Jean M. Auel

Ayla and Jondalar continue their epic journey across Ice Age Europe to join Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii, confronting new hardships and perilous challenges along the way.

The Shelters of Stone

The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children)

Jaymie Lemke

Yikes! What happened? After such a long wait for this book, I could cry at what could have been.

Michelle Lilholm Bennett

I ranked it 3 stars, because there were two aspects that each removed a star.

First star to go: 
Soooo many repetitions from the previous books and repetitions in general. I am so happy I this time around (have read the books before) just read The Shelters of Stone (SoS) in preparation of reading the 6th book in the series. Whole passages have been copied in from the previous books, and of course this makes SoS so much longer than it had to be. 
Also repetitions in general. Names and where people belong are repeated and some of them are soooo long. That Ayla speaks funny. How she knows what she knows. And the list goes on and on.

Second star to go: 
The descriptions of the landscape and that Ayla is such a Mary Sue.
The landscape descriptions are really long. Like, really really long. I can see that it would be very useful if this was a non fiction book, but for me I started to skip the landscape descriptions after a while because they were so long and for me, very boring.
Also, if you have an issue, any kind of issue, just hope that Ayla is nearby to help you and everything will be fine. It is fine that she knows a lot, but really? That much when she is 19 years old? 
Ah well, I didn't write the story.

I did like the story in general and I am looking forward to reading the 6th book, I just hope that Auel has cut down on the repetitions and landscape descriptions.

Sarah Kessler

Laurie-Pier Vezina

Vilde

Vicki Grever

Bee 

Mary Baldwin

Shawna Gavas

Pam Sartain

Lisa Miller

Carla Aquino

The fifth novel in the Earth's Children series, Jean M. Auel's internationally bestselling reconstruction of pre-historic life, when two kinds of human beings, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, shared the earth. Ayla and Jondalar have reached home: the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, the old stone age settlement in the region known today as south-west France. Ayla has much to learn from the Zelandonii as well as much to teach them. Jondalar's family are initially wary of the beautiful young woman he has brought back, with her strange accent and her tame wolf and horses. She is delighted when she meets Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of her people, a fellow healer with whom she can share her medicinal skills. After the rigours and dangers that have characterised her extraordinary life, Ayla yearns for peace and tranquility; to be Jondalar's mate and to have children. But her unique spiritual gifts cannot be ignored, and even as she gives birth to their eagerly-awaited child, she is coming to accept that she has a greater role to play in the destiny of the Zelandonii. Set 25,000 years in the past, yet utterly relatable today, The Shelters of Stone is an epic tale of love, identity and the struggle to survive, rich in detail of language, culture, myth and ritual. Praise for Jean M. Auel 'Beautiful, exciting, imaginative' New York Times 'A major bestseller . . . A remarkable work of imagination' Daily Express

Aurooba Ahmed