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jdglasgow's review
3.0
3.5 stars, but after reading some other reviews I ended up rounding down since Goodreads doesn’t allow half-stars. I still liked this book quite a bit, but it's definitely the least of the series so far and Auel's longstanding habit of being gratingly repetitive is in overdrive here - to the point it almost feels like antagonism toward the reader, like she’s mad at you for some reason and as a sort of passive-aggressive way of lashing out she’s forcing you to read about how Ayla found Whinney for the thirteenth time in the same book. Don’t get me wrong—as I said, I still liked this book quite a bit. It has some very strong moments. But I read my review of PLAINS OF PASSAGE before deciding on a rating, and I ended that review this this sentiment:
The flaws you just have to accept as a foundational part of the series; in my view, the strengths more than compensate for them.
This is to say that generally, despite being frustrated by Auel’s repetitiveness, those strong moments have felt like the more defining aspect of the series for me. I rated PLAINS OF PASSAGE 4 stars. This time, though there are some emotionally rewarding and narratively exciting scenes—the highlight, I believe, being when Ayla brings Lanidar, bullied because of a deformity, to demonstrate the spear-thrower before a huge crowd, instantly making him the coolest kid in school—when I think back to the highs of PLAINS OF PASSAGE, I’m not sure even the best scene in SHELTERS OF STONE reaches them. In my head, I’m asking myself, “Does any scene in this book match the moment when Ayla appears above the S’Armunai, shoots an arrow to untie Jondalar just before he was to be executed, challenges Attaroa in the S’Armunai language, and then rides off on horseback with Jondalar clinging to her?” My answer to that is no.
In fact, there was a moment approximately halfway through when I wondered if much had actually happened in this book. Unlike PLAINS OF PASSAGE, which moved from one action set-piece to the next, SHELTERS OF STONE is primarily about Ayla’s interaction with the Zelandonii and in particular her connection with the spiritual leader of the Zelandonii, Zelandoni. Thinking back over the book, though, I realized there were a number of very cool moments. When Marona tries to embarrass Ayla by tricking her into wearing boys’ underwear as a dress, but then Ayla wears it with confidence and makes it look stylish and sexy. The fact that almost everybody in the Zelandonii camp responds favorably to Ayla’s proclamation that flatheads are people and that she used to live with the Clan—a far cry from previous times she’s admitted her history and faced far more open discrimination. The way the Zelandonii are moved by watching the artful way Ayla speaks using the gestures of the Clan language. The bison hunt where a man is killed. When Ayla gives an impassioned speech about how she wants to be Zelandonii because she thinks of it as her native language, bringing everybody to tears. Ayla saving a neglected child by taking command, bathing her, and getting nursing women to share responsibility for feeding the baby; and the way she soothes the trauma of the older sister who had assumed responsibility of the baby before that. Ayla seeing 3-D recreations of animals painted inside a mystic cave, then encountering a cave vulva before taking a bizarre LSD trip to rescue Thonolan’s elan from being lost in limbo. And that’s just the first half!
In the second half: Lanidar stepping up to say that he loves Lanoga and will take care of her and the previously-neglected baby Larala in spite of his withered arm. The tension of the Matrimonial with four objectors present. The image of Ayla in her white-and-gold (or is it blue-and-black?) wedding dress, breasts bared, as she stands before the camp finally marrying Jondalar (it’s totally normal and not at all weird in their culture!). The medical scene where Ayla sets the leg of a boy mauled by a woolly rhinoceros. The medical scene where Ayla has to give Wolf stitches after he’s attacked by another pack of wolves. And, I mean, I guess there’s also the birth scene where Ayla finally has the child she’s been pregnant with all book, whom she namesRenesmee er… I mean Jonayla. I was never hugely invested in the “When will Ayla be pregnant?” storyline so although this is a big moment for the book it wasn’t particularly affecting for me personally. That aside, when I look back I realize I’ve identified a good number of scenes as particular bright spots. Even though my first thought was that nothing much had happened in half the book, upon reflection I realized a lot had, and I had fond feelings about what had happened.
