This was an intriguing story, but it was long. Not just in length (over 400 pages), but also in feel. The story spans several years, so some length is expected, I found it to take a while to read.As soon as I started reading the story, I was struck by how much it reminded me of The Clan of the Cave Bear. It too is set in the past and features a main character who is mostly raised by an elder pair from the tribe. There are many differences between the two stories, but it’s the similarities that s...

The Ice Age people that Kim Stanley Robinson describes from 30,000 years ago have as much common sense and wonder as any modern adventurer. While the narrative of this Ice Age novel seems calmer and less mind-boggling than Robinson’s other novels, it portrays the humans as acting essentially the same as his future explorers of Mars, loving an adventure and seeking the meaning of it all.There are no science fiction gimmicks, except for the use of the Chauvet Pont d’Arc Cave in France, a real cave...

So much fun! I love reading prehistoric fiction (and non-fiction books about those times) and this one did not disappoint. I read it immediately after finishing with Sue Harrison's Storyteller trilogy (Song of the River is the first one in that series and I recommend it as well). Yes, it may seem a bit unrealistic at times (with the tribes resolving conflicts mostly through diplomacy, or some concepts which are expressed in too modern terms (babysitter), etc, as some reviewers pointed out. That

I should make a disclaimer here. I hesitate to call this SF except in a single case: Kim Stanley Robinson has created a world, built it out of the kind of science we know, featuring old humans during the ice age and extrapolating from there.It's not really SF or F, but it shares a lot of the features. Most interestingly, it feels like a lot of the low-magic fantasy novels that have come out recently. Modern feel. And of course, it reminds us of Clan of the Cave Bear. But it's much more fascinati...

Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel may seem like a change from his past works, but in a way it fits in well with his other works. Instead of spaceships we get the end of the last ice age. And although you may think that this is a huge change in what Kim usually writes, we do get a story about humans surviving and adapting through innovation and investigation, just like all of his stories. 'Galileo's Dream' may have seemed like Kim was talking about the beginnings of science, but with 'Shaman' he s...

Those familiar with Robinson's expansive epics like 2312 or The Years of Rice and Salt, may find it tough to approach a book in which the author has deliberately aimed for minimalism. Once he decided to write a story about the Paleolithic Ice Age, Robinson could have taken the easy way out by aiming for an imaginary genealogical epic of various tribes, something like a modern Clan of the Cave Bear. But Robinson gives us a more personalized story, the description of what it may have felt like to

3.5 StarsShaman by Kim Stanley Robinson is an incredibly rich and rewarding reading experience about growing up during the ice age that moves along at a glacial pace. This book centers on growing up during a time where nature ruled our world. Survival is a daily struggle and everyone and everything eats one another.Loon is an interesting protagonist that I enjoyed more during the first parts of the book than the latter. This is historical fiction at its best. If that is your cup of tea then you

This is a really unique book. When I tell you it's a science-fiction story set 36,000 years in the past, you'll probably ask -- what are there like, ancient aliens or something?But no. There are no spaceships or little green men. The only 'aliens' are the community of people who live a month's journey north at the edge of the ice wall. This is a science fiction story in the way Asimov defined: "that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and tec...

This book was 10% story and 90% daily life of the ice age man. Of that 90%, half of it is references to and descriptions of sex and sex organs - and it doesn't seem to have a point. I can understand trying to tell a story and make it is realistic as possible (in this case I would assume a lot of guess work based on research), and in doing so, adding some everyday personality to it so it is not too dry. But for this author, sex seemed to be number one "personality" additive. (example: there are a...

I would have rated this two stars, but about halfway through things started happening and it became moderately exciting. For some reason, as I was reading, I couldn't help but imagine "Shaman" as a fanfic on Archive of Our Own, and what its entry would look like when coming across it while browsing.Here's the Archive entry I can't get out of my head:Shaman by Kim Stanley RobinsonFandoms: Stone Age HumanityRating: MatureArchive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character DeathCatego...

After two bull's eyes in a row (Galileo and 2113) Shaman isn't exactly a miss but it is off centre. It's a deceptively long book, being a not alarming 456p until you notice the size of the print and realise you should add about 200p to get a fair comparison with your run-of-the-mill thriller paperback. Some of the problems relate to this length, one way or another. The most fundamental being that there is no plot worth mentioning for the entire first half of the book, making it fairly slow going...

Shaman is a serious examination of what life was like for our distant ancestors of around 30,000 years ago, living in small, semi-nomadic groups and getting most of their calories from hunting migratory game. Robinson approaches the subject with the same rigor he brings to his science fiction work, and this short novel has all the depth of character found in his other novels. I didn't much care for The Years of Rice and Salt, which is Robinson's other foray into historical speculative fiction, b...

Having made his mark in science fiction Robinson is now writing historical fiction. I have read Galileo's Dream before, which i really enjoyed, so was looking forward to this one.This story is set in Palaeolithic times, when the glaciers set the northern boundary and is centred around a character called Loon, a 12 year old, learning to be a Shaman, and his small tribe of twenty of so people. At the very beginning he is set off on his 'wander' where he is released naked and has to rely on his tra...