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The Shelters of Stone: Earth's Children (Hardcover)

by Jean M. Auel (Author) "People were gathering on the limestone ledge, looking down at them warily ..." (more)
2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (622 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 44.95
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Product Description

From Amazon.com

Jean Auel's fifth novel about Ayla, the Cro-Magnon cavewoman raised by Neanderthals, is the biggest comeback bestseller in Amazon.com history. In The Shelters of Stone, Ayla meets the Zelandonii tribe of Jondalar, the Cro-Magnon hunk she rescued from Baby, her pet lion. Ayla is pregnant. How will Jondalar's mom react? Or his bitchy jilted fiancée? Ayla wows her future in-laws by striking fire from flint and taming a wild wolf. But most regard her Neanderthal adoptive Clan as subhuman "flatheads." Clan larynxes can't quite manage language, and Ayla must convince the Zelandonii that Clan sign language isn't just arm-flapping. Zelandonii and Clan are skirmishing, and those who interbreed are deemed "abominations." What would Jondalar's tribe think if they knew Ayla had to abandon her half-breed son in Clan country? The plot is slow to unfold, because Auel's first goal is to pack the tale with period Pleistocene detail, provocative speculation, and bits of romance, sex, tribal politics, soap opera, and homicidal wooly rhino-hunting adventure. It's an enveloping fact-based fantasy, a genre-crossing time trip to the Ice Age. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

The tiny minority of authors with the power to sell millions of novels each time out are a diverse bunch, but they share a talent for ushering readers into previously closed worlds, whether they're the top-secret inner sanctums of the American military or the ancient lands of magic. The best of them craft terrific stories that tap into universal topics, primal fears and deep-seated longings. In 1980, Auel became a member of this elite club. Her first novel, Clan of the Cave Bear, the exceptional and absorbing account of a bright Cro-Magnon girl struggling to understand the ways of the Neanderthals who adopted her, became a huge bestseller and launched the Earth's Children series, which has sold 34 million copies to date. In the next three of an intended six volumes, Ayla the Cro-Magnon girl grew up and put a pretty face on our earliest ancestors, as Auel explored the mother of all human themes: adapt or die. After the fourth bestseller, The Plains of Passage, however, 12 years elapsed, and Auel thereby added the protracted anticipation of her fans to her bestselling mix. Here at last, beautiful Ayla and her tall, gorgeous Cro-Magnon lover, Jondalar, arrive in Jondalar's Zelandonii homeland, to live with his clan in vast caves of what today is France. Travelling with a pet wolf and two horses, able to speak the strange language of the "flatheads," Ayla is once again an exotic outsider. Pregnant with Jondalar's child and as zealous in her desire to help as she is resourceful and creative as a medicine woman, Ayla soon wins the respect of the people she wishes to join. Bursting with hard information about ancient days and awash in steamy sex (though lacking the high suspense that marked Ayla's debut), Auel's latest will not only please her legions of fans but will hit the top of the list, pronto.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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People were gathering on the limestone ledge, looking down at them warily. Read the first page
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The Shelters of Stone: Earth's Children
77% buy the item featured on this page:
The Shelters of Stone: Earth's Children 2.4 out of 5 stars (622)
CDN$ 28.18
The Clan of the Cave Bear
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The Valley of Horses
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The Plains of Passage
5% buy
The Plains of Passage 4.0 out of 5 stars (223)
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Customer Reviews

622 Reviews
5 star:
 (71)
4 star:
 (70)
3 star:
 (117)
2 star:
 (146)
1 star:
 (218)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.4 out of 5 stars (622 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Not worth reading, even to a Jean Auel fan, May 8 2002
By Zeneve (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
First I want to establish my "credentials." Of my favorite books in the world, Jean Auel's Earth's Children series make up the first four. I have been her ardent fan since I first read her books at ten years old and have devoured every word many times over. I have owned many copies of the series and they have all fallen apart from rereading. They were a major formative force in my life, leading me to study archaeology and ancient art in college. I waited eleven years for this book!
It is difficult to say anything that has not already been covered by other reviewers, but I will try. The good first ... it is an absolute joy to read about Ayla and Jondalar again :^)) It's like catching up with old friends, camping with them for a weekend. I also enjoyed the fact I am familiar with the area where all of this took place, along the Dordogne River of France. I guess I could say that if you had never read anything else by Jean Auel you could still read this book and follow the "plot."
But you see, that is the problem. Any attempt at a plot is submerged beneath the recaps of the material from the previous books, word for word, in italics. Nothing is left to the imagination nor the memory. The scenes tend to be repeated more than once, like the scene with Creb in the cave of the Mog-urs; that scene is repeated no less than four times. Repetition is the name of the game here, with Ayla's names and ties repeated each time she meets someone new. There are several hundred people for her to meet (all with names like pharmaceutical products) and her full name is repeated to each one. Also, each and every one is afraid of Wolf and the exact same procedure of hand sniffing and petting is demonstrated for EACH ONE. They accept the horses pretty easily, frankly. I have horses and I know a lot of people who are more afraid of horses than just about any one of the Zelandonii. Another gripe, the religion plays a huge part, but in a very dogmatic way. This, I must admit, may be a very very subtle foreshadowing for the next book, but if it is it is a way more subtle touch than JA usually uses, even at her best. (More a Robin Hobb subtlety.) The style seems stilted and awkward as well, telling rather than showing. If you read the book, the more shame on you, you will see what I mean.
I think that the person reading this review may feel that I am nitpicking and not including anything about the plot. Quite simply, there is no plot. There are some things that happen (Ayla mates Jondalar, they have a baby, so does Whinney) but not enough to constitute a story. The best part of the book is the last fifty pages, with the plot finally taking off ... in the last paragraph. No kidding. There is no story here, just a series of recaps of the first four books, although rather twisted and changed to fit THIS setting. Also, there is a lot of description of the area which she obviously knows well; in fact, she tries to give a guidebook to the area without giving exact names. Now honestly, none of us are likely to hike up the Dordogne, so the extensive travelogue is not helpful. One more substitute for plot is the really heavy "mother" religion, which revolves around a very long creation song that gets repeated at full length twice, and parts of it about ten times, as though it held some great truth.
The last big problem, and it is a huge one, is that the Zelandonii accept her flathead background with scarcely a ripple. Even when she tells them about her other child, they don't say a thing. This is my biggest problem because it was reinforced from the start of the Valley of Horses that the Zelandonii are racially intolerant to an extreme degree.
This book could have been better very easily. It could have been another 300-700 pages longer. It could have have a plot involving the flatheads. It could have had more "inventions," like the other four books. And last, but certainly not least, it could have had better sex. Each and every one was boring and just like the one before. Someone described them as "copy and paste" -- a very good summation of the feel of the love scenes. ...

