The Shelters of Stone

I read all of the Earth’s Children books in the series. The first one was pretty good and the subsequent ones had interesting premises and characters, but Ms Auel’s habit of cut & pasting many frequently occurring descriptions became soooo irritating and predictable and distracting, that it very much detracted from my enjoyment of the book. I understand that in a series, you may have to repeat descriptions of things, events and people for the benefit of readers who may not have read all the earlier books in the series, but Ms Auel repeated many descriptions word-for-word over and over within each book. For example, the 1st time anyone meets the heroine we are once again subjected to her interlocutor’s unspoken musings about her strange accent which “wasn’t quite like and accent but more like she was swallowing some of the sounds as she spoke.” Then the author AGAIN explains that this peculiar manner of speech was due to her having been raised by flatheads who call themselves “clan.” I could name 15 or 20 more examples of these pointless, tedious word-for-word cut & paste descriptions (e.g., regarding their love-making details, how she learned to hunt, who raised her and what a Medicine Woman is, why/how she got her pet horse and lion, ad nauseam.) It was really the worst example of lazy writing I have ever read, and very much spoiled what could have been a really fun read.

I agree completely with the review stating “REPETITION” ad nauseam. Having read previous books in this series, I am heartily disappointed. Very little story so far (I’m 15% into the tome). The only good thing I can say is “thank goodness I only paid for the Kindle edition”, keeping my wasted money to a minimum. If there’s anything new and interesting in this book, I’ve yet to come across it. I skip page after page after page of redundant detail about the terrain, climate and so forth. If Ms Auel is attempting to equal James A. Michener’s abilities, she falls waaaaay short.

Boring and a waste of time.

2/21/15
Finally finished the book. Where things actually happen, it’s fascinating, but much too much repetitious writing about the terrain and ways/means of making the tools needed to survive. My view is that about 2/3 of the book could have been eliminated to make an exciting novel. The only thing that saves it is the ability to skip rapidly forward every time the author gets into the stuff repeated from previous novels or even through previous sections of this book. My rating is changed to 2 stars, about 1/3 of possible stars, as about 1/3 of the novel held my interest.

This is an enjoyable but repetitive series. If you have read them all, she does repeat herself filling you in on the outside chance that you have not read the other books. Other than that, her heroine gets credit for most of the remarkable inventions of mankind: domesticating animals, fire using flint, and feminism, all centuries in advance of their actual introduction. This is all excusable as the story is so well told, the characters so well developed and memorable, and the descriptions of the environment are pure descriptive poetry. The conflicts and people are modern, and become believable, quite a feat for a 35,000 year old tale. I wished that there had been illustrations with the text.

This whole series is so fuggin good I read the whole series in what might be record time. Then I got to this book and it was a huge let down. Though the book is decent you can tell by how it’s written it wasn’t suppose to be the last book. That’s the free pass I’m going to give it because if not then this author went from an amazing writer to a horrible one over the span of one book. Which I think is highly unlikely unless there is another unforeseen event that prevented her from preforming at her usual. Do I discourage you from reading it? Definitely not and how could you if you loved the series as much as I did.

12/14/2013 6:36am The Shelters of Stone Jean Auel (Spoiler)
I read all six volumes in this series, the original book “The Clan of Cave Bear” is the best of the series, I’m unable to review this book without mentioning the whole series briefly. This fifth in the series follows, the fourth book “The Plains of Passage,” the two main characters Ayla and Jondalar finally reach their destination in Zelandonii in south central France (his birth/home) after traveling for one year across rough terrain and crossing a dangerous glacier, from the Eastern European territory, the Danube River, the Ukraine, the Black Sea, Germany. When they finally arrive in Jondalar’s home, the book doesn’t really know what to do with the characters except mention a few people and never fully develops them or has them contribute to the story in any meaningful way. The author repeats things so often, I had a tendency to yell out you already said that, ad nauseam. The title of this book, “The Shelters of Stone” indicates a period of history that is unknown, who lived in the stone dwellings previously? There is a hint that the Cro-Magnons may have pushed out the Neanderthals, years before, they have cave drawings that were made hundreds of years earlier and they kept drawing right on top of the previous ones. A group of residents, who are suppose to be some sort of spiritual advisers have control over what these people are suppose to believe, how they live their lives. These people have no clue to what they are talking about because they don’t know anything. When Ayla asks what does this cave drawing mean, the head witch-doctor replies, ‘what do you think it means?’ Ayla knows this early-cave-dwelling hippie-witch has no idea what it is, and this hippie seems bent on taking hallucinogenic potions, teas in order to visit the world beyond and try to scare the crap out of her fearful residents. A major disappointment.

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