Revolt of the Dwarves

Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest #5

by Rose Estes

This is an "Endless Quest" book where you pick-a-path to adventure inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons Game. In it, you must save the kingdom! Your family is captured by the dwarven warriors who have just begun their revolt against human rule. you manage to escape, but they are searching everywhere for you to keep you from spreading the word. What will YOU do? They paths you ay take are many and the choices are yours. Will you travel down the dangerous river of dragons, knowing that magical monsters live on and guard its banks? Will you enter the enchanted forest and enlist the aid of the pixies in saving the kingdom? Or will you tackle the dwarves in their own dark caves and try to rescue you parents before warning the kingdom? Action and adventure are yours in every "Endless quest" book. You will find yourself returning again and again to experience new paths of excitement. Remember! Only you can stop the REVOLT OF THE DWARVES!

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games, Young Adult, Choose Your Own Adventure

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Rose Estes is the author of many fantasy and science fiction books, including full length novels and multiple choice gamebooks. After contributing extensively to TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons and Dragons Endless Quest series (of which she wrote the first six, as well as others later down the line), she wrote her first full length novel, Children of the Dragon (1985). She continued to write for TSR by writing six volumes in a series of Greyhawk novels. She contributed to other series, but continued to write books and start series of her own that, like Children of the Dragon, take place in a fantasy or science fiction world created by her own imagination. She also wrote the Golden Book Music Video Sing, Giggle and Grin.

Reviews

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole point of this book is that "Dwarves are revolting!" and that's a terribly racist thing to say! Just look at Peter Dinklage. He ain't half bad looking. Although, I wouldn't be saying that if he'd gotten his nose chopped off like he was supposed to!



Okay, I'll be serious. The plot revolves around the realm's dwarven guard who are in revolt. They plan a surprise attack on the castle to supplant the ruling humans. In this choose-your-own-adventure styled book, you play the role of human peasant boy who discovers the truth and must warn the prince in time! So off we go!

Adventure #1 In my first attempt, I tried to fight the dwarves and rescue my parents from them. It sounds like the heroic thing to do, but it got my ass killed straight away.

Adventure #2 Let's run away instead! Oops. I slipped up and got captured again. They took me back to their caverns (very plush caverns indeed!) where I met a blind dwarf former king and helped him rescue his son Bork (worst name ever). Together we raised a dwarf army of loyalists to rest power from the bad guy, Sneed (Seriously? These names are horrible.) We saved the day and all lived happily ever after, except for Sneed.

Adventure #3 This time I ran away into the country, befriended this kid with a raft and had a very Huck Finn adventure with near misses monster-wise. We raised a lizardman army and saved the day!

Adventure #4 Again, I ran away, this time into the forest where I met a pixie. She shrunk me down and we had a fairy good time. Lots of typical "magical forest" type things happened before we were able to warn the prince, raise an army and defeat the bad guys.


This is by far my least favorite of Rose Estes' Endless Quest books...and I don't know why. It's perfect fine. It reads as well as any of the others. There's something very relatable to the down-to-earth boy protagonist. He's just a regular old human kid, shitting his pants with fear, but doing his best in a strange and dangerous world. Plus there's plenty of neat D&D elements, especially in the forest scenes with its uncommon monsters and situations to overcome. And the illustrations are some of the best of all EQ books I've seen.

Perhaps, I didn't like it as much as other books, such as the ones in which you play an elf or something, for the very fact that the character you play is too darn relatable! Not only that, but elements in the book - like the Huck Finn rafting bits or the tired old faerie forest trope - have been done before and are played out.

Maybe I don't like Revolt of the Dwarves because, for all its fun scenes and high adventure, it's easy. Your options clearly lead to either success or failure. Each choice is telegraphed almost like...

Do you wish to succeed? :)
-or-
Do you wish to fail? :(

It's worth a read I suppose and probably good fun for boys about 7 to 10. I say "boys" because the main character is a boy and except for one storyline, the characters are male-centric. Only the fairy forest scenes include females to any meaningful extent.

