Rating: 
Summary: Do you have a strong stomach?
Review: The entire Draka series is fascinating, but _The Stone Dogs_ requires eve more than did _Marching through Georgia_ or _Under the Yoke_ that you have a very strong stomach. If you don't, you'll never finish it.
Rating:
Summary: A little too much fiction.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A little too much fiction.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: The Draka Series Requires Suspension of Belief To Be Logical
Review: The successes of the Draka in the first two books (Marching Through Georgia and Under the Yoke) were achieved by Stirling providing the Draka with weaponry, technology, and other miscellaneous language that are 50-100 years ahead of their time. Take for example the Civil War rifles that the Draka supposedly invented during the American Revolutionary War. The Hond III tank of WW2 is basically the M1A1 Abrahms without the laser range finder and Chobham armor. The P-12 ground attack aircraft is the Draka version of the A-10 Warthog. The T-6 assault rifle with its 75 round drum magazine, three shot burst mode, and 5mm shot circumference is a souped-up version of the M-16. The Draka also had a version of the MLRS in WW2 complete with multiple submunitions per rockets. In Under the Yoke, the Draka had helecopter gunships like the ones we used in Vietnam in the late forties! All these unbelievable tech advantages allowed the Draka to win. Also, I can't believe that the European powers of the 1800s, notorious for their greed and ruthlessness, would have allowed the Draka to keep resource rich Africa for themselves. Stirling also gave the Japanese in WW2 ten times the industrial capacity they actually had in order to tie up all of America's resources in the Pacific theater. The Janissaries are also unbelievably loyal to their masters. Don't even try to tell me there were real Janissaries. Yeah I know there were real ones, but they were offered citizenship at the end of their service. The Draka's Janissaries get nothing like that! Brutality may get you obedience, but it will only get you sullen obedience. You will get nothing more than that. In conclusion, I have to say Stirling rigged the entire board in order for his "super Nazis" to win.
Rating: 
Summary: An ending like few have ever dared write....
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Draka vs the Free World: Armageddon in 2000 AD
Review: This is the third book in Stirling's alternate history series. In it he continues to develop his reality to an incredibly detailed degree (close your eyes and you're there, folks!). Particulary effective are the leading excerpts (from sources WITHIN his alternate universe) at the beginning of each chapter. Each of those excerpts serves to point out both a commonality between his universe and ours, and a jarring difference where history took a different path.
The Stone Dogs lies about halfway between the action adventure of Marching Through Georgia (first in this series) and the follow-through on ramifications of the differences in his alternate universe in Under the Yoke (second in the series). Take the best of David Drake, Jerry Pournelle, and Tom Clancy, shake well, and you've got an idea of what this book is like.
My only dissatisfaction with this book is that it is an epic saga (spans 33 years), which I've personally never had much patience for. If you've got no problem with a novel that spans generations crank the rating up a point
Rating:
Summary: The good guys loose
Review: This is the third book in the Draka series. It is as well written as the other two, and just as logical. The Draka culture has the same effect on the world that a virus would, it can't be stopped, and it turns the enemy's strength against him, by converting the most capable enemy citizens into Janisaries. Sterling has a very good grasp of History and a very effective, disciplined imagination
Rating: 
Summary: Almost certainly the best alternate history ever written
Review: Urgent: this is the conclusion to the first Draka trilogy, and must be read last. These books--the first is Marching Through Georgia, the second Under The Yoke--are the most compelling and disturbing alternate history I have ever read, and most people have the same response to them. Although the Draka books are already the subject of thousands of Net messages and debates on various lists, they deserve to be far more widely known. Stirling's alternate history branches in the 1770s, with defeated American Loyalists founding a Cape Colony(Drakia, after Francis Drake) and subsequently reinforced by defeated French Royalists and American Confederates, plus the likes of Carlyle, Gobineau, de Maistre, etc., and founding a kind of Anti-America in South Africa, expanding north, grabbing the Ottoman Empire during WWI, and poised for the conquest of Europe as Germany bogs down in Russia in 1942. This sets the stage for Marching Through Georgia, and all the rest follows. It is impossible to overpraise Stirling as a writer of altrnate military history, but he is much, much more: his Anti-America is a brilliant and disturbing provocation to rethink the contours and possibilities of American political culture and history. I have never read anything remotely like these books: they are mostly criticized by people who cannot bear their implications. They are, incidently, hypnotically interesting pageturners, and you'll be cursing when they end--out of frustration that the intoxication of reading them must be suspended. Buy 'em now. This is as good as AH gets.
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