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Sep 19, 2011

Ally rated it:

Auel has written a beautiful saga about prehistoric man, and if I weren't so attached to her characters and their fate, I would have chucked this book long ago. Sadly, this is the worst of the five--mainly because it lacks plot and interest. Auel spends 200 pages on their first day with the Zelandoni, about 600 on the first month or so, then suddenly the last months whizz by in, maybe, 100 pages. She is redundant not only from her previous books, but within the book itself. She makes the sam More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Ani rated it:

I can't believe we had to wait 12 years for this book. It is a far cry from The Clan of the Cave Bear, which was captivating in its detail and character development. This book is in sore need of an editor. There is too much detailed description, and the pace moves incredibly slowly. Ayla is too perfect of a character, and the characters who don't like her are inevitably drunks or jealous bitches.

I feel really committed to this series, since I really loved the first two books, and li More...

1 comment like (15 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2007

Beth rated it:

Total Crap. Enough of "Pleasures" and discriptive scenes of ice age Europe. Some new information and a plot would have been great. The series has gone from one of my favorite books (Clan of the Cave Bear) to something I almost didn't finish. The series started crashing with "Plains of Passage" where Jondalar and Ayla "Pleasured" themselves across the continent while righing wrongs, curing injustice and improving life styles in their spare time. "Shelter" More...

2 comments like (16 people liked it)

Apr 30, 2010

Hannah rated it:

...hindsight being 20/20, I would have wished that Auel had spent an ADDITIONAL 12 years revising this book and gotten a better editor instead of dumping this horrible parody of our beloved Ayla on her fan kingdom. Not even a brief "thank you for your patience" on her dedication page to all of us who put her financial portfolio in the stratosphere these 20+ years.
It apprears she took her loyal readers for granted in a big way. It's obvious from the writing that she doesn't care More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2008

Danielle rated it:

I couldn't wait for this book to end. Repetitive repetitive repetitive. Auel uses the same phrases and descriptions so many times throughout all five books that it drove me batty. How many formal introductions of the same characters do there have to be? How many times do you have to tell the story of how Ayla acquired her animals, found Jondalar, was raised by flatheads, etc. etc. etc. Did Auel really need to write out the really long mother song multiple times??? And the thing that drove More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Kim rated it:

I would have liked to like this one more since I waited so long for it, but it seems as if the author just get lazier each book. The research is amazing, but the plot, the characters, all of that fails more with each book.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2009

Kara rated it:

Utter crap. Pretend the series ended with Plains of Passage and Ayla and Jondalar had a baby and lived happily ever after.

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2011

Stephanie / seenonflickr rated it:

First read April 2009.
Sometimes you just need some caveman politics, cultural studies, and soft-core porn to comfort you in rough times. Or at least I do. (Also? This book was the fifth in a buy-four-get-one-free at the library book sale.)

Rereading February 2011 in anticipation of the last book in the series coming out this spring.

This book does not need to be 800+ pages long! If only Auel didn't have Ayla tell and re-tell the same stories every time she meets a new More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2009

Mike rated it:

This is book 5 in a series I have been following since high school. The first was Clan Of The Cave Bear, followed by Valley Of The Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, Plains Of Passage, and now The Shelters Of Stone. In Clan Of The Cave Bear, I got hooked on the story of the main character, named Ayla. The books are set in prehistoric eras when people were still hunting with spears, living in caves and dodging mammoths on the way home. (what's the dark stuff between a mammoth's toe nails? Slow cave More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2008

Malcolm rated it:

This book took me longer to read that the previous four books - not because it wasn't interesting to read. Rather, I didn't want the book to end. Certainly, this book has some "fill" that could have be cut but it doesn't distract from what is overall, a great read. Ayla and Jondalar cross a great glacier dividing northern Europe to return to Jondalars people who live in natural spacious stone caves. Ayla is accepted by his people, well most of them. Of course, there are a few flies More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2007

Emily rated it:

This book is not worth reading unless you fell in love with Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of the Horses and are desperate to find out how her story continues. Each installment in this series is weighted down with the retelling of all of the previous books in the series, plus all the description that Jean Auel heaps into her books, to the point that this monster advances Ayla's story by barely a year. Typically, the description of technology, biology, and landscape in the Earth's Chi More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2007

Stef rated it:

Meh. What can I say. The series certainly continued on a horrible downward spiral. But why oh why did I read all of it? It couldn;t have been simply compulsion to finish.. And why do I find myself thinking about the story and the setting so much, could it have been because I have read nearly 3,000 pages of it over two months of my life? Hmmm, perhaps I liked it a little bit, if only for the familiarity of characters i have gotten to know (and hate!) so well. I wouldnt recommend anyone More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 22, 2009

Corrie rated it:

Let me first say that I read the earlier books of this series approximately 20 years ago. I remember really enjoying them. At that time, at least to me, they were very original and exciting. The only complaint I had was that Ayla was such an 'amazing' woman, that it wouldn't have shocked me if the author had her invent electricity, the automobile and the computer since she invented everything else known to mankind.

However, reading this book now really made me wonder if they wer More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 24, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Sarah (Tail-Kinker) rated it:

Jondalar and Ayla have returned to his home of the Zelandonii and are preparing to be Mated and set up their hearth and begin their lives together...

Sometimes it seemed to take forever...the first few days took up much of the book overall and seemed to stumble around well-worn areas that have been rehashed interminably in earlier books. I understand that Ayla and Jondalar would be called upon to tell of their exploits, but do the readers have to be treated to these re-hashings? I wou More...

