Customer Reviews

The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children® Series)

5 star:		(119)
4 star:		(105)
3 star:		(172)
2 star:		(200)
1 star:		(279)

 

 

Did I mention repetition?

I came away feeling somewhat lukewarm towards this much-anticipated book. Definitely, there were enjoyable parts to it, even parts that moved me to tears.

However, this book had a much different pace to it than what I've come to expect from this series. For every event, it reviewed experiences from the earlier books in tiresome detail. Later in the book, it even reviewed experiences that happened in the first part of the book.

And, really, how many times did we have to read about the people's first reaction to meeting Wolf, Whinney, and Racer? Yes, the animals were new to the people, but they were not new to the readers. Recounting the same reaction from the dozens of people that met the animals as well as the never-ending recitation of all the formal names and ties of the characters made for tedious reading.

I'll admit to skipping the long narratives to get to the action. In the earlier books I was fascinated at Ms. Auel's extraordinary talent of setting the scene with lots of rich details. In this book, it just seemed to make the story plod, maybe because I had read most of it before.

This book is a definite, if somewhat disappointing, read for those that have been captivated by this series. I find myself eagerly awaiting the next book. I only hope the author once again warms to her subject and the plot instead of relying on page-fillers from past books.

First off, I'm very glad that I got this from the library and didn't waste my money.

This book hardly justifies a 12 year wait for some fans. 3 years, in my case. It's boring, repetitive, and doesn't even offer anything significant to justify its incredible length.

What about all the buildup, the incredible conflict we expected? What about Zolena, Jondalar's former lover, being a possible factor between Ayla and Jondalar? Nope, she has to be incredibly fat and thus sexually undesirable, an effectively neutered woman. Jondalar's former fiancee is portrayed as completely rabid and malicious, when she's more than entitled to a little resentment of Ayla and Jondalar. The man *jilted* her, after all. But no, if you dislike Ayla, that makes you rotten to the core.

The Zelandoni prejudice against the people of the Clan that we were all so afraid of? Dealt with in one tiny scene wherein all Zelandoni are ooing and ahhing over Ayla's sign language. Give me a break. That's disgustingly unreal, and a disgrace after all the hype about it for the past three books.

The "villains" are cardboard stereotypes. Those who aren't immediately enthralled by Ayla we *surprisingly* find are bad, evil people. I'm in mind of Frebec from "MH" here...he was a fully developed quasi-villain whose transformation was within the realms of belief. No such luck here. They're totally bad and have the utter gall to try and humiliate or hurt dear Ayla.

Ayla makes no faux pas, saves every situation with perfect panache, enchants everybody despite her having been raised by (and having had sex with) "animal flatheads". (Which everybody conveniently accepts despite long-standing prejudice that's been harped on for the past three books.) In fan fiction there is a word for a beautiful, incredibly talented, and universally liked perfect young woman. It's a "Mary Sue", and it is not a complimentary term.

Ayla's lost all depth she had in "Cave Bear" to become the original Cro-Magnon Mary Sue, perfect in every way. Every Paleolithic (and some Neolithic!) innovation can apparently be traced to her somehow: the atlatl (spear thrower), iron pyrite as a fire striker, animal domestication, the needle, the concept of conception via sexual intercourse being just a few.

I'm just waiting for her to invent the wheel. Though she probably will as First Among Those Who Serve the Mother (come on, you know she'll have the spot soon enough.) I much prefer the uncertain, definitely flawed and definitely human Ayla of "CotCB" instead of this prissy, power-hungry, perfect and boring woman. Give us a normal woman with fears, flaws, and all, instead of this laughable, inane Super-Ayla.

Jondalar is also disgustingly perfect, though he's basically just Ayla's stud and bodyguard. I'm also amused by the fact that the copious, purple-prosed love scenes seem to portray him as merely a one-trick pony. (So much for his prowess in the furs). This increasing trend towards nauseating perfection has annoyed me slightly since it began in "VoH" and has increased steadily with every book. Perhaps Thonolan should have survived that cave lion attack in Jondalar's place...

