Humans

The first book in the series was somewhat enjoyable if only because the idea of a parallel universe where Neanderthals had survived instead of us is rather interesting. But once the novelty wore off I found a very boring story. Everything feels so cliched and forced. The Neanderthal society is used to show all the ways ours went wrong. Their society evolved into a gentle, tolerant, peace loving one while ours is violent, hypocritical and prone to warfare. This has been done a million times in science fiction (just replace the Neanderthals with some alien race).

How about developing a realistic culture for the Neanderthals and intellectually explore how their history and technology might be different from ours given their genetic and physical differences? The framework for the story has a lot of potential but instead retreads the same tired territory.