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Apr 28, 2011

Heather rated it:

I recently read this book for the 2nd or 3rd time and it was just OK. Even though I recently read the book, I only remember a few parts (says a lot about the book). The first 4 books were much better than this book and I think set such high expectations that the author couldn't live up to. As I stated in the review of the first 4 books, the author tends to repeat, repeat, & repeat the same things over and over again. It becomes annoying when the author tells you how to prepare certain foods More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Amber rated it:

I didn't finish this book. I might try to finish it some time, but so far it was a struggle trying even to get halfway through it. This is not so much a review, but more like a couple of complaints I have.

Auel is extremely repetitive and also very descriptive. She's keeps reminding her readers of things they already know from reading the first four books, which is of course terribly boring. There are also large paragraphs where she describes the landscape, which one has the urge to s More...

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Mar 23, 2011

Irene rated it:

This fifth installment in the Earth's Children series is pretty good. (It's hard to forget how masterful Clan of the Cave Bear is and it's hard not to compare.) I enjoyed getting to spend time with Ayla and Jondalar again. Auel always does an incredible job of making me feel like I'm walking alongside her Cro-Magnon characters. I do have to admit that I skipped The Plains of Passage, mainly because I could not get into the story. Tried three different times to read that book and couldn't. More...

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Dec 22, 2010

Rebecca rated it:

Having read the whole series.... book 1 ROCKED, book 2 was not bad... book 3 was cheesy.... book 4 was a bore, book 5 however seems to be getting back on track and is on par with book 2. Ms. Auel has this nasty habit of repeating everything so much that you have the feeling its to compensate for lack of inspiration. Lady, if we've gotten to book 5 all we need is a reminder (think flat heads) you don't have to tell us everything all over again, and DEFINITELY not more than once per book. That and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2011

Melissa rated it:

This fifth book in the Earth's Children series lacks the wonderfulness of the first four. While Auel's bad is definitely better than some author's good, it may prove to be a disappointment to some readers, and I definitely recommend that anyone whose never read the series before start at the beginning with Clan of the Cave Bear. This book does not suit well as a stand-alone.

For those not familiar with the series (and a possible spoiler) Ayla was a little girl when she was adopted int More...

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Nov 11, 2010

Phoebe rated it:

I was looking for some low-brow entertainment when I turned to this, the final book of Jean Auel's series about Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Weighing in at nearly 900 pages, I wasn't expecting a quick read, but at least something light and fun to pass the time while my brain recovered from adjusting to life with a newborn. Sadly, of those 900 pages, only about 50 contained any evidence of plot. The rest of the book was made up of endless repetition of the action covered in the first four boo More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 18, 2010

~M~ rated it:

I'm torn about this book. I was very interested to see the Zelandonii through Ayla's eyes. I was excited to learn about a new prehistoric culture. I was happy Ayla and Jondalar resolved their "issues." I was interested to see if Jondalar's people would accept Ayla and how they would react to her story.

I was really happy to get through The Plains of Passage, which I found intensely boring. I was ready for the next adventure!

All that is in the book but... blah. It More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 06, 2012

Josh rated it:

This novel, the fifth in the Earth's Children series, was a definite step-up from its two predecessors in my opinion. Auel spent the majority of the last novel, The Plains of Passage, describing foliage at length and throwing gratuitous sex scenes at the reader faster than a death eater throwing jinxes. I found The Shelters of Stone was more similar to The Clan of the Cave Bear in that through Ayla, the reader is able to discover and explore a entirely different race of people and their way of l More...

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Jan 16, 2010

Ariel rated it:

Okay I have some beef with this book ! The whole series was amazing then this one was kind of a major let down ! I don't know if anyone else thought so , but I know I sure did . Ole well I still liked it well enough , it only gets four stars though .

I heard or seen somewhere that she was supposed to be making a sixth one .. does anyone know if that's true ?! I would love to read a sixth book where her and Jondalar travel back and she gets to see Durc . The way this one ended it seems More...

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Jun 27, 2011

Starfire rated it:

On the plus side: research. So. Much. Research. Some of which was theory that has since been superseded. Also, worldbuilding. Of which there is much, and it's (for the most part) internally consistent.

On the minus? Repetition. So. Much. Repetition. Different characters thinking EXACTLY the same thing. In EXACTLY the same words. Paragraphs worth of repeated description. Repeated exposition. Repeated dialogue. Repeated repetition. Gahhhhhh!

Add to that the constant POV changes between paragraphs, More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2011

Tania rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 11, 2011

Liz rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Feb 24, 2011

Isis rated it:

After finishing the doorstop "Plains of Passage" I was not looking forwards to reading this latest book in the saga (apparently there is one more to come but not yet published). Part of me was sort of hoping that it would be better than "Plains of Passage" and "The Mammoth Hunters", because finally Ayla and Jondalar have reached the place that was their goal since three books ago, and finally we might get a somewhat meatier plot. Unfortunately, it was trouble from t More...

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Mar 28, 2010

Sarah705 rated it:

Wow, that was an amazing book. Besides the first, it was definitely the best in the series. Throughout the whole book, but especially during the last few chapters, I really found myself thinking about the whole idea of discovery.

During the whole series the main character, Ayla, is always figuring out new techniques and discovering new ideas and possibilities. She seems to be the only one who can figure these things out, although all of the characters (among them the Mamutoi, Zeladoni More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 03, 2009

Icia rated it:

The time periods between events are so sudden and enlongated, I hate not knowing what happens in-between! The ending was very weak, when compared to Auel's other novels. I didn't like the obsession the head Donii had with incorporating Ayla into the Mother's fold. It was annoying for some reason, and I hope it initiates something VERY interesting in the last book. There was severe de-emphasis of Jondalar and Ayla's child at the end of the book, even though throughout the rest of the series she w More...

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