If you really want to know what happens, wait for the paperback. If you are looking for a really good read, try anything by Robin Hobb, in particular Fool's Errand, or Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind. They evidence the subtlety and dynamism so sadly lacking in this woefully boring book. I gave it two stars for the sake of how much I still love the other four books in the Earth's Children series, otherwise it is a one star book.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The Shelters of Stone, Oct 27 2009
By Joan Kilpatrick "twotraveler" (Reno, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Shelters of Stone (Mass Market Paperback)
The fifth in the Clan of the Cave Bear series. Told in a most interesting way which captivates the reader into wishing he/she could have been there to see what transpired during the last ice age. This is the type of book which brings history alive. As usual the facts were well researched, also.
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1.0 out of 5 stars Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn...., Nov 5 2007
Like most readers of the "Earth's Childrens" series, I was hooked on book No. 1 which I found incidentally in a book store when searching for some easy stuff to read during traveling. I had never heard about "Earth's Children" before and didn't read any reviews before the purchase of the first novel (should have though!). It's not high literature, just entertainment at best, but quite nice. Good tight storyline, interesting (if very black-and-white) characters, gripping events. Happily I bought the rest of the series, book 2 to 5, looking forward to many hours of enjoyable reading, just right to relax on long winter evenings. BIG MISTAKE!!! I won't go too deeply into this - I can just say that it's a waste of money and paper to go anywhere beyond the first book. I have NEVER come across so much gibberish before. The "story", if it even deserves that name, gets flatter and flatter and disappears into thin air somewhere down the track throughout the series. How to best describe the series overall? Endless repetitions and descriptions of the same things over and over and over...it's just plain lame. I still can't understand how this rubbish could be published. I read the rest of the series only because I had been dumb enough to buy them in bulk after reading the first one. What did I do with my "Earth's Children" series? I dedicated it to the flames of my fireplace, and boy, did it burn well! I don't want to be responsible for other people's boredom - and that's what would inevitably had happened if I had given those "books" (piles of paper would describe it better) away. Stay away from "The Shelters of Stone" and any other book of the series except the first one.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't know how to end it
I have been a fan of the Earth's Children Series since that day when I opened the cover of Clan of the Cave Bear. Read more
Published on July 6 2007 by Janna Goddard

2.0 out of 5 stars Soft-core Filler
I thoroughly enjoyed the first 3 books of this series. I found the sexual scenes in books 2 and 3 a bit "explicit", but the storylines were still good. Read more
Published on Jun 27 2007 by Max

1.0 out of 5 stars Cave people soap opera
I have never seen so much padding in a book, ever. It is worse than General Hospital that my mother watched for so many years. Read more
Published on July 17 2004

2.0 out of 5 stars Monotonous and Inaccurate
I loved Clan of the Cave Bear, but after that, each book in the series got worse. Auel has taken what could have been a great prehistoric fiction series and turned it into... Read more
Published on July 12 2004 by Rob

5.0 out of 5 stars The Shelters of Stone
This book is quite possibly the best of the series. Ayla finally meets the ALnzadonii, Jondalar's kin, but can they accept this stragne woman and her even stranger animal friends... Read more
Published on Jun 5 2004

2.0 out of 5 stars Having not read the first four books...
I found this book fairly interesting; for the first half, anyway. After reading a few reviews, my thoughts that this book simply rehashed the previous four were comfirmed. Read more
Published on May 25 2004 by Jennifer N Anderson

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't Put it Down
I've been waiting to read this book for a long time. I read the first 4 about 10 years ago and almost forgot about the series. Read more
Published on Mar 2 2004 by Sunkist

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
I was anxiously waiting (and waiting and waiting) for this book to come out. When I started reading the series I was completely hooked. Read more
Published on Jan 1 2004

2.0 out of 5 stars Eep.
I read the first book, I was hooked. I read the second book, and it was pretty good. I read the third book and started to get disinterested. Read more
Published on Nov 24 2003

1.0 out of 5 stars Where was her editor?????
I was excited to get this book, but quickly became disappointed in it. I almost started counting how many times someone remarked on what a beautiful couple Ayla and Jondalar... Read more
Published on Nov 10 2003

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