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 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

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 - 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.

For the Draka, it never was a question anyway. Those last chapters have been someof the most riveting I have ever read. Buy it !