The Stone Dogs (Draka Novels) [Mass Market Paperback]

S.M. Stirling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1990 | Series: Draka Novels

The Stone Dogs is the third of four books of S.M. Stirling's alternate history series, The Domination. During the cold war between the Alliance and the Domination, Frederic and Marya work for the OSS as spies and assassins. During the Draka conquest of India, Marya Lefarge is taken prisoner. She becomes a serf to Yolande Ingolfsson, who after torturing her repeatedly with a neural weapon, forces her to become a "brooder" (i.e. a surrogate mother) for her offspring, Gwendolyn. Yolande also swears vengeance on Fred Lefarge after he kills her lover, Myfanwy Venders, during the Indian Incident. As both superpowers expand into space, they prepare different doomsday weapons. The Alliance's weapon is a computer virus ("comp plague") secretly planted in Draka military computers by spies; the Draka's is a biological virus called the Stone Dogs that causes infected personnel to go insane. Yolande discovers Marya, who has contacted the OSS, planting the comp-plague and allows her to escape with knowledge of the Stone Dogs. This forces her uncle, Archon Eric von Shrakenberg, to use the weapon prematurely. The Draka win the resulting conflict; however, their incomplete victory leads to Eric negotiating an arrangement whereupon the Alliance is allowed to launch its generation ship "The New America" and the remaining Alliance survivors in space are granted limited Draka citizenship.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 522 pages
• Publisher: Baen (July 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671720090
• ISBN-13: 978-0671720094
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #764,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a writer by trade, born in France but Canadian by origin and American by naturalization, living in New Mexico at present. My hobbies are mostly related to the craft -- I love history, anthropology and archaeology, and am interested in the sciences. The martial arts are my main physical hobby.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best Cold War/Armageddon stories I have ever read, November 22, 2001

By 

Indra Sunrise Geerts (Buffalo, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stone Dogs (Draka Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

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

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An ending like few have ever dared write...., September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stone Dogs (Draka Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the final book in Stirling's original Draka trilogy. (If you haven't read both Marching through Georgia and Under the Yoke, read them first, or at least read Under the Yoke). I dicussed the background for the Draka trilogy in my review of Under the Yoke - see it for my overall discussion of the series. This review will focus mainly on The Stone Dogs.

In many ways, the Stone Dogs is a much weaker book than Under the Yoke. Whereas Under the Yoke is a brillianly rendered dystopia, the Stone Dogs is more action/adventure/science fiction. I didn't find the characters in the Stone Dogs particularly compelling, and I didn't think Stirling focused as much on the fascinating background as I might have liked. While he certainly did a good job of weaving the history of this alternative timeline with the characters, there was too much emphasis on spying activities. Also, Yolande Ingolfsson is not a particularly compelling main character; she's a monster, in a way that the Draka in previous books were not (compare her to Eric Von Shrakenburg). Also, the scientific advances in this book were ludicrous; both the Alliance (the Americans and other good guys) and the Draka manage to colonize the Solar System in a matter of decades, in a way that turns the Draka universe into space opera. It's a pretty good adventure story, but probably no better than most other space operas.

WARNING!! THE NEXT PARARGRAPH CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY READ THE BOOK OR DO NOT CARE!

What ultimately makes the Stone Dogs so memorable, however, is the ending where - to put it bluntly - the Draka wins a complete and total victory over the Alliance (America), destroying the Alliance utterly in a thermonuclear holocaust. While the means they use to do it (a supervirus that turns the Alliance military into raving lunatics) is pretty unrealistic, it's the very thought of the Draka, the most despicable villains in science fiction, winning completely that turned my stomach -- and yet it utterly facinated me. I have not been able to forget the ending to this book in the three years since I read it -- something which few other books have done. It is a measure of Stirling's skill both that I hated the Draka so passionately, and that I was so upset by their victory. (If Sterling was not as good a writer, the Draka's victory wouldn't mean anything). Now, I'm not criticizing Stirling for his ending -- indeed, the ending, in a peverse way, is the best part of this book, precisely because it was able to stir my emotions so effectly. Indeed, I've often thought that if I had a million bucks, I just might pay Mr. Stirling to write a final book in the Draka saga where they are utterly, and totally defeated.

Enough raving about the ending -- the Stone Dogs is a good book with an unforgetable ending. That's high enough praise for any book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You like SF and alternative history - You HAVE to read it !, February 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Stone Dogs (Draka Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

In his gripping conclusion to the "Domination of the Draka" trilogy Stirling takes the conflict between Alliance and Democracy developed in the second book to new levels. The two opposing systems race to colonize space, research computer viruses and vicious biological plagues in preparation for the final apocalyptic war. In between, the secret service agents of the Alliance and the Draka aristocrat Yolande Ingolfsson, a main character of such depth as rarely encountered. The background as well is developed to such a degree that you have no problems immersing yourself in this strange world of theirs. And Stirling is not afraid to actually let the Final War happen - For the Draka, it never was a question anyway. Those last chapters have been someof the most riveting I have ever read. Buy it !