Ordinarily, I like long books, historical fiction (especially pre-historic era) and young adult books.

And since I love love love Philip Pullman, I was drawn in by the cover quotation from him calling, The Kin by Peter Dickinson, "A magnificent work from one of the real masters." Frankly, I was very excited to buy this 628 page novel about 6 children living 200,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, The Kin is dreadful. I kept trying to convince myself I liked it, giving up on that about 200 pages in, and then just reading for the endurance factor.

On the inside back cover, the author says, about writing this book, "It shouldn’t have happened, really." He is so right.

What I disliked about this book:

• Nearly all of the sentences are very short, 3-5 words.
• Most of the characters say things like, "I, Ko, ask this,"  "I, Suth, say this," "I, Noli, thank," and "I, Tun, praise."  Occasionally they get to say more, or think more, but mostly they announce who they are and then say no more than 3 more words.
• When they aren’t saying that, they say, "I am bad, bad," or "I am tired, tired," or "I am hungry, hungry." Reading this dialog is boring, boring, and painful, painful.
• To be fair, part of the premise of the book is that many of the
  characters are pre-lingual humans. But Jean Auel was able to write
  interesting, intelligent books about pre-lingual humans.
• Even worse than the main storyline, every chapter is separated by an invented creation myth. Although those include more complex sentences, and no one says they are "lucky, lucky" or "I, Mana, give" they don’t resonate and they aren’t compelling. By the end, I could barely stand reading them.

I did think the premise was cool, and I liked the way the little girls and women were portrayed as equally important as the little boys and the men.

But in the end, I’m sorry that Philip Pullman is so much worse as a critic than an author.