Rating: 
Summary: What a great book!
Review: For all ardent fans of Ayla and Jondalar and their creator, Jean Auel, this book is a gem The 12-year wait between "Plains of Passage" and this one was difficult, but will worth it! I really couldn't put it down. We finally get to find out what
Alya meant when she said that she had seen that cave before. Loved every word!!
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely disappointing
Review: I've been a huge fan of the Earth's Children series since I first read Clan of the Cave Bear. I thought that Plains of Passage was a little too detailed at time about the flora and funa that the characters were traveling through but overall it was a great story. I'd be happy if Shelters of Stone were in line with that. I just could not get into the story, if in fact there was one. Seriously, the first 300 pages are pretty much nothing but introductions to one-line characters that do nothing for the plot. Pretty much "this is so and so from this cave". Then they're never mentioned again. There's a couple of minor conflicts such as when Ayla meets the woman that Jondular was promised to before he left but the conflicts are easily solved. I was also expecting a lot more from the search for Jondular's brother in the spirit world. It was mentioned so many times in the previous novels that I was really looking forward to it. Again, the actual scene fell flat. The characters drink the special tea, go into the spirit world, find the brother, and send him on his way. No muss, no fuss, no bother. The whole part only took a couple of pages. There was more description of the cave that they were in than the event itself. Plus the event is told from Ayla's point of view but only Jondular sees his brother (if he does, they never really discuss it at the time) so she only gets impressions of what's happening. What kind of story-telling device is that? Overall I think that Ms. Auel did a great job researching to give the story local flavor but the plot left me feeling empty.
Rating: 
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK
Review: Like everyone else, I waited for tweleve years for this book.. and I ran out and bought it as soon as I could. I want my money and my nine hours back. The characters are bland. There was no plot, no twists, and just about nothing happening that wasn't either easy to foresee or a rehash of books one through four. Wait till book six comes out, then pick this one up in paperback and skim it. Trust me, I'm trying to save you the anguish of characters you can't get into, events that are just plain silly, and the endless retelling of events that you don't need to be told about if you bothered to read the rest of the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new here.....700+ pages of rerun
Review: What a bitter disapointment/a repeat of all books up to now/she meets the zelandoni they are scared of her/ they grow to accept her she has Jondalars child book ends with her agreeing that she is a Zelondona their name for mog-ur or mamuti. Some of the pages seemed word for word from her other books. It was clear this book was written for profit not because she had nanyrthing new or interesting to add........
Rating:
Summary: Rather disappointing, lacking the depth of the others
Review: After waiting so long for this book, I was disappointed on the reuse of previous information from the other books. Yes, they needed to recount their adventures but it seemed to make up the majority of the book. The only really key new theme was the relationship between Ayla and the Zelandonia and even that wasn't in the depth and detail that situations in previous books were presented. I found this book rather "fluffy" compared to the others and don't think Ms Auel was really into writing it. Furthermore, it ending with such an obvious "wait for the next one" it didn't seem complete. I felt each previous book told its own complete story even though it led you to expect another.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing doesn't begin to cover it.
Review: ...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.
Rating:
Summary: Long Awaited--Kind of Disappointed
Review: After eagerly awaiting the 5th book for over 10 years I find myself disappointed in it. It was very slow going at the beginning and introduced too many new characters who didn't seem to have a whole lot to do with anything. Brukeval and Laramar could have been made into better antagonists but were left kind of hanging. Don't get me wrong...I loved her first three books and the fourth was alright but I guess I expected more out of the fifth book because it took so long to be finished. Hopefully the 6th book won't take as long and will be better than the 5th.
Rating:
Summary: Shelters of Stone
Review: I was very disappointed in this last installment. 2/3 of the book seemed to span a total of 2 months and then in the last 2 chapters we rushed through 6 months of time. The character development was very poor and the humanity of the characters was missing. I would have rather spent my time re-reading Clan of the Cave Bear. It would have been a better story.
Rating:
Summary: Excited to read more finally!
Review: I've read the other 4 books in the series countless times, and was very excited to finally find out more of what was happening in Ayla/Jondalar's lives. I thought the book was interesting, and didn't see as much repitition as I'd expected from other reviews. This book didn't have as many really "high points" as some of the others, but was still very enjoyable. It also ended on a much more "to be continued" note. While I knew the others would be continued, they seemed to be more stories in themselves that could stand alone. This one, despite its length, still left so much hanging at the end. And covered such a short time period compared to the first few books - so much time was spent meeting everyone and learning about all of them that there wasn't much time left for anything to happen. But I loved the book (as I did all the others) and hope book 6 is much quicker in coming!
Rating:
Summary: A long-awaited rip-off
Review: Do not waste your money on this piece of garbage. How many times are we going to see this formula? Ayla meets strangers, who don't trust her. Then they like her. Then they find out about the Clan and don't trust her. Then they love her again. This book is nothing new. The entire thing is a rehash of the previous three (yes it was used in Clan of the Cavebear, so I should say previous four); Auel doesn't even bother trying to come up with new ideas. The most interesting part, the birth of Ayla's child, is taken care of so fast you almost miss it, and her attitude to the child is one of "Oh isn't this nice?" No where NEAR the fierce love she had for Durc. It was totally unrealistic that a woman who had wanted another child for so long would be so unemotional about finally getting that child. And of course the tribe has their version of Broud, who immediately doesn't like or trust Ayla. It's the same character with a different outfit, and we've seen him lots of times before. And the tribe is all a twitter about the animals. YES WE KNOW ALREADY!! The biggest disapppoint was the total lack of plot development. Except for having her child and tieing the knot with Dalamar, nothing new or exciting happens. (and those things are debatable as exciting anyway). I wish Auel had taken another few years to at least find a plot for this one, because there is none. Nada. Zip. It's not even worth the cost of driving to the library to check it out.
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