The characters have become cardboard, mere shadows of what they could have been, should have been. What they were promised to be when we first met them and they enchanted us. Many good books have been ruined with multiple steadily more awful sequels. Laurie R. King's "The Beekeeper's Apprentice" is one. "The Clan of the Cave Bear" is another. Ms. Auel should have left it at the end of "CotCB" and been remembered for that splendid masterpiece instead of cranking out ever worsening tripe *ad nauseum*, justifying it by, "It continues the storyline."

How about Ayla being an outcast from Zelandoni society because of her past? How about that causing strife with Jondalar, torn between love and his people? That was the book we should have received, the book that previous volumes promised us. Instead we find the couple happily married and accepted, with unquestioned incredibly high status, showering benevolence and help upon all who are needy. Is this supposed to be a parody, a farce?

This book has no conflict. This book has no action. This book has positively no character development. This book practically deconstructs any good done in "CotCB" and "VoH". In fact, this book has absolutely *nothing* to justify spending 28 dollars and 12 years of anticipation. Any first-time writer sending this in would be firmly rejected and laughed at. "SoS" indeed--very apt. Send out the distress call and load the lifeboats, because this one plummets to the bottom fast under the weight of its own bloated self-importance. A solid F.

...The Shelters of Stone is not a good book, and it is not a bad book that is fun. It's such an incredible departure from Auel's other books that I question whether she actually wrote it herself. Let me tell you why.

In the previous Earth's Children books, she tended to get somewhat flowery and overblown with descriptions of, say, prehistoric tundra landscapes or intricate cultural customs. But the overblown descriptions were at least engaging. She's never been a master of character development -- the characters have always been very one-sided, with the good people being superhumanly good and the bad people being very, very bad -- but at least she made you care about the characters to some extent. And she's never been particularly excellent at writing dialogue, but at least every once in awhile she'd hit upon something poignant, or funny, or interesting.

None of these things happen in the Shelters of Stone.

The book is a cold, stilted, haphazard, frankly [weak] attempt at continuing the story of Ayla, who loyal readers have known and loved and been following for over 20 years now. The characters are cut from cardboard and stuck in at random intervals where it seems convenient, not to move the story along. Not that there's much of a story -- frankly, about 3/4 of the book is exposition from the previous 4 books. Very little actually happens in Shelters of Stone that you haven't seen happen in the previous books. Ayla and Jondalar meet the Zelandonii, and then every time they meet someone new there's the endless round of introductions, they have to explain Ayla's background, how she got the animals, the spear-throwers, the firestones, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

There is thankfully much less explicit sex in this book than in the former books, but Auel more than makes up for the tedious sex scenes with the tedious exposition of covered territory over and over and over. Events that should be touching -- weddings, deaths, births -- are glossed over or ham-handedly dealt with, but then followed by pages and pages of Ayla and Jondalar explaining Ayla's background, which we've known the most intimate details of for four books now. I found myself skipping large portions of chapters just so I could get to the next part that actually had something to do with the story.

The dialogue between the characters is so awkward it's painful at times -- it sounds like an 8th-grader's first effort at writing a skit for the school play. The narrative, dialogue and plot careen from point to point, emotion to emotion with seemingly no direction or finesse. Some of the details that have been consistent through the last four books are now different in this book, like the spelling of a major character's name. There were some great opportunities to tell parts of the story we hadn't heard before, about Jondalar's background, but none of those were explored in favor of having Ayla explain for the umpteenth time to some person how she trained Wolf. Also, whoever edited this book needs to be fired, because on top of the numerous problems discussed above, there are comma splices, sentence fragments and other grammatical problems throughout the book. Maybe Ms. Auel was given final edit; if so, that was a really, really bad idea.

If Ms. Auel was a new writer and not an established author with several bestsellers backing her up, there's no way this book would have seen the light of day. There are too many literary problems with this novel to even enumerate here. Frankly, the book stunk. It was painful for me to read it, and I was actually sorry afterwards that I had spent money on a hardback.

