Rating: 
Summary: What Happened?
Review: I have been a fan of this series since Cave Bear was first published. My favorite book was Valley of Horses. When I heard Shelters was on the shelves, I ran straight out and bought it and was planning on devouring it that night.
That was on the day it first hit the shelves and I just got through reading it. It was like walking up a sand dune with a 50lb pack on my back. I had to make myself read it.
Maybe it is a setup for the next book, that's the only thing I can think of. Like The Empire Strikes Back. It set up Return of the Jedi and that was about all. I'm trying to convey as much respect as I can to Ms Auel, as I do admire and respect her work. I have a BA in Anthropology, and believe me, she's done her homework.
I was so starved for something profound to happen in this book, I was actually hoping Jondalar would bite the dust in a hunting accident towards the end. But, what more is there for them to do? They've completed the journey and there are no more worlds to conquer.
Rating: 
Summary: The Shelters of Stone
Review: This most recent offering in the Earth's Children Series is a decent read if you are looking for a book written by an average author. If you are looking for the brilliance and creativity you found in the first four books you will be disappointed. Reading this book leaves you wondering why you had to wait so many years. It ties up what happens to Ayla and Jondalar and would have made a nice ending to the fourth book but it just is not able to stand on its own. There is a strong feeling that Jean Auel was tired and having made a nice short story suitable for lunch hour reading she reworked it using repetitive wording and other filler suitable for a high school science report to stretch the story in an effort to make it a book. There is just no meat to the story, no strong conflict, no heart wrenching decisions, just nothing to make you care about the characters. Fans will be disappointed in this story but at least it gives a feeling of closure, unlike the first four books this one does not leave you hungry and desperate for more. Like oatmeal when you want steak...it will fill the void but never satisfy the craving for red meat. The best I can say is that after reading this I feel indifferent when I think about the possibility of a sixth book. The addiction has been cured. Buy it and let the memories of past triumph temper your criticism for a brilliant author who has lost her way.
Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to book six
Review: This book was excellent - as an introduction to the next book in the series. There's really not a main climactic point, just a series of lesser ups and downs. There are a few great moments - mostly anything taking place in a cave - that make the whole thing worthwhile. This book has taken a lot of flak, but if the point of this book was to introduce everything that is to come in the next book, it served its purpose.
Rating:
Summary: Read It, But....
Review: I actually read the whole series over a summer, so I was not among the excited fans waiting for this book. But, ergh. Jean M Auel, please please please don't make her a Zelandonii, that would be incredibly corny.WILL EVERYONE STOP FALLING IN LOVE WITH AYLA? "I'd like to get to know her. She has courage and a strong will." Who would say this? "Well, if you need anything..." Yes, we realize Ayla is pretty, blah blah blah. Ayla is portrayed as waaaay too perfect, and if someone like this exists, it shouldn't be jealous and spoiled Jondalar who gets her. Thonolan, maybe. WHEN OH WHEN OH WHEN... The reader spends the book waiting for the mating of Ayla and Jondalar, and then for the birth of Jonayla (bad bad bad name). FRUSTRATION I was really excited upon the meeting of Brukeval and read through the book searching for his name, but there were no developements. GOODY TWO SHOES The whole poor family thing and how Ayla helps them through is page wasted. REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT We rehear the stories of Ayla and Jondalar, the excitement over their now not-so-new inventions, the titles of everyone again and again and again. Sorry folks, Clan was a classic. This is a downfall.
Jean M. Auel, I'll wait twenty years if your last book is like the first, I truly will.
Rating:
Summary: Ho hum...not that different from books three and four
Review: I personally don't see what's so different about this book from The Mammoth Hunters or The Plains of Passage. When all is said and done, there will only be three important books in this series: The Clan of the Cave Bear (the best, by far, where we are witness to Ayla's unbelievable upbringing), The Valley of Horses (where we see how Ayla copes with being expelled from the only family she's ever known, and learns how to become self sufficient in an ancient world cruel to loners - not to mention her first meeting of another person of the Others), and the final book where, hopefully, Auel will tie Ayla back to Brun's Clan somehow. The only very dramatic moments in this so-far five book series came from interactions with the Clan in the first book, and I hope and pray Auel brings it full circle by the end in the sixth book. Everything else is essentially filler. If you love Ayla - and if you've read all five of these books you must - then it's fun to follow her through her adventures across Europe. But make no mistake: nothing very dramatic happens in this entire series after the first book, including book five. Nothing that's going to keep you reading hours after bedtime because you can't bear to put it down. I have high hopes for book six. If it takes her 12 years to write it I'll be most upset.
