Most helpful customer reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A little too much fiction., Jun 6 2003
The Stone Dogs is the end of the conflict between good vs. evil, on our world as we know it. Although it's very heart-stopping and the Alliance (Americans and it's allies) loses, it really doesn't end. I have a hard time fathoming the explosion of technology and advancement in space travel in the 3 decades after WW 2 (Eurasian War in the Draka timeline). In their 1970's, they were into technology not even applied (or even possible) in our present...30 years later. Considering overall history, the Draka have either been too fortunate to survive the Alliance, or the Alliance was too weak to act against their would-be conquerors. The Domination did just that...dominate, and the Alliance was asleep at the wheel.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best Cold War/Armageddon stories I have ever read, Nov 23 2001
Any book exists upon two levels: the story, and the stories within. Where this book shines for its plot, its slow, careful setup, it's rich world, in short - it's story, it is truely the glimpses into the lives of the characters - the stories within - that cause this work to stick in your mind, years after reading it.
On the surface, this is an alternate-future fiction that any player of Diplomacy would be proud of. A nation of slaveholders, the Domination of the Draka, is founded in southern Africa. Because they are hated by their primitive neighbors, they are forced to expand and become more warlike. When World War I breaks out, they already own all of Africa. By their existance, they create a second front for the Ottoman Empire. Because the Turks fight a two front war, they are smashed, and assimilated. When WWII comes around, Russia now has a potent adversary on their southern border, and are unable to protect against Germany, or threaten Japan. As a result, the Germans pound the Soviets, the Japanese rule the Pacific, landing on the US west coast. After Russia falls, the Draka are able to press into the overextended Germans, pushing them back, and back again. Each step in this history derives from the previous step, clearly, simply.
So the history works. It is believable, the way a carefully explained chess match is believable. Each move makes sense.
This story takes place at the end of this history. The world is now divided into the Alliance for Democracy (the Americas, Japan, some parts of the far east, england) and the Domination of the Draka (Africa, Europe, almost all of Asia - in short, the other 3/5 of the world), and the two sides hate, fear, and totally fail to understand each other. Eventually, inescapably, this failure of understanding leads the world into total war, a total war started for the most personal of reasons.
So the _Story_ holds up, is gripping and engrossing.
But it is the _Stories_ inside, the tales of individual heroism and cowardice, brilliance and stupidity, the thousand tiny thoughts and decisions that make up the tide of history, that will make you remember this late at night. Not the stories of the main characters, the little stories: the mother who keeps her starving children alive on 'soup', she tells them, soup she made with her blood; the captain of the orbital battleplatform set to self-destruct, closing his eyes and remembering himself a small child (written well enough to bring tears just _recalling_ the passage); the general who, infected by a hallucinogenic virus, cuts off his own testicles with a fire axe. These are the images that will stay with you, long after you put down this book. These are the images that make a book worth reading.Indra
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3.0 out of 5 stars
An unrepentant tour-de-force -- but flawed, Dec 7 2000
S. M. Stirling's "Stone Dogs" is by far the best of the Draka Series. It gives us a better look at a wider range of Draka society than the first two in the installment. Where as "Marching through Georgia" focused mainly on the battlefield, and "Under the Yoke" on the life on a Draka Plantation, "Stone Dogs" follows the entire life of Yolande Ingolfsson, giving the reader a truly chilling look at near every aspect Draka civil society. We don't get any true description of how the Draka Industrial Sector works (it only mentioned in passing, never visited), but that's understandable. The ultimate plausibility of such a world is strained enough already. We also get a brief glance at what the America of this time-line is like, which is a refreshing break in a novel which get almost too grim at times.It is in "Stone Dogs" that Stirling's mechanical and technical expertise truly gets to shine. His descriptions of everything from star ships to lunar colonies are so clear and well painted that one can almost close their eyes and see them. The beautiful ability to put imagery into words is truly Stirling's best talent. This is also illustrated in the appendix at the end of the book that gives the history as to how the Draka became such an industrial superpower. Stirling certainly has an encyclopedic grasp of the early industrial period. The author is a delight to any military historian or aficionado of "hard" science fiction. Unfortunately, what Stirling so masterfully describes pushes the limit of almost all plausibility or even common sense. The industrialized slavocracy that is Draka society ignores any lessons to be learned from past two centuries of history. The Aryan supermen and women that are the Draka themselves would be offensive to anyone short of Neo-Nazis. It is the characters that Stirling depicts that are the weakest part of the book (or any Stirling novel). The lesbian-super-warrior is present in "Stone Dogs", and is basically a duplication of every other lesbian-super-warrior Stirling has put in his books and is just as boring. Not only are all his characters largely two-dimension cut-outs, his protagonists (in his view) make no mistakes at any time and go through the entire book unchallenged and unbeaten. It is this inability of the author to flesh out the Draka with any kind of human fault that make them as uninteresting as comic book characters. Stirling's uncomfortable depictions of such disagreeable and unlikable characters are at all times unrepentant and uncompromising. The author is deserving of praise in this regard for so refusing to bow to any common convention. The conclusion of the book, while predicable, is with out relent and is a true assault of the senses. Few authors could remain so true to their convictions, especially when their convictions are so revolting.
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