Rating: 
Summary: long awaited and well worth it
Review: I read many reviews of this bool and I don't understand, the only book of the series that I have not read countless times is the first one, CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR. This book was everthing I expected of it. My biggest question is, is everyone reading the same book???????????? I have read SOS twice now and do not find anything out of line with Ms. Auel's writing, just one question will we have to wait so long for book 6?...
Rating:
Summary: Ditto to Marcinetta's Review
Review: Reading Marcinetta's review... "it's a beach/plane reading book"... made me realize why I enjoyed it as much as I did. I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did, but, I was reading it on the plane and at the beach. Fun, light reading that I could easily jump in and out of. Honestly, after her last one, I almost didn't read this one. I'd pretty much given up on Jean Auel's series. I was so bored by the long drawn out "Plains of Passage" and the ridiculously drawn out sex scenes. While her new novel suffers many of the issues you read in these reviews, this book is better than her last one,and I did enjoy reading it. The key was not going into it with high expectations. I think that is the key to these books any more. We all got hooked with "Clan of the Cave Bear" 20+ years ago...Ayla is like an old friend and you just want to know how she is doing. My opinion...if you are into these books, read this one, it's better than the last one. And I actually look forward to her final novel. I'd like to learn more about the Zelandonnia spritual word, and if Jean Auel heads the reviews of her readers, just maybe she could do justice to the final book in this series.
Rating: 
Summary: Unrealistic Expectations?
Review: Wow, I came to write a little review to find over 300 negative ones. I don't think this was such a bad book. I wasn't overly fond of The Plains of Passage (I just wanted them to find a home already) so I guess I wasn't surprised with the length and the detail of this novel. Nor was I expecting much after that one. As one reviewer wrote, she's creating an entire world and society and I guess she or her editor felt a need to explain it to us to the last detail. Yes, I too waited 12 years for this book and while it isn't Clan of the Cave Bear, I didn't expect that. I like the characters and like the fact that the story continues. She could have just quit writing them but she didn't. Perhaps she should have, but it's too late for that now. Besides, this is a series folks and how many series that run longer than three books really live up to their predecessors? Or the first one? Maybe we expected too much? I didn't mind the repetition. I didn't mind the repetition. I didn't feel that Auel was cheating or talking down to her readers. She felt a need to explain her world, so be it. The book and story weren't the greatest but I'm glad to have read it for myself, glad the prehistorical world continues, glad that Ayla can live (or try to live) a quiet life and bear her child in peace. I don't mind Ayla as a seemingly flawless character. I don't think of her as a real person but a composite of modern humans and our greatest strengths. I don't mind for one novel seeing an example of our best selves. If you don't mind that, then you won't mind the characterization of Ayla in this novel. If you are expecting more than that, reread Clan of the Cave Bear. I didn't buy the hardcover. I borrowed this book from the library. And I dragged it around for a week while I read it. But I will buy it to add to my other paperbacks in this series. Series like this don't come around too often. I say if you like the series, buy The Shelters of Stone. Read it and form your own opinion and give Auel one last chance with the next one . . . but get them from the library first. For those who feel real cheated and angry, Auel did print an apologetic letter for the length of time it took her to write this tome in the back of the new editon of The Plains of Passage. Maybe that tone of apology was for more than the 12 years. Take it as you wish.
Rating: 
Summary: Waited too long for too little
Review: I'd eagerly awaited this "new" book in the series, however, I could have saved my money, and re-read what I already have in my collection. I really expected more than a rehash of events, we don't need to spend an entire tome reliving the same old prejudices Ayla had gone through before. I had anticipated a final chapter, with Ayla meeting Durc and her Clan at some point, and living up to a dream she had about Durc and a new child she had meeting on perhaps dangerous ground. Or maybe I just dreamt this plot. At any rate, since MS Auel is writing another book, I sincerely hope she can get down to a continuation of the story and not simply a rehash of prior books with one new event!!
Rating: 
Summary: I would've given it a half star...
Review: if that were available. This was an awful book. I didn't enjoy any portion of it. I was drawn in by the wonderful 'Clan', and even liked the 'Valley'. Couldn't have cared less about the 'Mammoths', but suffered on to the bitter end. I feel like Jean became a cut-and-paste master, and I can tell you all of Ayla's connections in my sleep! Too repetitive, too bland. Wait for the paperback at the 1/2 off store if you must read this.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, please..........
Review: Pre-historic drivel......I forced myself to read almost every word....the alternative entertainment would be drilling holes in my head with a slow drill. Even the sex scenes were cut and pasted from earlier work......And how many dramatic inventions and cultural innovations can one gorgeous 19 year old come up with? Please.......And we had a contest at our house: who could aloud read from 'The Mother's Song' the longest without dissolving in laughter. Is this a humorous book?