I wanted so much to love this book. I had a bad feeling when I read the first two advance chapters in my bookstore late last year -- the writing just didn't seem up to par with her previous efforts. I honestly believe that Auel only wrote maybe 25 percent of the book, and the editors hastily cobbled together the other 75 percent out of the last four books. I understand there's a sixth book in the works. I'll be waiting for the (used) paperback on that one. It kills me to say this, but if this is the best Auel can do, maybe she should think about retirement.

My first reaction when I finally turned the last page of "The Shelters of Stone" was "I waited twelve years for THIS?" Indeed, the only thing that made me stick with the reading until the last page was the forlorn hope that Auel would stop repeating herself and maybe something interesting would happen.

Like many "Earth's Children" fans, I waited with bated breath to see what might finally happen when the sexy cave hero Jondalar brings the even sexier cave heroine Ayla back home to meet his people. We'd already been led in previous books to believe that Ayla's introduction to the Zelandoni would be anything but smooth. The Zelandoni (we have been told) believe that the Neanderthals who raised Ayla are animals and any children produced from Neanderthal-Human trysts are "abominations." Particularly intriguing were what we imagined might happen when Ayla met Jondalar's old love, Zolena (who is now "Zelandoni of the Ninth Cave," and who in a mere five years has become a gargatuan image of the woman Jondalar loved; so we no longer have to anticipate a conflict between Ayla and the most powerful Zelandoni priestess. Would've been fascinating, but oh well!), his old ex-fiancee Marona, and his powerful but prideful mother, Marthona. How would Ayla, whom we know as fiercely protective of her Neanderthal adoptive family, react to a people who might judge her based on her past history with these "animals?" We couldn't wait to find out! And what would Jondalar do, who in previous books was torn between his intense love for Ayla and his worry over what his family might think? Oh please tell us!

So, what happened? Ayla meets Jondalar's family. They think she's kind of strange, but nice (several of them fall in love with her). Ayla meets the rest of Jondalar's people. They think she's kind of strange, but nice(several of them fall in love with her). She goes to the Summer meeting and meets a lot of other people. Mostly, they all think she's kind of strange, but nice (several of them fall in love with her.) A few think she's kind of strange and are intensely jealous that everyone else thinks she's nice ... although it is made clear that anyone who doesn't love Ayla has serious problems. One of these is the Cave drunk, who lusts after her body but is offended because she's given more status than he. Then there's the ex-fiance Marona, a character who isn't even believably realistic. She turns out to be a pouty,juvinile acting brat whom one doubts Jondalar would have ever actually had anything to do with. The meeting of ex-fiancee and Ayla is so predictable it took effort to get through it.

Truth be told, the entire book took so much effort to get through that I skipped or skimmed large sections ... something this reader rarely ever does!

The *best* thing about the former books was the intensely erotic love scenes. I once thought that Auel wrote better erotica than anyone else I'd ever read. Well, something happened between the last book and this one because even the cave-love has lost it's draw. While an intergral part of former stories, the erotic scenes in this installment seem almost an afterthought, as if Auel would rather be writing something else (such as another endlessly detailed description of the making of cave-objects, baskets, mats, clothing and the like)and inserted the love-scene only because she knew the readers expected it.

About the endless descriptiveness, especially of early human culture: a bit of this is fine and added to the original book's appeal, but it almost seems as if "Shelters" was written so that Auel could exhibit her meticulous research and theories as to how life was lived then, as if the story was a mere frame for a display of the research, rather than the other way around. If I want to learn every detail of how to live like a cave-man, I'll take a survival course. I buy a novel to be entertained! Tell me a story!

Even the animals, formerly the real charmers of the stories, succumbed to this book's long-windedness. Do we really have to be told *every* time Ayla goes to check on the horses? Do we really need repeated descriptions of how astounded people are when they first see tame animals? Do we really have to hear the story of how Ayla discovered domestication of animals as many times as this book subjects us to it? Even the attempt at tear-jerking fails; every crisis encountered in the book is resolved so anti-climactically we drop our hankies unused.

