Finally, Book 3 of This Riveting Prehistoric Fiction Series

Prehistoric fiction is a small niche. There aren’t a lot of novels in this genre so I cheer every time I find one I love, like this one:

DEATH IN THE NEW LAND

by Kaye George

Amazon blurb

Enga Dancing Flower and her tribe have reached a place they can stay in safety. Or have they?

It’s clear the groups of other settlers in the area do not want more neighbors, and this is made even more evident when a male of Enga’s tribe is murdered, and a baby is kidnapped.

The future of the tribe is immediately put into question. Can Enga and her people find the killer and rescue the baby? Or will the security and bright future the tribe has dreamed of fall to pieces?

My review

I read Book 1 and 2 of Kaye George’s excellent People of the Wind Mystery series (click for my review of Death in the Time of Ice), and then had to wait what seemed like forever (about five years–an eternity for prehistoric fiction aficionados) for Book 3, Death in the New Land (Untreed Reads 2022). This picks up as Dancing Flower’s Neanderthal tribe settles into a new home, away from the glaciers that made their old home so cold. They meet neighbors of their kind and have a successful mammoth hunt in preparation for the cold season. Life is better than expected until a former group member-turned-traitor begs to be readmitted to the group and they find that the dangerous Tall Ones (a different version of man’s genus) live close by with another former group member who has become an enemy. When a valued tribe member is killed and Dancing Flower’s adopted daughter disappears–probably kidnapped–Dancing Flower struggles to balance the all-important needs of the tribe with her love for her missing daughter.

Throughout this story–the entire series–you learn details about George’s vision of Neanderthals, how they function as a tribe, hunt for food, establish the maternal tribal hierarchy where women are hunters and men perform more traditional female roles. They believe in acting for the good of the group, not the individual and don’t believe in fighting others or killing their own kind. Many of these beliefs are challenged by events in the story, giving the reader a sense of the tension and worry that comes with changing norms.

To be clear, though: These early ancestors as described in this series are not like other Neanderthal stories you’ve probably read. A few observations you may have read in my review of the prior book to this trilogy, Death in the Time of Ice, remain in place:

• They communicate with thoughts not words or hand gestures.
• Women are more powerful than men.
• The youth of the tribe have considerable influence over group decisions.

A few memorable lines that explained a lot about the story:

“We cannot be friendly with them. There are probably others we cannot be friendly toward. It is time for us to adopt a different way. A way of war and fighting. If we are to survive among these violent people, we must defend ourselves.”

“Sister Sun seemed to steal the colors from everything and take them with her as she disappeared. The fresh green of the pine needles, the brown of the dirt beneath them, the blue of the water—they all began to lose their own colors,”

“Enga, and everyone else, could see the pride in his thought-speak, glowing with a shimmering hue, like the white light from the eyes of Mother Sky.”

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“The thought stream was sent in a wave of dark colors to shield it from the other tribe members and make it private. I know it is a good thing. “

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Overall, an engaging read about our predecessors that left me better for having read it. I am hoping for a Book 4.

 

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Man vs. Nature saga, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the acclaimed Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection, Summer 2022

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