Rating: 
Summary: Ayla and Jondalar wouldn't have been blond.
Review: I love the Clan books, they are brilliant Science Fiction,like Star Trek, of which I am also a fan. Auel builds a fictional world that is consistent within itself and has enough resemblance to our world to have the ring of truth. As in good historical fiction, Auel has researched her prehistoric era well. Because it is fiction, it is impossible to criticize her for literary license or even selecting the science she will use and distorting or ignoring the rest. It seems like nit picking to point out the parts that are pure pulp, but I can't help myself.
First of all, Ayla and Jondalar wouldn't have been blond. Their perfect looks seem to be derived from the much later Celts and super market romance fiction. Reporting the current state of scientific inquiry on the subject, Richard Klein and Blake Edgar wrote in The Dawn of Human Culture :
"To some archeologists, cataloguing the behavorial differences between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons smacks of Neanderthal-bashing, a kind of paleo-racism that all caring people should resist. Yet, our point is precisely that skeletal remains and genes imply that Neanderthals were not analogous to a modern 'race', however that is defined. Modern 'races'all originated very recently, mostly within the past 10,000 years..."
As the Clan books are set at about 30,000 years ago, the people were probably a kind of generic brown.
The Neanderthals were probably more different than they are portrayed by Auel. The above authors continue on that subject: "despite their large brains, their patent humanity, and their relatively recent existence...we suggest that they disappeared not simply because they didn't behave in a fully modren way, but because they couldn't." Auel exaggerates their more sympathetic qualities and over emphasises their ability to understand and communicate (albeit wordlessly) abstract concepts.
Rating: 
Summary: A long-awaited disappointment...
Review: Having been a faithful reader of the first 4 books, Shelters of Stone was eagerly anticipated for 11+ years. What a let-down! It is if someone else wrote this book. The repetition of descriptions of places or encounters that the characters have is annoying, to say the least. Jean Auel never wrote like this in the first 4 books. Ayla can rethink a thought or conversation for two or three pages. It is if the "author" is trying way too hard to educate the reader or make the situations in the book more true through repetition. Or the publisher, like a teacher, said this had to be so many pages long and the writer went back and repeated and rehashed each scene in the book. One of the most irritating books I've read in a long time. If you liked the first 4 books of the Earth Children series I would NOT recommend this book. It is a great disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Total Disappointment
Review: I waited 12 years for Ayla, and this book was a total disappointment. Nothing new happened, no new feelings, no new inventions, no new animals, no interesting story. Just a retteling of the previous books and a very expected meeting with the Zeladonii. Even the baby is only barely mentioned. I almost gave up in the middle it was so boring. I read the bad reviews and refused to beleive it, but if I hear bad review on 6 (who knows how long it will take to come out) I'm not going to read it. 1,2,3,4 were amazing. Jean, what happened to the magic?
Rating:
Summary: A colossal dud
Review: This book is one of the mose tedious reads I've ever slogged through. What a dud! Nearly 800 pages, and NOTHING HAPPENS. Auel has become so enamored with exploring her characters' motivations she's forgotten the need to entertain. This book is more of a paleoanthropology text than novel. Auel introduces scores of characters and gives none of them depth. As usual, Ayla is a superwoman who can do anything. Single lines of dialogue are often followed with up to two pages of descriptive asides that left me wanting to scream, "Get on with the story!" That is, if there was a story. If this was the first book in the series, it would never have seen the light of day. Auel repeats scenes over and over, such as people's fear at first spotting Wolf. Jondalar is his usual wimpy self who doesn't come to Ayla's defense when she's humiliated by Marona. All these pages, and there's ONE action scene! And even that one doesn't directly involve Ayla or Jondalar. It's probably for the best, since Auel has always been a terrible action writer. I can't believe I waited feverishly for 12 years for this turkey. Where was her editor? The book is full of hundreds of pages of needless descriptive detail that rob the story of any momentum. Auel seems to think it's entertaining to the reader to spend nearly the whole book inside her characters' heads. This one is even worse than that prehistoric romance novel, The Mammoth Hunters. She labored for 12 years and produced this? Give me a break!
Rating:
Summary: "Are we almost there?"
Review: This yawner reminds me of seemingly endless car trips when I was a kid. Is it really possible that the author of "Clan" wrote this turkey? - a Paleolithic soap opera drowning in herbal tea and endless introductions. I'm thankful I checked it out from the library instead of wasting [X]+, but I still paid 30+ days of fines to tough it out to the end. I think I'll celebrate reaching the end by brushing my teeth with a twig. (Did Jondalar use mouthwash? I forget.)
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