The constant repition of a "poem" in the book ("The Earth Mother's Song")annoyed me to no end. Auel ought to leave poetry to people who know that craft, yet she is so infatuated with her own amateur-quality poem that she repeats it constantly and in fact even has a special repeat of it all by itself at the end of the book.

Late in the book Ayla delivers her baby and promptly names her without stirring a single emotion. Nothing like the dramatic and soul-searing deliver of Durc, her half-Neanderthal son, in the hallowed 1st book, "Clan of the Cave Bear."

Auel makes many references to the need to live in harmony with the environment throughout her entire series. She might've done the environment a favor and not written 700+ pages of pure drivel. If she wanted to bore us she could've done so in 300 pages or less. Or better yet, just issued a press release saying she didn't really know where to go with this story anymore, because it seems obvious that she doesn't. Yawn.

I ended up enjoying the "lectures" on botany, Stone Age hunting tools and methods, geology and geography more than the dialogue and didactic prose. Reviewers have hilariously pointed out how stilted the dialogue can be.

I'm one of the compulsive "must have the whole series" fans who thus like the book more than I really ought to. However, wouldn't it have been nice if:

a) Jondalar and Ayla actually have disappointing sex one night.
b) Ayla actually makes a medical mistake!
c) Ayla throws a temper tantrum or overwise displays some human moment of petty weakness like the rest of us lesser mortals
d) Wolf takes a dump in the cave
e) Somebody thinks sure, Ayla is attractive, but just not his type
f) Somebody besides Ayla actually invents something
g) With all this racial diversity, how about somebody who is gay or lesbian? Imagine that--Ayla gets a gay pal or maybe falls for a hot girl, and poor Jondalar doesn't know whether to be excited or jealous

I'm being tongue-in-cheek a bit, of course, but the writing did leave something to be desired. People are all two-dimensional characters, far more so than those of the Clan.

My rating is actually 3.75 stars -- it's much better than three, but not quite four.

Ms Auel has made no secret that she includes backstory in each of the succeeding novels in this series so that each book is accessible and comprehensible to new readers. It's a fine line between engaging the new reader while not boring the ever-patient Earth's Children junkie. While largely successful at this, Auel unfortunately crosses the line more often than she should. Too many passages, whether only phrases or entire sections, are lifted from the previous titles. There is also more internal repetition of events within "Shelters..." that sometimes makes the long-time reader feel bludgeoned by author's insecurity that we will forget earlier events.

Except for the last few chapters, "Shelters..." is very much a revisiting of "The Mammoth Hunters", except without the jealous tension. It's a less stressful book to read (which isn't to say that it doesn't have its suspenseful moments). It's also a set-up book that has established a number of characters and motivations that will not be fully fleshed out or resolved until the next episode is written.

A major aspect that finds me returning to this series is the number of emotionally powerful or memorable scenes to be found in each book. This fifth installment, unfortunately, came up a little short. While there are good scenes, this is the first of these books that didn't have any that sent me flipping back to re-read something that was amazing. In many ways it just felt like the author had lost some interest in the work and was just trying to fulfill the demands of her fans and publisher.

Overall a fine effort, and I look forward to the last installment of this series (hopefully within my lifetime <G>). While the wait was long, returning to visit old friends was very satisfying. My only hopes for the next novel are that Ms Auel find a better editor to manage the redundant information and presentation, and is better able to inject the degree of her own passion for the work into the story this is found in the earlier installments.

If all you want to do is find out what happened to Ayla and Jondalar next, then wait for the paperback or go to the library. I have seldom read a less satisfying book. I wasn't bothered by the recapitulation (it'd been 12 years after all) or the descriptions of the landscape and technology, which I have come to expect. The irritation starts with the stilted dialogue and the constant repetition of what Ayla knows that no one else does.
Also, there are a number of clumsy moments in the book. Her second or third day she literally wanders from dwelling to dwelling looking for something to do.