[Tyler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just a horrible book, with so many problems:
- plot moves too quickly for anything to be totally set up
- imagery is first-thought and one-note
- illustrations are ugly and unclear
- workers are vilified and their oppressors are exalted
- dungeons and dragons was (I thought) always more of an adult, or maybe 12+, game, but the nature of this book keeps it at a 9-year-old reading level, and worse, the content of the book is too immature for even a 9-year-old (more fitting for age 6). If I were a kid I would have felt insulted and patronized by the tone, too deigning
- this is "based on DnD" only as much as the tooth fairy is based on DnD

What's clear most of all is that this was written in three months with strict publishing guidelines, giving the author no time to think things through and no room to do anything interesting

But I didn't read this looking for good literature; I read it to study the choose-your-own-adventure format, a thing which I find interesting because it requires an author to write more than one book in one. Here there are probably about a hundred different decision points for the reader, leading to more than a dozen different endings, and thousands of different paths to "read" the book. Many of the choices feel cheap--they lead to immediate dead ends, or they'll tell you "don't choose this one! turn back", or two choices will both lead to the same outcome, things like that. There's nothing wrong with that--it's impossible to write 1000 good books in one, and I'm sure the publisher was giving annoying notes like "we need another decision here".

If anything could fix this I think it would just be deeper dedication to a few fundamental writing principles:
- make the protagonist relatable and interesting (this hero's only quality is "boy with a dog")
- define the protagonist with clear character foils
- use imagery and description to immerse the reader and suspend disbelief
- action scenes should be set up with parameters and actions, not just "bang bang, clash clash"

[David Torres · Rating 3 out of 5]

¡Devoré este libro!
En verdad la fantasía no me interesa tanto como la ciencia ficción, pero lo que captó mi atención es el tema de "tú eliges lo que sucede". Al ser un fanático de Rayuela de Julio Cortázar no pude resistirme a esa idea de tomar el camino que prefiera (aunque obviamente en Rayuela esto se lleva por otro lado). Es muy curiosa esta forma de lectura y me gustaría encontrar más libros así, que inciten al juego, como mi querido Cortázar tanto deseaba.
La historia como tal, bueno, lo que puede esperarse: enanos, dragones, hadas, arboles con vida y demás. Los enanos no son mi criatura ficticia favorita (de hecho me resultan un poco aburridos), tal vez con otras criaturas como base central lo hubiese disfrutado aun más, pero este es el único libro de Dungeons & Dragons que he podido conseguir, por lo que vi en internet son un poco complicados de encontrar.
¡Experiencia muy divertida!

[Jsrott · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was a kid I remember this book as being one of least favorites, although upon re-reading I can't for the life of me understand why. There are three separate possible adventures to follow, all three are wildly different and all three have their share of choices. Granted, most of the choices are pretty obvious as to which choice is the right one, but it's still fun.

[Toni Serrano Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un niño y su perro contra una conspiración para derrocar a un rey. La premisa es muy interesante y el desarrollo, pese a tornarse algo infantil para el público juvenil, es muy divertida. Sin embargo, es un libro atípico dentro de la colección e incluso dentro del mundo D&D, dejando un claro ejemplo en los enanos, que se parecen más al ejercito mongol que invadió China (el de Mulan) , tanto en su descripción como en el diseño de las ilustraciones, que a los enanos habitualmente conocidos de las historias de fantasia (de hecho montan a caballo como bárbaros) Otro punto interesante es Sneed, el malo de turno, más parecido a los grandilocuentes magos de las peliculas Disney que a un malo de fantasía, aunque funciona igualmente, pero no deja de resultar extraño. Otro punto a comentar son sus numerosas opciones, aunque a veces se separen de forma exagerada de la historia principal, pudiendo incluso encontrar ciertos finales que la ignoren completamente, cosa que hace más interesante el libro, pero también más disperso.
A mi me gustó mucho, la verdad, aunque admito que es para cierto público y puede que no agrade a todos por igual

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly, you are not a dwarf in this (let's be generous) novel; you are an elf. And you, elf, encounter not only dwarves. No. There are also gelatinous cubes.

And, alas, no Ogre Battle: http://youtube.com/watch?v=rMgTb45uAw...

Come tonight! Come to the ogre site! Come to ogre-battle-fight!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book! You get to choose what happens next every few pages. Lots of different endings. Only takes about 30 minutes max to read. We're going back to the bookstore to buy the rest of the set. They are ancient. This one is from 1983.

