The Shelters of Stone - Jean M. Auel

First book of the year is the penultimate novel in the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel. This post contains SPOILERS.

Earth's Children is set in the Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. It focuses on one Cro-Magnon with a heart o'gold, Ayla, who is adopted by a Neanderthal tribe after losing her parents in a tragic accident. Ayla deals with the trials and tribulations of being a good Neanderthal woman until she leaves at the age of 14 to find her own people.

Cue 4 other books, all dealing with Ayla's search for acceptance amongst "The Others". In fact, each book can be summarised as such:
Ayla meets new people.
OMG, she's, like, a Neanderthal!!1!!one
Gratuitous explicit sex scene.
Ayla uses superior healing skills to save headwoman/son of headwoman/labouring headwoman.
Another gratuitous sex scene.
Ayla's not too bad, let's adopt her!

The Earth's Children series are a guilty pleasure of mine. I can re-read them many times and ignore the almost tragic Mary-Sue-ness of the main characters enough to really immerse myself in the story. Compared to some of the other fiction out there *coughtwilightcough*, Auel tells a pretty good story and you do find yourself caring for the characters, although, towards the end, you find yourself just wishing that Ayla would invent a motorbike and travel across Europe faster. After all, she invents just about everything else, including the needle, domesticated animals, the bra, the Pill and even oral sex (no kidding!).

Speaking of sex, there is a lot in these books. And I mean a lot. The people of the EC series are matrilineal non-monogamists, and participate frequently in sexual based festivals (I didn't call them orgies). There are page of descriptions of who did what to whom and how, so if you're a prude, these probably aren't the best books for you. Although it is interesting to see how many flowery phrases there are for penis.

If you want to get the full scope of the story of Shelters of Stone, you really should read the previous four books:
The Clan of The Cave Bear
The Valley of The Horses
TheMammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage.

SoS tells of Ayla's final arrival to Jondalar's people in the west. She gets to meet all the people she has heard so much about, including Marthona, Jondalar's mother, Marona, Jondalar's ex-finacee and Zolena, Jondalar's past lover and currently highest spiritual leader of the Zelandoni. In her usual style, Ayla wins over the people and has many adventures.

I will always recommend the EC series to anyone who enjoys good fiction that isn't too heavy. Meticulously researched and with a good sprinkling of sex scenes to break up the education, you can't really go wrong. Try them, you might learn something.

7 out of 10.

The Challenge.

After hearing a lot about reading challenges, I decided to start one in 2010.

I thought I'd start with the basic challenge - a book a week for a whole year. For those that are mathematically-challenged, that's 52 books a year. I thought I'd up it to 53, mainly because the blog address wasn't available!

The Rules

One book a week. It can be a new book, a re-read, a classic, fluff, ebook, graphic novel, anything!

A book can be stretched over weeks or months, but will only count towards the week when it is actually finished.


At least one blog post per book.



I am going to create a list of books I want to read during the challenge.


About Me

I'm a 25 year old living in ever-sunny Canberra. I'm married, and have a gorgeous tornado of a son who is 14 months old. I love to read, but find it hard to commit the time to it. Luckily I got an iPhone for Christmas, and the ebook reader is a life-saver!

Please comment or let me know if you are doing a similar challenge, I'd love to follow your progress :)