The Shelters of Stone - Jean M. Auel

==Overview== The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel is the latest book from her Earth's Children series. It is the fourth book and long awaited. (especially by me!) If you have not read any of the previous books I wouldn't worry because the book goes into complete explanations of all the characters and explains key points from the previous books. This is a prehistorical novel. I can't say why I love these prehistorical novels except that they are so interesting and the writing is uniquely clever. This book was published in 2002 by Crown Publishers and in hard back it is 749 pages long. Don't be scared by the length- the book is so great you won't want it ...  Read the complete review

Getting this book as soon as it came out in 2002, i was eager to read what was going to happen to Ayla and her world. I will say it straight away that this was my most dissapointing book of them all. The story was not as interesting as the other books, and all in all, not much seemed to happen throughout the whole story. The climax and kind of cliff hanger at the end was not nearly interesting enough for me to get excited about the next book; although i will definitely buy the next book! Ayla truly settles down in this book, living with Jondalars tribe in the shelter of stone - a tribe living under a large rock formation. The couple settle down ...  Read the complete review

Very near the beginning, when the world was young, people began to inhabit the Earth. They were divided, The Clan and The Others. People of the Clan were searching for a new home after the earthquake. The medicine woman, Iza, stumbled across one of the Others, a child named Ayla. This child was raised by Iza, much to the disgust of Broud, and a few other members of the Clan. Ayla had to learn the Clan's ways and rules, always being abused by Broud, whenever he could. When her son, Durc, was born, he was of mixed spirits, and Ayla should have left him to die, but she couldn't. Eventually she was cursed with death, and had to leave, and make her own way in ...  Read the complete review