Rating: 
Summary: Primitive
Review: When you come across a book with this name and know that it is fiction you really don't have to be a genius to figure out what the plot is going to be. It then becomes a question of how well it is done, and whether there was enough research on the subject matter so that you might actually come away from the experience with more than just a few pleasantly spent hours. The answer to these questions is . . . yeah it's pretty well written, and yeah, there's enough research there to make it worthwhile. I would have liked to see a little more depth as it regards the nature of the Neanderthal society--think of the imagination that went into Dune, for example, or the Hobbit thing--but on the whole it was entertaining. The characters were pretty much cardboard also. Naturally, the single boy and girl heroes are brilliant and beautiful and of course have sex, the eccentric doctor finally goes around the bend, and the brilliant, lead U. S. scientist is a crippled, deformed geek. Trot out the usual suspects. Both the malevolent CIA and some nameless Russian organization are involved. We wouldn't want to read this sort of thing without at least one of them making an appearance, would we? Oh, and very late in the book, there is a ridiculous contrivance: a Russian soldier unexpectedly appears out of nowhere to save our heroes, who are about to have their skulls bashed in. And also . . . Well, gee, what is the point? You don't pick up a book like this with the idea that your life is going to be transformed by beauty or truth or knowledge or something. You are simply hoping for a pleasant diversion for a few hours and with luck maybe to learn something. Or at the very least, to have your curiosity piqued so that you wish to learn more. On that very modest level, I guess, the book succeeds, but I just wish there was more to it. Instead of some heavily-marketed, paint-by-the-numbers, half-researched pot-boiler--written by somebody whose real name probably isn't on the cover--there could have been more complexity, more thought, more imagination, more depth, more . . . You get the idea.
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