Still, unlike PLAINS OF PASSAGE and the books which preceded it, I don’t find that the strength of these scenes is enough in this instance to overcome the book’s challenges: extreme repetitiveness and occasional flatness in the narrative as Auel dovetails into bland technical descriptions of Ice Age plant or animal life. And did I mention extreme repetitiveness? I might call it a draw: I’m equally impressed by the satisfying scenes as I am agitated by the plodding ones. Nevertheless, I’d still say that the positive things about SHELTERS OF STONE have the edge on the negative, hence the 3.5-star rating and the largely positive review. I’m still eager to continue with the sixth book in the series, THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, possibly before the end of the year.
P.S. I’ve said before that you can’t talk about an Earth’s Children book without discussing the sex scenes, although this is one you almost could. There’s less sex in this book than others, and what there is largely treads the same ground as previous books (Auel’s repetitiveness is also display in writing sex scenes, unfortunately) which makes them easy to gloss over. I did want to say, however, that I was surprised during the scene where Ayla gives Jondalar a blowjob that she spit it out afterward; she calls it his “essence”… I would have expected either the Clan or the Zelandonii to have some superstition about expelling a man’s essence. I guess not.
The flaws you just have to accept as a foundational part of the series; in my view, the strengths more than compensate for them.
This is to say that generally, despite being frustrated by Auel’s repetitiveness, those strong moments have felt like the more defining aspect of the series for me. I rated PLAINS OF PASSAGE 4 stars. This time, though there are some emotionally rewarding and narratively exciting scenes—the highlight, I believe, being when Ayla brings Lanidar, bullied because of a deformity, to demonstrate the spear-thrower before a huge crowd, instantly making him the coolest kid in school—when I think back to the highs of PLAINS OF PASSAGE, I’m not sure even the best scene in SHELTERS OF STONE reaches them. In my head, I’m asking myself, “Does any scene in this book match the moment when Ayla appears above the S’Armunai, shoots an arrow to untie Jondalar just before he was to be executed, challenges Attaroa in the S’Armunai language, and then rides off on horseback with Jondalar clinging to her?” My answer to that is no.
In fact, there was a moment approximately halfway through when I wondered if much had actually happened in this book. Unlike PLAINS OF PASSAGE, which moved from one action set-piece to the next, SHELTERS OF STONE is primarily about Ayla’s interaction with the Zelandonii and in particular her connection with the spiritual leader of the Zelandonii, Zelandoni. Thinking back over the book, though, I realized there were a number of very cool moments. When Marona tries to embarrass Ayla by tricking her into wearing boys’ underwear as a dress, but then Ayla wears it with confidence and makes it look stylish and sexy. The fact that almost everybody in the Zelandonii camp responds favorably to Ayla’s proclamation that flatheads are people and that she used to live with the Clan—a far cry from previous times she’s admitted her history and faced far more open discrimination. The way the Zelandonii are moved by watching the artful way Ayla speaks using the gestures of the Clan language. The bison hunt where a man is killed. When Ayla gives an impassioned speech about how she wants to be Zelandonii because she thinks of it as her native language, bringing everybody to tears. Ayla saving a neglected child by taking command, bathing her, and getting nursing women to share responsibility for feeding the baby; and the way she soothes the trauma of the older sister who had assumed responsibility of the baby before that. Ayla seeing 3-D recreations of animals painted inside a mystic cave, then encountering a cave vulva before taking a bizarre LSD trip to rescue Thonolan’s elan from being lost in limbo. And that’s just the first half!
In the second half: Lanidar stepping up to say that he loves Lanoga and will take care of her and the previously-neglected baby Larala in spite of his withered arm. The tension of the Matrimonial with four objectors present. The image of Ayla in her white-and-gold (or is it blue-and-black?) wedding dress, breasts bared, as she stands before the camp finally marrying Jondalar (it’s totally normal and not at all weird in their culture!). The medical scene where Ayla sets the leg of a boy mauled by a woolly rhinoceros. The medical scene where Ayla has to give Wolf stitches after he’s attacked by another pack of wolves. And, I mean, I guess there’s also the birth scene where Ayla finally has the child she’s been pregnant with all book, whom she names
Still, unlike PLAINS OF PASSAGE and the books which preceded it, I don’t find that the strength of these scenes is enough in this instance to overcome the book’s challenges: extreme repetitiveness and occasional flatness in the narrative as Auel dovetails into bland technical descriptions of Ice Age plant or animal life. And did I mention extreme repetitiveness? I might call it a draw: I’m equally impressed by the satisfying scenes as I am agitated by the plodding ones. Nevertheless, I’d still say that the positive things about SHELTERS OF STONE have the edge on the negative, hence the 3.5-star rating and the largely positive review. I’m still eager to continue with the sixth book in the series, THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, possibly before the end of the year.
