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189 of 200 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Repetition, repetition, repetition, May 5, 2002
By A Customer
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.
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90 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
SOS Indeed, September 30, 2002
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.
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307 of 345 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing doesn't begin to cover it., May 3, 2002
By A Customer
...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.
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