REINDEER HUNTERS

Reviewed by Pat Monaghan in the Dutton Booklist, October 1994.

Now this is what a prehistorical should be! Wolf must have done a great deal of research, but there’s never an obtrusive fact in this page-turner about Cro-Magnons living in the Pyrenees. The plot is well paced and well designed, building to a perfect climax and resolving extraordinarily well. A number of warring, but related, peoples makes peace among themselves in order to rally against the invasion of unrelated folk as the Ice Age ends and cold weather game disappears north. Yet when a fierce band of proto-Britons arrives in their mountains, the original folk finally accept them as useful new blood and new strength for the tribe. If there is a somewhat unbelievably perfect quality to the relations between men and women here—they seem to come straight from the pages of feminist Riane Eisler’s Partnership Way—well, that’s OK. After all (or rather, after Auel—Jean, that is), isn’t that what readers want?

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