Dog Soldiers: A Novel

By Robert Stone

In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers—and the price of survival was dangerously high.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 2, 1997
• ISBN: 9780547524160

Robert Stone

ROBERT STONE (1937–2015) was the acclaimed author of eight novels and two story collections, including Dog Soldiers, winner of the National Book Award, and Bear and His Daughter, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2007.

Reviews for Dog Soldiers

[jldarden · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

While I enjoyed and appreciated Stone’s writing this fell short for me in the category of likable characters. I found none to root for or respect, leaving me unsatisfied

[danielstj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an amazing tale. I was thoroughly wowed, especially by the ending-- which was a roller-coaster ride of emotion and action. Stone is a great writer and he exemplifies his talents well here. A must read for anyone who looks at the synopsis and wishes to go further. Impressive and integral. Full marks.

[profh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Descriptive writing and curious plot--I enjoyed this novel while it was in hand, but it hasn't stayed with me.

[blanderson-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5/5

Good book, a torrid pace. I could readily see Stone's stylistic influence on the early work of Denis Johnson (Angels, especially)

A split plotline, two sets of characters involving a heroin deal.

At its best, Dog Soldiers moves like that fever dream. The first 4/5s of the book acts as a pretty intriguing allegory for the VietNam

Flaws: the characters were good but did not really emote with me. I kind of connected with Converse, since I too am a pretentious selfish ass.

At the end of the book, Stone pushes the Nam metaphor a little to hard---Runnin thru the Jungle---and for a novel with such a suspense-oriented plot, there wasn't a lot of suspense for me at the end of the book.


Still, Dog Soldiers is a very good book that does a good job of capturing the identity of an era---the morphing of swinging sixties into the sick 70s, the drug-culture's self-consuming good times, and the Nams culture of fear and displacement.

I always imagined the book being a little trippier, tho.

[dougj110 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An exciting, strange tale of drugs, sex, betrayal and spirituality. It exemplifies the post Vietnam era corruption and decadence.

[max_china-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have a suitcase full of paperback books from last time we moved house, all the shelf space being taken up mostly with hardbacks. Seeing Dog Soldiers again on goodreads, I just had to find it and read it all over again. For me, a mark of a good book is when it reads better second time around - and I did that years ago. Reading it for a third time was like coming home. I really enjoyed it. There's a sense of inevitability that comes through in this story perhaps beginning with the expectation of rain. . . If anyone is coming to this the first time, yes it is a bit dated, but well worth a read. My favourite character was Hicks.

[poprockz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Did not like the begining, after that this book takes off and keeps going.

[absurdeist · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful book even despite the relentless depravity depicted in the desperate lives of drug smugglers set against a bleak, gritty backdrop during the waning years of the Vietnam War. So many hard drugs got smuggled out of the Sixties. Too bad peace and love couldn't have been smuggled out of the decade too.Published in 1974, and winner of the National Book Award, Dog Soldiers served as a nice dark bookend to the Sixties, a black denouement to dashed hippie ideals, a twisted paean to the power of heroin and hash, covert-ops and coverups. But Dog Soldiers is not dated. Nearly forty years out, its sordid story still resonates. For as long as betrayal, lies, lust, disillusionment, exploitation, addiction, greed, small time dope dealer's schemes, military corruption and law enforcement hubris, remain en vogue in the shadier realms of human experience, so will Dog Soldiers remain universally relevant. The novel rings as brutally true today as it did in the Seventies. The novel violently -- and painfully, so sadly -- mirrored the slow erosion, that indefatigable demise, of hopeful Sixties slogans metastasizing into something a little less lovely than freedom or flowers.

[theampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When somebody says that a book is "a product of its time," it's not usually meant as a compliment. The great achievement of Robert Stone's novel, on the other hand, is to capture the sense of cultural malaise that followed the end of sixties idealism. Another reviewer here has pointed out some philosophical overtones in this work, but I tend to think that he reads too deeply – this book's characters, most of whom are self-serving hustlers or wannabe hustlers, have perverted sixties-era ideas and language for their own selfish ends. These characters have chosen to sustain themselves on pretty but hollow rhetoric and a pharmacy full of controlled substances, and the overall effect is unsettling in the extreme. Stone's writing is also perfectly suited to his material, capturing both his subjects desperation and a bit of their desperate humor. As the book draws to a close and things start to go off the rails, the entire thing starts to feel like a particularly heavy, particularly bad trip. "Dog Soldiers" is built like a noir – I wasn't surprised to learn that it'd been adapted for the screen – but a seductive junkie haze hangs over the entire thing, too, giving the book a softer, more beautiful edge. Don't try any of this at home. Highly recommended.

[snat_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I began this book thinking it would be about the Vietnam War told from the perspective of an in-country reporter named John Converse. I came to find that, while a few early scenes were set in Vietnam and Converse did occasionally reflect on his time spent there, the focus of the book is a drug deal that goes wrong--horribly, horribly wrong. However, I still loved the book. It has a bit of a Pulp Fiction or Guy Ritchie film feel to it. None of the characters are likable people and they have the moral sensibilities of a gnat, but they're entertaining and a reflection of the shifting values embodied by the time period (when asked why he tried to move heroin from Vietnam to the U.S., Converse replies, "You hear stories over there. They say everybody does it. Being there f***s up your perspective.") Like most Vietnam novels, the novel is liberally sprinkled with black humor (for those who can find and appreciate it). I would read the novel all over again just for Converse's remembrance of being fragmentation-bombed in Cambodia--a particularly harrowing and well-written scene of self-realization.

[polutropos_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Powerful Vietnam War book. Combination thriller and existential meditation, Camus and Hemingway. "Form is not different from nothingness. Nothingness is not different from form. They are the same. Try a little nothingness." (318) Hemingway could have said that. "Well, they just kept coming, he thought, one of them after another. Pieces and bayonets, lies and cunning and deviousness but none of them were worth a shit." (314) "In the end there were not many things worth wanting -- for the serious man, the samurai. But there were some. In the end if the serious man is till bound to illusion, he selects the worthiest illusion and takes a stand....Thinking it made him smile. Good Zen. Zen was for old men." (168)Great stuff. Worth rereading and pondering.