Hell, I was a Lit major and I still kind of enjoyed these. They’re junk reading, not great stylistically, but fun, light stories that are great when you don’t want anything heavy or portentous. I agree, the first one was the best over all. It was tighter and more eventful than most of the other books. There really aren’t all that many sex scenes in the books. I think the most recent one had them doing it about three or maybe four times in 500 pages, with a paragraph or two for each. That’s like once every few weeks of the timespan involved. Maybe they make more of an impression for other people, but I’m a guy, so I think about sex on average about once every few minutes. (I’m slowing down a bit now that I’m out of my 20s).
She’s following romance novel conventions, more or less, in the later books. Clan of the Cave Bear was more of a coming of age in harsh circumstances story. In Valley of the Horses she starts with adventure while Ayla dealing with survival, the aftermath of her grief, and finding out who she is as an outcast from Clan society and everything she grew up with. The last half is pretty much a romance novel though. The pattern fits: spunky heroine meets man of dreams, obstacles are overcome, penis ensues, the experience is best ever for either of them (she’s a born-again virgin since her first experiences with sex were inter-species rape), they fall madly in bed.
The Mammoth Hunters, where Auel breaks them up, puts social obstacles in the way, and introduces a rival for [del]Long Dong[/del], er, Jondalar is nothing more than a big fat historical romance with much better than average research on the setting. There’s enough adventure to keep this particular guy interested, and enough social stuff to engage most women who may not like more overt romances. She really does include something for just about everyone.
I don’t get the bitching about inventions. Ayla started with a sling, which was technology that her tribe had. Her first refinement was a way of throwing that is frankly not all that skilled compared to what a good slinger was capable of if you read ancient Bronze Age accounts of slingers in war. She could throw two rocks in quick succession. Big deal. A good slinger from those later times could keep that up for as many rocks as he could hold in the off hand; thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, with seconds between missiles. It’s just a difference in an athletic skill, not in a technological refinement.
The atlatl is a small step from a sling, and it wasn’t just her thinking about it. If I remember right, Jondalar and people from the tribes in Mammoth Hunters and Plains of Passage contributed refinements. Both she and Jondalar learn a lot of things from the people they spend time with on their journeys, themselves contributing cross-culture technological pollination to the hosting groups along the way. Both of them are creative risk-taking people and besides, neither one of them would have lived long away from supporting groups if they weren’t intelligent, adaptable, and very skilled. Humans aren’t loners. Living by yourself with stone-age technology is probably doable, but not easy for anyone.
Ayla is obviously supposed to be very smart, and the development of her intelligence is partly due to the circumstances of her upbringing. People in pre-literate cultures anywhere and anywhen have to have incredible memories, and people with stone-age technology have to have broad skill sets to survive well. They make their tools over and over again, probably learning something each time they do so, and it’s probably not uncommon for someone to make up a new way of doing something or a refinement on a design that already exists in their group. There’s basically nothing Auel posits Ayla doing that is outside her abilities or circumstances.
In fact, I think she makes a lot more out of the “wonder” aspect of the semi-domestication of animals Ayla raised than she needs to. If anything, that’s what rang false to me. If North American Indian stories are anything to go by, people had an extensive knowledge of animals and how they act, going so far as to give them real personalities and anthropomorphize them to some extent. There are obviously going to be differences between cultures, but I just can’t buy people being in so much awe over Ayla’s rapport with animals. It’s still early days with the Zelandoni though, so maybe Auel will drop that when people get more used to having the animals around.
The Shelters of Stone was disappointing partly because not much happened. I mean, really, Ayla didn’t even invent anything. 
There was some social conflict, but not much, and nothing else of much consequence happened in hundreds of pages. Because of the cross-cultural experience she’d gained and the outsider’s point of view from growing up in a culture that is not related to Jondalar’s people, she was able to see similarities in language and stories that the Zelandoni and Mamutoi wouldn’t have. That may be a big thing from Ayla’s point of view and take on some mystical meaning for her, but it doesn’t have much real consequence for the story. At least, not yet.
Yeah, the poem, I skipped over that quickly. Lotsa blather, nothing of much interest. Auel could probably have cut half the story without getting rid of anything important. All they do is arrive, Ayla gets hazed, a future conflict is set up but not resolved, they get married, Ayla earns her Master’s in Cross Cultural Mythology and enrolls in shaman school (she’ll basically be working toward a medical degree combined with Applied Botany and a Literature minor) and she finally has Jondalar’s kid.
) His wife, though, knew of the series, and called it “caveman porn,” while giving him abuse about reading the series.
As with people, it’s a sign of affection for a book if I can make fun of it.