Claire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs, is fiercely intelligent and urgently intimate, written with precision, humor, and an incredible...
Continue »
The Shelters of Stone continues the story of Ayla, who lost her family to an earthquake and was raised by the people who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. She arrives in the land of the Zelandonii, the home of Jondalar, the man she loves, but his people are wary of her and think of the Clan who cared for her as flatheads, animals that resemble people but who are not much smarter than bears. Ayla has brought with her two horses and a wolf, over which she has uncanny control. Though she tries to explain that she found the animals when they were babies and raised them as her own, to Jondalar's people — who have never tamed or domesticated animals — they seem supernatural and frightening. The story unfolds with those who want to cause trouble for Ayla, a woman who seems foreign and strange in this new land.
Click to hear Jean Auel talk about Shelters of Stone.
To view, you'll need one of the following:
·
Real Player 7.0 or later
·
Windows Media Player 6.0 or later
And one of the following:
·
Explorer 4.0 or later
·
Netscape 4.x
-->
Review:
"It's been 12 years since The Plains of Passage and, although it sold as well as its predecessors, many fans felt a let-down in the series, with the action delayed by hundreds of pages. Here, once again, Auel shows her riches of research, with suspenseless but readable passages of flora, fauna and landscape....Auel clearly has one more installment to add to her Ice Age saga. Her fans can swim through this behemoth and hope that the next volume doesn't take 12 years." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Here, once again, Auel shows her riches of research, with suspenseless but readable passages of flora, fauna and landscape....Auel clearly has one more installment to add to her Ice Age saga. Her fans can swim through this behemoth and hope that the next volume doesn't take 12 years." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis:
The fifth installment of Jean Auel's Earth's Children® series, which began with The Clan of the Cave Bear, is one of the most hotly anticipated books in publishing history. In The Shelters of Stone, Ayla and Jondalar complete their epic journey across Europe, join Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii, and face new and perilous challenges.
Synopsis:
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 Jondalars 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 Aylas 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 Earths Children® saga that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear. And it includes an amazing rhythmic poem that describes the birth of Earths Children and plays its own role in the narrative of The Shelters of Stone.
Jean M. Auel is the author of the bestselling Earth's Children series, including The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, and The Plains of Passage. She lives in Oregon with her husband, Ray, and is currently researching the sixth book in the series.
Kristen_Ayla, August 10, 2007 (view all comments by Kristen_Ayla)
My granma loved these books, then my mum got into them, telling me every time she got a chance how much she loved these books, when I first picked up the clan of the cave beer, I was deeply in love, I found cold lonely nights more interesting than ever, Indulged in my lovely series of ayla, my only problem with this books series is that I find it hard puting them down. please info me when the 6th book is finerly out!. Thank you Jean M Auel for a great read.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (11 of 17 readers found this comment helpful)
whoseblues1, June 28, 2007 (view all comments by whoseblues1)
This is the 5th book in the Earth's Children series (2002). After an extensive gap (12 years) between the 4th and 5th installments in the series, Auel offers up a very long, repetitive book with no real plot. The main characters finally arrive at their destination after the endless trip related in The Plains of Passage, we meet a boatload of new characters (to whom the same stories must be told and the same explanations given, over and over), and we get a lot of information about everyday life in this new place. But nothing . . . ever . . . really . . . happens. This book seems to be an extensive stage-setting device, with Ayla's intellect and other powers coming to be recognized over time by Those Who Count, positioning her to do Big Things in the next installment -- that is, if it ever comes. It's been 5 years since this one was published, and the next book still isn't out. Without it, all of this stage setting is pretty much for nothing, in my view. Knowing this, if I were deciding whether to read these 750 pages (and devote that precious commodity, my limited reading time, to them), I'd wait to make the investment until Auel gets around to publishing the 6th book instead. Until then, IMHO, there's nothing here you really need to know.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (17 of 36 readers found this comment helpful)
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"It's been 12 years since The Plains of Passage and, although it sold as well as its predecessors, many fans felt a let-down in the series, with the action delayed by hundreds of pages. Here, once again, Auel shows her riches of research, with suspenseless but readable passages of flora, fauna and landscape....Auel clearly has one more installment to add to her Ice Age saga. Her fans can swim through this behemoth and hope that the next volume doesn't take 12 years."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"Here, once again, Auel shows her riches of research, with suspenseless but readable passages of flora, fauna and landscape....Auel clearly has one more installment to add to her Ice Age saga. Her fans can swim through this behemoth and hope that the next volume doesn't take 12 years."
"Synopsis"
by chrisb@powells.com,
The fifth installment of Jean Auel's Earth's Children® series, which began with The Clan of the Cave Bear, is one of the most hotly anticipated books in publishing history. In The Shelters of Stone, Ayla and Jondalar complete their epic journey across Europe, join Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii, and face new and perilous challenges.
"Synopsis"
by Random,
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 Jondalars 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 Aylas 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 Earths Children® saga that began with The Clan of the Cave Bear. And it includes an amazing rhythmic poem that describes the birth of Earths Children and plays its own role in the narrative of The Shelters of Stone.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
