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    The Valley of Horses
    Unavailable
    The Valley of Horses
    Unavailable
    The Valley of Horses
    Audiobook24 hours

    The Valley of Horses

    Written by Jean M. Auel

    Narrated by Sandra Burr

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    This odyssey into the distant past carries us back to the awesome mysteries of the exotic, primeval world of The Clan of the Cave Bear, and to Ayla, now grown into a beautiful and courageous young woman.

    Cruelly cast out by the new leader of the ancient Clan that adopted her as a child, Ayla leaves those she loves behind and travels alone through a stark, open land filled with dangerous animals but few people, searching for the Others, tall and fair like herself. Living with the Clan has taught Ayla many skills but not real hunting. She finally knows she can survive when she traps a horse, which gives her meat and a warm pelt for the winter, but fate has bestowed a greater gift, an orphaned foal with whom she develops a unique kinship.

    One winter extends to more; she discovers a way to make fire more quickly and a wounded cave lion cub joins her unusual family, but her beloved animals don't fulfill her restless need for human companionship. Then she hears the sound of a man screaming in pain. She saves tall, handsome Jondalar, who brings her a language to speak and an awakening of love and desire, but Ayla is torn between her fear of leaving her valley and her hope of living with her own kind.

    Second in the acclaimed Earth's Children® series

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 16, 2017
    ISBN9781543613506
    Unavailable
    The Valley of Horses
    Author

    Jean M. Auel

    In 1980, Jean M. Auel became a literary legend with The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first book in her Earth’s Children® series. Now a mother, grandmother, and author who has sold more than 45 million copies worldwide, Auel is a heroine of history and prehistory alike, changing the world one enthralling page at a time.

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    Reviews for The Valley of Horses

    4/5

    2,227 ratings63 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      There are parts to this book that are atrocious, and parts that are wonderful. Similar to Clan of the Cave Bear, I particularly enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the landscape, flora and fauna of Upper Paleolithic Europe. Ayla is an intriguing character; her struggles and obstacles were riveting. Jondalar's struggles....not so much. Certain aspects of the story are so unbelievable it is almost laughable. Ayla accumulated quite a miraculous number of inventions and cultural innovations, well ahead of what is historically accurate, such as horse domestication.
    • 4/5
      really enjoyed this series
    • 3/5
      The adventures of Ayla continue in Valley of the Horses. The book is a great read as far as how new characters are introduced. I liked the way she alternated chapters with Ayla and Jondalar and his brother Thonalan. My only turn off in this book was the characters from the last book were not included in this, so there was no mention on how there lives went on without Ayla there, which was something I wanted to know.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book! I couldn’t stop reading and listening to it.
    • 5/5
      Great love story illustrating the power of love, diversity, kindness, and laughter to promote life and adaptation in the face of challenge.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book the first moment time I read it
    • 5/5
      The story of the young Ayla continues, as she lives without people, and compensates with animal friends, an idea unknown at the time.
    • 3/5
      I like this book, except there were skips ahead throughout the entire book. The skips total one hour and 28 minutes. This seems a substantial loss of story line. It’s disappointing!
    • 4/5
      Good book. But NOT a children's book. This series has graphic sex. Especially book 3 it goes into some very very graphic details and is NOT FOR CHILDREN......
    • 2/5
      I'm annoyed that scrubbed won't let me listen to this book again.
    • 3/5
      It was a little bit like soft porn and the jandalar and brothers side of story was boring with too much describtion.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating look at daily life in our pre- history. Especially enjoyed descriptions of tools used and how they were created and how close to nature the people in these books were.
    • 5/5
      I'm loving this series, although, I could do without the caveman porn.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I love Auel's desriptive scenes. This was the second audiobook in the series that I've listened to and enjoyed.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Through a series of events, Ayla meets Jondalaar, becoming my favorite literary couple, other than Father Ralph and Meggie. Ayla befriends a wild horse and a lion cub.
    • 4/5
      After The Mammoth Hunters, I probably wouldn't have read this if a friend hadn't passed on her copy. It was as good as the first in the series, however, with well drawn characters.
    • 5/5
      Amazing story. A little hard to follow in the beginning when you are meeting new characters, and I was worried I would not be able to finish it for having trouble seeing how it was going to come together, but the author does so in an amazing way. The last several chapters are full of suspense, as you do not know which way it is going to go and what is going to happen. I am glad I stuck it out because it was well worth it. Can't wait to read the next one.
    • 4/5
      This is the second in the Earth’s Children series. I was impressed with the first. The second started off well, but ended up way too steamy for me. Ways and means for living in the stone age was well researched and intriguingly interpreted into the novel. The descriptions of the sex scenes didn’t seem to fit, didn’t flow with the descriptions of life in the rest of novel. It was a disappointment.
    • 1/5
      I got so tired of reading how BLUE his eyes were and it just started to seem like a book of caveman porn!!! I finally just decided there was not enough story telling to make it worth my time. Too many sexual description scenes and not enough story. The author seems obsessed with it!
    • 2/5
      The focus on graphic sex ruined this book for me. This is a shame, because it otherwise would have been a good book, instead of reading like an issue of Hustler.
    • 3/5
      Auel greatly damaged the success built from 'Clan of the Cave Bear.' The plot and basic idea are all appealing - individual survival in a harsh environment with limited technology - yet Auel attempts to be all things to all people. Part survivalist story, part dime-store romance novel, the second installment of 'Earth's Children' is a move in the wrong direction.