But what really galls is the complete lack of any dramatic tension, brought about by the endless introduction of plot lines that go nowhere. The Amazon summary mentions two: will Jondalar's mother accept her? Easily, it turns out. What about the jilted girlfriend? She plays one mean trick in the beginning and then completely disappears. Here were a couple of opportunities to make an interesting story, but they were squandered. There are more: the idea that maybe they should find out more about the Neanderthals, perhaps develop trade relationships because they possibly resent them for taking their land and might someday attack. Or the half flathead, a potential criminal sociopath if I've ever seen one. Ayla captivates and angers him, but his character remains undeveloped. Or Ayla's knowledge of birth control. At one point the tribe priestess is intensely interested in finding out more. But she never does. And finally, the bombshell that Ayla once gave birth to a half flathead herself. She hides this knowledge until the end. It's shared with only the priestess and there's no time left to develop this plot line either.

Basically all Auel has done is set the stage for the next book. Her editor has let her and us down by not demanding the book Auel is capable of writing. If this were a first novel by an unknown, it would never have been published.

My mom bought this book to read on a plane trip after reading the previous novels, and since I had also read them, she gave it to me after she was finished. Here for the first time I'm going to break one of my own personal rules and review a book that I didn't finish. I've read many hefty books with higher page counts in my time. Why didn't I finish Shelters of Stone? Because it's so drop dead boring, and because the main character's extreme Mary Sue-ish 'qualities' have really started to grate on my nerves.

I enjoyed Clan of the Cave Bear the best, since then things have been all downhill. With this book, things have fallen very far indeed. As other reviews have mentioned, there's an unbearable amount of repetition, not just of previous volumes, but repetition within the book itself. I'd be fine with it if it only happened once and then was skipped or abridged in later explinations, but no... We have to suffer through the complete retelling of everything every time. How many times can a reader suffer through the discovery of firestones without slitting their wrists with one? Now we know.

I gave up reading about halfway through, because nothing happened. And I mean really, nothing happened. Nada. Zip. They got to Jondalar's home. Everyone is over the fact that Ayla was raised by 'flatheads' in record time, wasting a plot point that had been built up in the last three books and turning it into a barely there afterthought. Anticlimactic is an understatement. Ayla gets introduced, gets tricked into wearing inappropriate clothing and there's a hunt. That's it. It took around 250 pages to get to this point. I've read better books that were over in fewer pages.

Then there's Ayla. A good 95% of the characters in the book (I hesitate to say 'story' because there really isn't one) seems to exist just to remark on how amazing she is. Repeatedly. Everyone she meets just has to swoon and realize how she's wonderful and gorgeous and smart and gosh just isn't she so darn peachy keen? Except, of course, they're supposed to be a villain, and then they just hate her on sight for no reason. Maybe they have a point though, because I've started to actively dislike her myself. Ayla never does anything wrong. Never makes mistakes that cause problems, never suffers from jealousy, never wishes that the perpetrators of a cruel practical joke played on her would fall off a cliff, never feels overwhelmed at all the people she's suddenly having to face, and is just the bestest ever at everything she ever tries to do. She just prances around the tundra acting like some kind of prehistoric female Thomas Edison celebrity superstar, complete with adoring groupie squad.

Speaking of the adoring groupie squad, what the heck happened to Jondalar? Over the course of three books he's gone from being at least an interesting (if overly angsty and guilt ridden) love interest to some kind of Ayla bodyguard/yes man/body temperature dildo. In fact, the only reason he's notable in this book is by his absence, mentally if not physically. The only time he has any input anymore is when it's in relation to Ayla. You'd think he'd be conflicted, or at least a little nervous about introducing a strange woman who's been raised by people that his relatives consider little better than animals, but no... He stumbles through SoS almost as an accessory to Ayla. The name Jonayla could almost fit Jondalar himself in this book.

Do yourself a favor. Avoid this book unless what you're looking for is a cure for insomnia.

Because it's been so long since the last book, I read The Shelters of Stone with some curiosity. It didn't take me long to realize why the Earth's Children series has become beach/plane reading - not awful, just not compelling. Ironically, I find the protagonist, Ayla, the least interesting thing in the series - except as an example of how authors become overfond of certain characters.

