about life in the Cenozoic era, true, especially with the boundaries of evolution of Man thing, but if you ask me, heroine Ayla and the over-endowed, personality-free Mr Savior of Prehistoria Femina dude Jondalar – I’ll call him Dongalar from now on – are pretty much the Barbie and Dong of the prehistoric Skinimax. In this book, at least, book three puts me to sleep and I never picked up book four. Why? Because there’s no sex like sex in The Valley of Horses. Yes, I’m a pervert, but is the title referring to a prime piece of Dongalar’s body?
In book one, The Clan of the Cave Bear, our heroine, beautiful Neanderthal heroine Ayla, reared by the more ape-like pre-Neanderthal ancestor kind of folks called the flatheads, had been abused, violated, raped, et cetera. This, by the way, is the theme of this series. You may be a Prehistoric Barbarella, but you always need a man for sexual healing. No sex is good sex unless Dongalar is sticking it to you.
Anyway, I digress. Ayla now lives alone in The Valley of Horses except for her playing with some saber-toothed tigers and horses. No, not that way, sorry, horndogs. But Dongalar will provide the perks of sloughing through this billion-paged skin flick, trust me. See, while Ayla is leading her happy, clueless asexual Barbarella lifestyle, running free in lush, untamed grasses or some poppy-induced Utopia nonsense, Dongalar is spewing his manly semen like the second coming of the Great Flood on the New Earth. This, my friends, is a man we should all live for. He may be a Neanderthal, but not only does he know what a clitoris is, he knows where to zone in and send the woman straight to Heaven and beyond. He gives perfect cunnilingus. He has a baseball bat rearing out of his thickly golden furred crotch, and while it looks scary to the women, they can’t get enough of it.
Dongalar – Daddy Gigolo! Dongalar deflowers virgins in some ceremonies and teaches women the Joys of Sex and the Power of their Bodies! How humbly we mere women submit to the wisdom of Dongalar, Prophet of Onan, King of Masturbaria, and Cunnilingus Consort! Teach us what that magic button do, oh Wise Dongalar! Better still, show us. Oh baby. Oh baby. Oh. Oh.
But Dongalar’s second coming of wisdom is only the beginning. Wait until he and Ayla meet. I tell you, his donginess not only teaches Ayla that sex is not all bad – at least, sex with beautiful, luminous Neanderthals is so hot. I mean, seriously, forget what you see of those sketches of Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons or whatever the correct term is for these people (sorry, I’m no anthropologist), the people here – Dongalar and Ayla’s people, at least – are perfect Aryans with some token brunettes thrown in with perfect physique and teeth. They make us modern people look like results of inbreeding trolls.
If it’s not for the sex, I’ll be using this book as toilet paper, I tell you.
The sex! Ayla is the only woman big enough to fit the entire zillion inches of Dongalar, so wow! Dongalar plunges to the hilt for the first time since he gets debauched when he was ten, eleven or something by Mama Earth Pedophilia-Is-Best Priestess or something, and they do it doggy style, humpy style, missionary style, and sideway style. In between panting for breaths, these two discover horse riding, fire, wheel, rocket science, aliens, God, and what seems like every single thing ever. Okay, I’m kidding about God and aliens, but Ayla is like the Mother of Human Progress according to Ms Auel. It is she who proposes the radical idea of a man’s sperm causing a woman to be with child. She is the first woman to domesticate wild beasts. And she takes all of Dongalar – cool. And of course, she may be Rocket Science Barbarella after she has a man to teach her the ways of her sex, but she is at the same time clingy to Dongalar. Don’t leave her Dongalar! She needs you!
I wait for Ayla and Dongalar to discover anal sex, BDSM, water sports, fetish, and other “advanced” sex stuff, but alas, no such luck.
The prose pushes the definition of “purple” to the limit, but dang, the sex is cool. Gigolo barbarian heroes, hapless lily-wilt heroines wearing impractically skimpy clothes needing hero to teach them how to be a woman, and lots of skanky, gratuitous Dongalar sex. It’s so guilty pleasure, I tell you. The details may be there, but Ms Auel can’t tell a story to save her ass. She can do though a lot of bad, mean Conan the Barbarian bad-ass glorious skank sex to tantalize and tease in the lowest of lowbrow. And I like that. Everyone who’s into guys needs at least one Dongalar in his or her life, I say. A man who gives good head is definitely a prize.
Viva la Dongalar!