      One of the major problems here are the throwaway characters. We are finally introduced to Jondalar, who is Prehistory's version of Prince Charming. Jondalar's story up through the point that he meets Ayla is excessively verbose, as the characters met along Jondalar's journey quickly enter and exit the reader's view. Basically, they are difficult to care about, and make the first half of the book very difficult to read as the reader gets the feeling that nothing important is going on.

      During this time, Ayla's story is more compelling, as she's forced to live with the rather unfair cards she was dealt at the close of Clan of the Cave Bear. Her story moves the book along - up to a point.

      Once the two characters meet, the book loses all the richness and complexity that Auel painstakingly built in the previous work. The two characters inevitably move towards gratuitous and constant sex, which becomes almost the sole focus of the book's last chapters. This isn't a problem if you go in wishing for a generic trashy romance novel - but I was hoping for something more along the lines of historical fiction.

      Ultimately, it's very difficult to stay involved with this book. The environment and scenery are still well built, but it lacks any semblance of an antagonist (man, beast, or evil force) to make the book suspenseful. This book could have been written in half the pages and ended up with the same result. My only inspiration to pick up the 3rd book is the success of the 1st, as it's obvious that Auel has the potential to tell an interesting and unique story.

      Two and a half stars, rounded up to give the author the benefit of the doubt.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Not up to the standard of Clan Of The Cave Bear, but still gripping.I had trouble remembering so many characters in this one, but I loved the passages of Ayla learning to survive in the Cave with her horse and Baby the lion. 
    • 3/5
      READ IN DUTCH

      Right after finishing The Clan of the Cage Bear I wanted to read this second book The Valley of Horses.

      But for me it missed something. Ayla has left the people she grew up with and in search of The Others, but mainly she's just sitting in a cave, personally inventing all kinds of stuff. (It is almost as if she herself invents both the wheel and fire)

      I thought it was a bit too much, I liked her better when she wasn't all this perfect.

      As for Jondalar, I don't like him either.
    • 3/5
      After being rather roughly ejected from her adoptive Clan of neanderthals, Auel's Cro-Magnon heroine Ayla has to survive on her own in a remote valley. Meanwhile, a tall blue-eyed stranger is traveling cross-country with his brother, on a collision course with unexpected tragedy and romance.Sounds a bit hokey, does it not?Add a tamed cave lion and horse as plucky sidekicks, endless overly-detailed descriptions of various tribal customs, and a bunch of Stone Age conjugation (if you know what I mean, wink wink) and it becomes a 544 pg. coagulation of "Meh" moments.I first read it at age 10, so I was fairly forgiving of its many flaws at the time. I'm not nearly so forgiving after a recent re-read, but I think I'll let it squeak by with two and a half stars just for old time's sake.
    • 4/5
      The Earth's Children series are my guilty pleasure and I haul them out to read them every couple of years or so. A young girl is found after an earthquake and rescued by a pre-historic tribe. She is well-treated but considered an oddity because of her appearance. She learns the ways of the medicine woman, she learns to hunt, she has a child. Not everyone loves Ayla, however, and she is forced to leave the tribe and her child and make her own way. A young man is journeying with his brother. They encounter several tribes along the way, settling down with them and learning skills from them until leaving to resume their journey. The brother dies along the way from a cave lion attack that leaves Jondolar severely injured. He is rescued and nursed back to health by Ayla, who has settled down in a nearby cave with only the animals she has managed to domesticate for company. At this point, the series becomes a little like a Harlequin Romance against a pre-historic backdrop. Boy and girl meet and fall in love. Neither is able to articulate their feeling for eachother, leading to a series of misunderstandings. However, they are able to work together and between them manage to invent most of the significant developments of the Stone Age. Eventually, they realize that their feelings for eachother are mutual.Ayla and Jondolar continue their journey together. They meet many other people along the way. There continue to be misunderstandings, breakups and reconciliations. The most interesting thing about these books are the descriptions of the lives and customs, the ceremonies and festivals of these stone age people. I really like the whole series and will probably continue to re-read them every few years or so.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      An exercise in futility. If Ayla is such a strong woman, why is she acting like the modern-day equivalent of a giggling 15-year-old girl hiding behind her locker at school when she sees her latest crush? The touch-me/don't-touch-me ridiculousness between Ayla and Jondalar is completely unbelievable; prehistorical persons would just not act that way because that is a learned societal behavior and I refuse to believe prehistorical humans would act like a 12-year-old Selena Gomez.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I enjoyed the first is this series. Got half way through this oe and gave up on this one. Boring and to much detail for me. I did not like the two story lines. :(
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this one very much, although it dragged a little in the middle. I've grown very fond of Ayla and this series and I plan to continue it right until the end! 3.5?
    • 3/5
      Decent story set during the stone age.
    • 4/5
      I am really enjoying this carefully-researched series of adventure stories (there's also romance!) describing what prehistoric life in Europe might have been like.