Ayla's the kind of character that I have come to find myself rooting AGAINST, even though it's a fixed game - the author clearly loves her creation so much that she can't bear to think of Ayla being insufficient in any way. She's so beautiful that every guy wants her. Every (Cro-Magnon) guy. Whenever you get the male viewpoint, it's never "Ayla was reasonably attractive, though Jarovar preferred smaller, brown-haired women." No, she's always considered dazzlingly beautiful (Neanderthals aside).

Not only is Ayla beautiful, but she's a supergenius. She has already invented or discovered the domestication of animals, the needle, the use of flint to start fires, the atlatl, the travois (I believe) and the role of men in human reproduction. Let's not forget that she's an incredibly talented healer, able to learn foreign languages in less than a month, and, I think, psychic. And she's a great orienteer - she's able to find a cave that has been overlooked by the people who live directly on the site.

Does everyone love Ayla?, Well, yes, unless they're psychotic, insanely jealous jilted lovers, drunken bums or otherwise amidst the dregs of humanity. In fact, I can't even recall anyone who's lukewarm about her.

But let's get to the plot of the book, such as it is. Here you are. 1) Ayla and her toolish mate Jondalar show up in Southern France. They sadly convey the news of Jondalar brother's death, which everyone seems to take pretty well. 2) Everyone meets Ayla and decides to adopt her almost immediately - except for Jondalar's bitchy ex-girlfriend and the local drunken bum, of course. Oh, there's also Jondalar's old rival and some part-Neaderthal guy who's not right in the head. They don't really like her either. 3) Ayla teaches everyone that "flatheads" are really nice, smart, spiritual people and that wolves aren't really scary. 4) Jondalar's other ex-girlfriend, Zeladoni, recognizes that Ayla is the smartest woman in the world and recruits her for the priesthood. 5) Ayla has her kid, named Jonayla.

That's pretty much it. Ayla does get to see the Lascaux caves in their infancy. I'm just waiting for her to become the greatest artist the prehistoric world has ever known.

As for the writing, Auel has become increasingly fond of mind-numbing repetition. EVERYONE who meets Ayla has to (mentally) remark upon her accent. EVERYONE thinks she doesn't look like all the other blondes in Southern France. Auel does treat us to many, many examples of what Ayla's accent sounds like (she rolls her rs.) There are also a few clinical sex scenes thrown in. None with the horses this time around, however.

I gave this book three stars, because it's a perfectly adequate continuation of the series.

When I purchased SoS I expected to sit down and read it through in a single sitting, dragging myself away for potty and food breaks. Instead it took me 3 days to read, and whenever I put it down for a break I had little interest in picking it up again right away.

I am disappointed. It's not a bad book, but Ms Auel's earlier problems, going *too* far into the descriptions of everything, is magnified in SoS. There is just so much a person can take. She spends *pages* at a time just telling about simple things like how a valley is laid out in great detail. I found myself scanning until something happens again, skipping paragraphs and even pages. SoS is a 750 page book that should have been done in 400.

My biggest complaint is the number of times she repeats herself in explaining the important points from the earlier books. For example: every time Ayla is asked about how she got the horses, Ms Auel repeats several paragraphs that could have been cut and paste. She could have simply written "Ayla sighed and retold the story again" and spared the readers.

OK, I admit I love reading again about Ayla and Jondalar. The only thing that kept me reading was that it *was* Ayla and Jondalar. There are still good, and even great points to SoS. I was happy to see less of her trademark descriptive sex and more emotional relationships. Zelandoni is a truely great character and the newly introduced cast of the Zelandonii are convincing as people.

When the storyline does finally emerge from the endless descriptives it seems that rather than a story in itself, Shelters of Stone ties up a few loose threads from Plains of Passage and sets up Book 6. This isn't much of a suprise, since Ms Auel has been writing Book 6 at the same time she wrote SoS.

When Book 6 is finally written, I hope that since Ms Auel has pretty much described everything within miles of the 9th Cave of the Zelandonii that she will relax and stop repeating herself. It seems she has set up Book 6 to be an excellent climax to the series.