The Shelters of Stone

Earth's Children, Book 5

By: Jean M. Auel

Narrated by: Sandra Burr

Length: 33 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

After their epic journey across Europe, Ayla and Jondalar have reached his home, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, the old stone-age settlement in the region known today as southwest France. Jondalar's family greet him warmly, but they are initially wary of the beautiful young woman he has brought back, with her strange accent and her tame wolf and horses.

Ayla has much to learn from the Zelandonii and much to teach them. She is intrigued by their clothes, their crafts, and their home, and wants to learn their customs and the ways that they live, so that she will fit in. She is delighted when she meets Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of the people, a fellow healer with whom she can share medicinal skills and knowledge. The Zelandonii are surprised to learn she was found and raised by the Clan, the ones that they call flatheads and think of as animals, and are skeptical when she tells them they are people.

After the rigors and dangers that have characterized her extraordinary life so far, 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 her eagerly-awaited child, she is coming to accept that she has a greater role to play in the destiny of the Zelandonii.

Listen to more in the Earth's Children series.

©2004 Jean M. Auel (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved

Critic reviews

"Burr is adept at reading the detailed descriptions of Cro-Magnon artifacts without losing our interest and at creating varied portrayals of the many characters. A fine performance of a long-awaited book." ( AudioFile)

Well reached and great story too!

I look forward to listening to this series once a year.
lots of interesting information, and enjoyable character development.

Great Read

Always love learning about our ancestors and how they dealt with everyday life. I have only one book left to finish off the series. I know I will listen again and again to these wonderful books.

A Great Read

Loved it! Looking forward to reading more books by Jean Auel. Keep up the good work.

Great book series

Once you get to know the characters you can’t wait for the next book for the adventure and to find out what happens next to Ayla

Good Lord

Ayla's voice sounds like a bad impersonation of Red on Orange is the New Black. It's completely annoying and unnecessary, considering the first 4 books she spoke without an accent. Otherwise the story is good, as always, but the accent is truly distracting.

What happened to Ayla’s accent??

So I’m not too far into this book, full disclosure.

I hate her new accent… and she doesn’t THINK in it so why?? She is equally as foreign to the Zelandoni as she was to every other post-Clan clan…. to every other group she had a foreign quality with swallowed vowels…. But suddenly to the Zelandoni she has this bizarre Slavic/Latin/Central Asian mashup with half-rolled Rs added for flavor?? Just for the Zelandoni? WHY?? I don’t love that this series devolves further into cave porn with each volume…. But now with this horrendous new accent?

On a positive note, I absolutely love the gathering and cooking passages. I find them so relaxing, and I feel that transported-away-by-a-book feeling listening to them. Seriously love!

Why Eyla’s voice changed?

The book was good and the story was interesting. Logical continuation to previous books except that all of a sudden Eyla’s voice got unpleasant accent and Jondalar voice sounded different, no longer sexy. That was the biggest disappointment.

Repetitive for a reason!

I absolutely love this series. And while I love the narrator in most cases, I do question the decision to change the main character's voice 5 books into the series. I doubt the narrator was the one that made this decision, so I won't hold it against her.

I've seen a lot of reviews mention that this book seems to be repetitive of previous books and there's a very good reason for this repetition. It's easy for us now to listen to these books back to back to back. But if you check the publication dates of the series, you'll find a 12 year gap between books 4 and 5. And again, for very good reason, the author did extensive (an absolute understatement) research into the world she created. She went to Europe, learned to live in caves, spent years learning about prehistoric weaponry and ice age flora and fauna. The dedication she showed to this series is incredible but because of her time spent perfecting the knowledge, there were huge gaps between release dates. Imagine reading book 4 in 1990 and then book 5 in 2002... Recaps and repetition were her way of making sure her readers remembered the highlights without having to reread the entire epic each time a book came out. TV shows give recaps after just a few weeks, this is no different but so much more needed.

Storytelling at it’s best

I love the cave bear books and truly enjoyed having it read to me so I could work on projects at the same time.

Awesome

So good as always on her books! A great read! She keeps you eager to hear more and more.