Dog Soldiers

Rating:
Summary: A nightmare that never ends
Review: Robert Stone's National Book Award winning novel, "Dog Soldiers", may have a special resonance for the generation of Americans who lived through the sixties and seventies amidst national angst over the US' involvement in the Vietnam war and the counterculture that it spawned, but it's hard for non-Americans like me and those unfamilar with the seedy underworld of drug smuggling and dealing to decypher and make out what Stone's writing about. The proliferation of American slang and jargon made the book a difficult read for me. There are nevertheless tracts in there which I truly enjoyed - like the disastrous incident with the young middle class couple who wanted to experiment to experience the real thing - very much a sign of the times which evoked in me an indescribable sense of horror. That the novel is populated exclusively by unsavoury characters is not unexpected or a put off. After all, we're dealing with the underground world of drug traffickers in a hell that has followed us back to America from Vietnam, where you learn who you really are. As I was reading the book, I was thinking to myself, "what a great movie this would make" not realising that it was made into a movie in the late 70s under the title of "Who'll Stop the Rain" with Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld and Michael Moriaty. While I found much of the book tough going and confusing - especially the part with Ray Hicks hallucinating - perhaps seeing the movie will help make the meaning clearer. My feelings towards the book are decidedly mixed. It's an important book. I only wish it were a little more accessible to non-Americans like me.

Rating:
Summary: You Need to Read This Book
Review: Stone's books are all filled with drugs and paranoia, but Dog Soldiers, his second novel, is his most on-the-edge. His vision takes in everything, the obscure details that fill the world, focused in tight-points on the counterculture and that which the counterculture resists, on the idea of America, of respectability. Dog Soldiers starts in Vietnam with a drug deal, moves to California, where the deal goes wrong, and winds up with one of the protagonists walking through the desert, wounded, toward death. Welcome, America, welcome

Rating:
Summary: yes, a masterpiece,etc -- but READ ON:
Review: Stone's DOG SOLDIERS is a fine book, but if you happen to see this without exploring the rest of the reviews on Amazon -- access them. The novel was assigned as a high school project in Iowa, and the kids who had to read it seem to have flocked en masse online (perhaps part of the project) to review it. I found reading these reviews very entertaining, and recommend the experience to anyone, though it won't tell you much about the book. I like kids, what can I say. Now that that's out of the way, Stone is one of the most important (and most strangely neglected) writers of the 20th Century. I think comparisons with Hemingway and Conrad are a bit off the mark; this novel is far more reminiscent of COMEDIANS-era Graham Greene, in his troubled Catholicism and concern for the decline of religion in the 20th Century. While Stone is hardly interested in promulgating any particular religious point of view, he IS a moralist, and a scathing critic of what we've become without a sense of God. This novel can be read, I think, as a crucifixion myth of sorts, made relevant to the 20th Century. It IS dark, but it's brilliantly paced and written, and a fairly accurate look at the time it deals with. Stone, by the way, talks of a recurring dream he has, where he's bringing drugs or contraband into a country, usually on a ship, and knows that he is about to be caught. This motif informs the paranoid tenor of the novel. A final point: the title has nothing to do with Lakota warrior societies, and is a bit of a misappropriation. It appears to be a reference to the proverb "better a living dog than a dead lion," which Converse muses on in the text. The outstanding performances by Michael Moriarity as Converse and Richard Masur (who usually seems to have a limited range) as Danskin are two really good reasons to see the film...

Rating:
Summary: Review from City High School Student
Review: The book Dog Soldiers has a good story line, but the writer makes it kind of hard to understand the story. I like the idea of the book, but I don't think it is written very well. The business about overseas drug dealing is very realistic. It seems that lots of drug dealers get their drugs someplace where it is cheap, and bring it back to the United States, and sell it for big bucks. The main characters are Ray Hicks, John Converse, and Marge Converse. Ray Hicks and John Converse are in Vietnam at the beginning of the story. John and Marge are married, and Marge works at a strip club, and John is a reporter in Vietnam. John Converse, and Ray Hicks are drug dealers. The story gets hard to follow when the characters are running around all over, because the writer doesn't explain who everybody is, and what they are doing with them. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good book.

Rating:
Summary: Sex, drugs and murder makes for a winner.
Review: The Dog Soldiers is an incredibly well written novel by Robert Stone. He tells the story of an over seas drug deal gone bad. A lot of the book is the characters experiences with sex and drugs in full description. This book is great for anyone interested in the counterculture, but is not for the weak hearted as many of the sex and drug scenes are extremely descriptive. I loved this book because I am so interested in the 60's and 70's. As I was reading the book I kept thinking about what my parents were like during this time. A lot of the book is disturbing to read becuase it is so hard to beliecve that people behaved like this. You really must keep in mind that this was a completely different time period and morals and ideas were extremely different. The characters are very hard to like becuase they are so weak, but the book is a quick read and is very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: I hate them all
Review: The writing style of this book is wonderful. Stone certainly has an excellent command of the language. The writing in this book was all, however, which I did actually enjoy. I don't believe that Stone wrote the book as well as he could have. The plot would have been good had Stone not made every character a figure of my hatred. I hate them all. None of them have any moral values. They all live according to themselves. It embarasses me to think that our country actually went through this selfish stage. "She set about separating another high from the dope on the sheet of paper." Drug crazed hippies. This book is about evil, selfish people focused on drugs. I did not like this book because of the lack of moral values that the characters have.

Rating:
Summary: Quintessential Vietnam War novel
Review: This book is among the top three or four greatest Vietnam War novels ever written -- period. It goes deep deep deep into the human condition, making it, frankly, more than just a book about the war and its aftermath. It's about the irrevocable stain on the American soul, a stain that got there long before the atrocity in Southeast Asia (think European expansionist genocide, think slaughter of the American Indian, think Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- think, think, think.

Rating:
Summary: Dog Soldiers: A review
Review: This book is strange, to say the least. It won the National Book Award in 1973. The characters are so realistic and involve themselves in what people have the ability to do in extreme situations or when opportunities arise to gain wealth or power and no negative consequences seem imminent. The book is very believable because the characters resort to drugs and illegal activity when the chips are down. That's how a lot of people in society deal with problems; either drugs or alcohol. It's usually the people who don't fit the typical mold, like Converse. He's just a simple, tabloid reporter. The fact that the book seems to jump around in setting constantly keeps the reader immersed in the story and wanting to know where the next page will lead them. I felt that the book contained too many characters and each character's purpose and importance were sometimes unclear. The sex scenes and drug use were too many and too detailed for me. I would recommend this book to an older audience due to the drugs/sex. It will inform younger adults of the dark side of the 70's/Vietnam lifestyle or serve as a trip in time for readers who actually experienced it.

Rating:
Summary: An Uncanny Take on America and Vietnam
Review: This is as true a take on the corrupting effect of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam as you will find. It is a world in which most people are torn from their moral and ethical moorings. Like Converse, one-third of an unholy triangle that includes his wife, Marge, and his best friend, Ray Hicks. The book is a chronicle of how Ray sticks to his moral code, as the rest of the world goes haywire around him. It's left to the reader to decide who is crazier--Ray or the world he lives in. This book is an essential part of the American experience. If you were of draft age during Vietnam, reading this will confirm for you the craziness of the times. If you weren't, this book provides a window into an era that was even stranger than the current one.

Rating:
Summary: A great book!
Review: Well worth a reader's time. Even if the symbolism of the counterculture and Vietnam is lost, it still reads like a great, hardboiled crime novel. Hicks is a helluva creation. (this is good place to mention that Stone co-wrote the script for the film based on the book. It's an excellent movie--in some ways improving on the story.)