Rating:
Summary: What Happened?? (nothing much)
Review: Maybe I had to wait too long for this book. Maybe Auel was pressured into writing it & her heart wasn't in it. Maybe she didn't even write it. Some one of these has to explain the vast difference in enjoyment I experienced between the first 4 books and this one. The more I think about it, the more I wonder how this book even made it out the publisher's door. There was too much repetition & rehash (after 12 years I think readers had too much time to read & re-read the other books and know the past backwards & forwards). Not enough interesting plot development occurred - everything that I expected to have happen in maybe the first 1/4th of the book took the entire 700 pages, and little new or unexpected things happened to spice up the expected events. I suspect 90% of her readers could have fashioned a more exciting plot than this book had, especially after having over a decade to let their imaginations go at it. There were too many characters and sidelines to the story partially developed & then dropped. With all the wait between #4 & #5 I assumed extensive research was involved, but the background development resulting from any research was far inferior to the depth of the 4th book. This book is, at best, an uneventful bridge to book #6, IF Auel's readers are not too annoyed at having rushed out to pay hardback prices for this one to even bother to buy the next one. The things of importance I took away from this book could have been conveyed in a few chapters of the next one. Surely the editors could have seen how inferior this book was to the first four. The publishers can only have been concerned with reaping hardback revenues, not maintaining the author's reputation, to have allowed this book to go out their doors the way it is. I cannot imagine the paperback doing well at all, and if there is to be a 6th book, she has a major redemption task in front of her.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: Somewhere along the way, Jean Auel forgot that a novel is supposed to have a story. The latest installment in the Earth's Children's Series drags along on "Ayla and Jondalar get married and have a baby," surrounded by hundreds of pages of obviously well-researched but often tedious details more suited to a taped narration in a natural history museum. Characterization is often reduced to caricature. Ayla, the prehistoric superwoman, is the first human being to domesticate animals and to discover the fire-starting properties of iron pyrite. Ludicrously, she also becomes the first to realize that pregnancy results from sexual intercourse. In short, this is not a novel; it's a National Geographic special.
Rating:
Summary: please dont waste your money
Review: I read the first chapter on-line at Amazon, and was a trifle suspicious as it was yet again the usual intro with the "meet the animals....etc etc". However I figured that after the last debacle of "plains of passage" where 50% of the book was a repetition of the previous 2 books, the editors had put their 2 pennysworth in and some strict editting had come into play. After all this one had taken 10 years to complete!!!!???!!
So it was my birthday and thought why not complete the set... and I paid good money and bought the book!...I was [cheated]
There is nothing new, in fact to look at the 5 novels in total, if you removed all the repetitions from them all (e.g. She's preggy- so she has to pass water frequently not just once once -but twice- three or even more.... ) (and Jondalar does love to clean his toothypegs with a wintergreen twiglet!!! 2-3 times in SOS, 3 times in POP, 4 time in MMH, and twice in VOH) theres really isn't enough story line to support any more than 3 books.
In fact there's certainly no new story line in this book. If you look back to The Mammoth Hunters it was inevitable that she was going to be the all powerful earth mother..... she didn't even struggle much against it... so what could possibly be new in the next 6th book? just more of the initiation into Auels version of yet another ceremony.... It would have been much more interesting if new characters had been developed after the Valley of the Horses, and we moved a decade on from these people. After all she's been going around spreading these "radical" ideas around.... So.... what did happened back in the mamutoi camp when she left??? ...... What did happen to Broud, Durc and and all the other characters ....???
It really isn't good enough....... the first 2 novels were excellent...... but p'raps Jean Auel needs a ghost writer to complete the series.
Rating:
Summary: The Shelters of Stone by Jean Auel
Review: When I first discovered "Clan of the Cave Bear" many years ago ,I couldn't put it down...many nights I would still be readi ng at 4 a.m.!!In fact over the years I have read "Clan of the Cave Bear" seven times, "The Valley of Horses" three times and "the Mammoth Hunters" twice. "Plains of Passage" should have alerted me to the change of style..Ayla had become a superfical character,always right..the savior of the human race etc etc. Still when "Shelters of Stone" was finally released I must have been one of the first to purchase a copy. What an unbelieveable disappointment!!! I can understand having to reiterate on the story since it has been twelve years since the last book but please, most readers would have remembered the main theme and new readers would have read in sequence so there was no need to go on for so long.
Also Auel's obvious knowledge of prehistoric times is daunting and her textbook descriptions of cave life etc are impressive especially if I had wanted to read a reference book but I bought this book for enjoyment and I found Ayla had lost her crediblity. Her character was underdeveloped and superficial. As for Jondalar he became 'a cardboard cut out'. Gone was the adventurous free spirit ..the great hunter. The love scenes between them were just a rehash from the previous books and boring to have to read again and again and again!!!!The reader does not need such graphic descriptions that are really quite out of character for prehistoric men and women! To have to wade through the same style of lovemaking so many times is dull and does nothing for plot development -least of all for reader interest.
The book finally showed a bit of spark towards the end obviously setting up for a sequel but here's one reader who will be looking elsewhere for a good read.
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