The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children #5) » (Reprint)

Never has the Cro-Magnon era been so exciting. With her bestselling The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel singlehandedly founded a new genre, The Pre-Historical Novel. Auel s Earth s Children series, which combines rich characterizations with scrupulous research, has earned her an international following.

The Shelters of Stone opens as Ayla and Jondalar, along with their animal friends, Wolf, Whinney, and Racer, complete their epic journey across Europe and are greeted by Jondalar’s people: the Zelandonii. The people of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii fascinate Ayla. Their clothes, customs, artifacts, even their homes—formed in great cliffs of vertical limestone—are a source of wonder to her. And in the woman Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of the Ninth Cave (and the one who initiated Jondalar into the Gift of Pleasure), she meets a fellow healer with whom to share her knowledge and skills.

But as Ayla and Jondalar prepare for the formal mating at the Summer Meeting, there are difficulties. Not all the Zelandonii are welcoming. Some fear Ayla’s unfamiliar ways and abhor her relationship with those they call flatheads and she calls Clan. Some even oppose her mating with Jondalar, and make their displeasure known. Ayla has to call on all her skills, intelligence, knowledge, and instincts to find her way in this complicated society, to prepare for the birth of her child, and to decide whether she will accept new challenges and play a significant role in the destiny of the Zelandonii.

Jean Auel is at her very best in this superbly textured creation of a prehistoric society. The Shelters of Stone is a sweeping story of love and danger, with all the wonderful detail—based on meticulous research— that makes her novels unique. It is a triumphant continuation of the Earth’s Children® saga that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear. And it includes an amazing rhythmic poem that describes the birth of Earth’s Children and plays its own role in the narrative of The Shelters of Stone.

Book Magazine

Well over a decade since the last volume of her Earth's Children series hulked atop the bestseller lists, Auel has decided to continue the prehistoric saga of that preternaturally resourceful Clan woman, Ayla. After traipsing the glacial wilderness that would become Europe, Ayla and her hunky beau Jondalar arrive to stay with his people, the Zelandonii. Although the Zelandonii are a comparatively advanced tribe—they live in vast limestone caves and have elaborate social rituals—they still fear many of the strange things the two bring with them, like a bow and arrows, the ability to make fire and the animals they have tamed. After Ayla is introduced to seemingly every person in the caves, plans are made for her and Jondalar to be married. Soon the reader realizes that half of the book has passed with just about nothing of import happening. Auel spends so much time with the stories of Ayla's past that it often seems as if this book is meant to be a refresher course instead of a new installment. Auel's research is impressive, but when it comes to character development, the novel is frighteningly juvenile.