P.S. I’ve said before that you can’t talk about an Earth’s Children book without discussing the sex scenes, although this is one you almost could. There’s less sex in this book than others, and what there is largely treads the same ground as previous books (Auel’s repetitiveness is also display in writing sex scenes, unfortunately) which makes them easy to gloss over. I did want to say, however, that I was surprised during the scene where Ayla gives Jondalar a blowjob that she spit it out afterward; she calls it his “essence”… I would have expected either the Clan or the Zelandonii to have some superstition about expelling a man’s essence. I guess not.
danilanglie's review against another edition
1.0
Whyyyyyy. Actually this book is a slight, slight improvement over the previous one, because at least there are more people around, which prevents a bit of the boredom of spending a whole novel with just Ayla and Jondalar, the two most boringly perfect protagonists ever. But saying that this is better than Book Four is not saying much at all, and this atrocity still gets one star from me.
More repetition. Ayla tells her back story to everybody she meets, and we get to hear it all like five or six times in this novel alone. Not to mention the fact that we already experienced the whole thing in excruciating detail over the last four novels! Also, everybody in Jondalar's family has these infuriatingly long name with all of these titles that they have to say during formal introductions. In a normal book, you might say all of these titles once, and then just say "so-and-so and so-and-so were introduced formally" whenever you needed that to happen again for the plot. But no. We get the full fuckin' list of titles over and over and over again and my brain nearly exploded.
Ayla is perfect. She's beautiful, she's nice, she's intelligent, and almost everybody loves her instantly. The few people who don't like her only dislike her because either a) they are jealous of how awesome she is, or b) they want her for themselves and they are jealous that Jondalar gets to have her. Whenever anybody tries to harm her, their attempts fail instantly and Ayla gets the upper hand without trying.
The sex scenes are still painfully horrible. Luckily there aren't too many.
That's all I have to say. What a freakin' joke of a novel.
More repetition. Ayla tells her back story to everybody she meets, and we get to hear it all like five or six times in this novel alone. Not to mention the fact that we already experienced the whole thing in excruciating detail over the last four novels! Also, everybody in Jondalar's family has these infuriatingly long name with all of these titles that they have to say during formal introductions. In a normal book, you might say all of these titles once, and then just say "so-and-so and so-and-so were introduced formally" whenever you needed that to happen again for the plot. But no. We get the full fuckin' list of titles over and over and over again and my brain nearly exploded.
Ayla is perfect. She's beautiful, she's nice, she's intelligent, and almost everybody loves her instantly. The few people who don't like her only dislike her because either a) they are jealous of how awesome she is, or b) they want her for themselves and they are jealous that Jondalar gets to have her. Whenever anybody tries to harm her, their attempts fail instantly and Ayla gets the upper hand without trying.
The sex scenes are still painfully horrible. Luckily there aren't too many.
That's all I have to say. What a freakin' joke of a novel.
allyhoz's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
janinaloli's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
wafer's review
2.0
This book could have hundreds of pages taken out and it would be so much less agonizing for it. Why does Auel insist on constantly repeating information I already know?
zaliha's review against another edition
1.0
Ok so I read this thinking it was the last one and then I found out there was one more but couldn't even be bothered to read that. So yeah, there you go. Me giving up on a book. It's rare but it happens. I still admire the amount of work and historical research that went into the book and it's really obvious there is so much love for the protagonist going on and I wished I could be as amazing as she is and have as much plot armor as she has (without experiencing any of the shit she went through). But holy mess, this series broke something in me, if I wasn't even bothered to read the last one, after the entire ordeal I had already gone through. This book made me a quitter.
marlowek's review against another edition
1.0
This series is just getting stupid now. Even though I loved the first few books of the series, I seriously don't think I can bring myself to read the final installment, if it ever comes out.
fictionista3's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0