Rating: 
Summary: The Darker Side of the 70s
Review: I read this book for a college course on the cold war. I couldn't believe my professor. He actually apologized for putting it on the curriculum! He said that it was perhaps too gross, or graphic.... or something. How insulting!...How are we s'poseta learn about the cold war if the teachers teach with sterilized kid gloves. This book is, to Vietnam, a more accessible version of what Gravity's Rainbow is to WWII. It's harsh but not without redemption. Dog soldiers is goods good good...
Rating:
Summary: good good good
Review: I read this book for a college course on the cold war. I couldn't believe my professor. He actually apologized for putting it on the curriculum! He said that it was perhaps too gross, or graphic.... or something. How insulting!...How are we s'poseta learn about the cold war if the teachers teach with sterilized kid gloves. This book is, to Vietnam, a more accessible version of what Gravity's Rainbow is to WWII. It's harsh but not without redemption. Dog soldiers is goods good good...
Rating: 
Summary: Vietnam as 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre'
Review: I read this years ago, and saw the movie adaptation, 'Who'll Stop The Rain', and found Stone's take on the questions to what our involvement in southeast asia was and the crippling results of that amoral action hard edged and totally embodied by the pathetic denizens of this novel. From Hicks' stance as a lost samurai to Converse's justification to sell dope and make money it's only natural all who they come in contact with suffer from some delusion or another of what is 'right' . There are no good guys in this book. This was a pretty delusional era and the symbolism of dope as gold as cure all to be lost in the dust of the desert with leisure suited thieves works as a beautiful ending. A hard book to put down, especially for anyone who lived through this time and like Hicks, has a decent sense of irony.
Rating:
Summary: Keeps your attention
Review: I would just like to say I had never heard of the author or the book until this year. As part of our contemporary Literature course this was the first book which was allocated that we read first. It is part of American Studies at University of Canterbury in New Zealand.I really enjoyed Stones style of writing even though it is abit depressing. Overall the book was captivating and showing students like myself some of the realities and aftermath during this time.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I'd read a lot about how prescient Stone was about the drug trade and American involvement abroad, so I picked this book up, excited about a literary author who actually seemed interested in getting the reader's blood pumping. In any case, I was disappointed: I'm not sure how novel this was when it appeared in the 70s, but many of its scenes have become standard cliches of the movies - the torture scene, the bags of drugs, the shootouts in precarious and picturesque locations. Perhaps it isn't fair to criticize a book for how much it's been imititated, but a genuine work of art shouldn't lose much of its lustre just because of mediocre followers, and I found myself genuinely bored by a great deal of Dog Soldiers. The only scene that showed the talent of the author was the surreal conversation between the central character and his slightly crazy mother. I haven't read A Flag For Sunrise or any of Stone's other books, but I'd certainly try those before this one.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece! The best novel I've ever read!
Review: If you came of age in the late 60's and early 70s (as I did) and found yourself at the center of the counterculture (in my case, Madison, Wisconsin), you'll recognize all of the characters who people this extraordinary story. In no book I've read are they rendered with such precision and invested with such uncanny life. Charmian, the heroine dealer, is the most sensuous femme fatale in American Literature. There's Danskin, the hippie narc, turned by the feds to surveil the counterculture -- a far more convincing psychopath than Hannibel Lecter. There's Smitty, the jailbird 'muscle', for Antheil, the 'bent' DEA agent. There's Converse's own mother, nursing home-bound and lost in paranoid dementia -- and my personal favorite, Eddie Peace, the wheeler-dealer who supplies drugs to the Hollywood film community. And these are only the supporting cast. Converse, Hicks and Marge are the richest, deepest, most dimensional protagonists in recent fiction. The story is at once twisting, turning action-adventure (it was made into the wonderful movie, 'Who'll Stop The Rain,' with Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld and Michael Moriarty, all perfectly cast) as well as a dark parable of the Manson-flavored decline of the Woodstock Generation. Briefly, John Converse, a playwright, has decided to escape a degrading job (he writes for his father-in-law's skin magazines ('Woman Impaled by Falling Skydiver!')) and failing marriage and becomes a freelance journalist in Vietnam. As his tour draws to a close, he has a brainstorm: Buy two kilos of pure, Golden Triangle heroine, smuggle it back into the US and reap the enormous profits. For the smuggling, he calls on old friend Ray Hicks, a merchant marine who's a student of Nietsche and Zen, and 'cultivates the art of self-defense.' Hicks agrees to carry John's skag when the USS Coral Sea departs Vietnam for San Francisco. Trouble is, Charmian's tipped off Antheil, the crooked DEA agent, and he (in the persons of Danskin and Smitty) are waiting for Hicks when he delivers the heroin to Converse's wife, Marge. A page-turning chase ensues that takes Marge and Hicks into the dark netherworld of the Los Angeles drug scene (circa 1970) and ends at a New Mexico commune very like Ken Kesey's own psychedelic ranch. (Stone was one of the drivers on Kesey's bus, 'Further.' Imagine, Ken Kesey, Robert Stone and various Beat poets (Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, et al.) on the same bus! An astonishing time and place!) I can't overstate the excellence of this masterpiece. More than any since Conrad's and Hemingway's (writers Stone's often compared to) this novel confirms that classic quality and rivetting story are not mutually exclusive categories. His two subsequent novels, 'A Flag For Sunrise' and 'Children of Light' are both excellent -- as was his first novel, 'Hall of Mirrors.' ('Flag' may be as good as 'Dog Soldiers.') If you found his last two novels, 'Outerbridge Reach' and 'Damascus Gate,' a bit slow-going and overly 'philosophical,' be advised that early Robert Stone had a much better balance between story and theme. Also recommended: The 13th Valley by John M. Del Vecchio The Short Timers by Gustaf Hasford The White Album by Joan Didion Rads by Tom Bates Famous Long Ago by Ray Mungo The Stoned Apocalypse by Marco Vassi Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan Going Away by Clancy Sigal
Rating:
Summary: A late twentieth century masterpiece
Review: It's a shame that this book's star average has been kept down by all those lame reviews from Iowa - where presumably it was set as some sort of high school project - because Dog Soldiers is undoubtedly one of THE great novels of the late Twentieth century. And you can enjoy it on so many different levels. As pulp fiction: racy plot; sex, drugs and ultraviolence. Or as post-modern literature: relentlessly bleak, skewed, confusing narrative - culminating in an inspired burst of hallucinatory, stream of consciousness. Or as a profound comment on the legacy of Vietnam in the American psyche. Whatever, the important thing is is that you read it. It's a work of genius.
Rating:
Summary: Heeeeeeelllp!
Review: Keep this book away from people in Iowa City, Iowa
Rating:
Summary: High School Kids in Iowa?
Review: Look, this is an American classic, simply one of the best novels I've ever read. It's way over the heads and hearts of all but a few high school students, yet someone in Iowa City decided a couple of years ago to assign it for class reading and the kids ran screaming here to complain about it -- thus the less-than-stellar starred review you see above. Read this book: I lived a lot of the events portrayed in it. It is right on.
Rating:
Summary: Vietnam, USA
Review: Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers is one of the most important novels to come out of the Vietnam experience. His insight into the counter culture and American society during the last years of the war ensure that this book will remain forever in the canon of American Letters. Stone is a remarkable writer. He takes Hemingway on at his own game and wins. To bring the Americans out of Vietnam and bring Vietnam and the War back to the US is Stone's masterstroke. And to manage this in a novel that is as fast paced as the best pulp fiction is a remarkable achievement for any writer of literature.
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