[Vali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was a kid. I actually won it; I entered some AD&D drawing and a few weeks later this little runner-up prize arrived in the mail. I loved this book, it was fun to read and I liked the illustrations.

[Shana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book as a preteen and still reread it from time to time. I think I'll purchase the rest of this set.

[Avery Stempel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did it! Warned the Prince and saved the kingdom! First try! Love choose your own books!

[Fizzgig76 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Galen, his father Paul, and his mother Martha find themselves prisoners of the Dwarven Royal Guard who intends to overthrow the new prince.  When Galen escapes, he and his dog Wooly must find a way to rescue his parents and stop Sneed from his treachery.  Galen’s path is fraught with danger and every choice he makes could be his last…can Sneed be stopped and Galen’s parents rescued?

Written by Rose Estes, Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 5:  Revolt of the Dwarves is a choose-your-own-adventure style of book.  Following Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 4:  Return to Brookmere, the young adult story features interior art by Jim Holloway with Elmore providing the cover art.  They can often be found in PDF form on the internet.

I had a collection of the first four books of the Endless Quest series growing up which I read religiously.  I can remember wanting more of the books, but being sidelined but other series and novels as I got older.  The best part of the internet is access to some of these books you missed, and Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 5 is just one of those “gets” that allows you to revisit childhood.

Like most “choose-your-own adventure” books, the series has obvious cliffhangers and occasionally less obvious.  You have Galen and his dog out for adventure which of course has them being potential prisoners on almost every page or just giving up on your family and the prince (which is always my favorite ending).  The writing is pretty cliché fantasy, but fortunately, the choose-your-own-adventure aspect of the series does override some of the humdrum of the fantasy.

Some of the other books in the series have more impressive art (which helps “inspire” you to choose different paths to see how the art ties in).  Nothing is wrong with the story art in this volume, but I always read choose-your-own-adventure series for the monsters and horror and the elves don’t do as much for me (though some of the creatures Galen runs into are fun).

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were readable video games for the time they were made.  They gave you some choice and some options, and allowed for multiple “play-throughs”.  The Dungeons & Dragons series gave the hook that I needed to get into them a bit more.  With the internet and multiple “pick-this” or “pick-that” options, it feels like choose-your-own-adventures could come back in a big way if they tap into the right online format, but the thrill of turning to “page 73” and seeing you’ve died isn’t quite the same.  Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 5:  Revolt of the Dwarves is followed by Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 6:  Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons.

[Shad Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is also meant as a response to "Tyler's"
I know that review is a couple years old at this point. But, reading it, I just felt the need to correct a few of his points.
- This book was published in 1983, and the illustrator (Jim Holloway) created art in many official D&D books and magazines of the time. Might not be to your contemporary tastes, but they were quite "in fashion" at the time.
- D&D is and was a game played by both youth and adults. However, the Endless Quest line of books was marketed for younger children in the 7-14 age range (as a sort of introduction to D&D).
- There was no publisher looming over the author's shoulder demanding "more choices!" In fact, they gave her a tighter deadline and additional books to write.
- As for his "writing fundamentals", let me give you "gamebook fundamentals". These often apply to Endless Quest, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, Which-Way and the numerous other series of books where you direct the story through choices: "have the lead character be a little generic (skip the details) because you want the reader to be able to imagine they ARE this character, not just reading ABOUT the character. So the characters are intentionally given shallow backstories and weak physical descriptions. It is why on many covers gamebooks of this style, the protagonist is either not shown or shown with face obscured or turned around.
- These books are a mere 157 pages (give or take). Many of the adventure paths loop back around to the same results. Some are obvious or backtrack (yes.) Often, this is a little trick because the book is creating a new "path intersection" where you will get to the same result, but either by bypassing text for a choice that you did not make, or because it is allowing another path to merge up to where you are (to share the ending without them reading some of the text did not work for that path's earlier choices."

All that said, Revolt of the Dwarves is not the best Endless Quest story, and it was not Rose Estes's finest work. Is it 5-stars? Not at all. There are better ones by Estes and other authors. But the book still does what it intended, and isn't horrible. It IS a fun romp.

[Stormcrow Hayes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book up last week at a book fair. Every few years I can't help myself and I become a slave to nostalgia and pick up either an Endless Quest or Choose Your Own Adventure book. And every time I do, there's not a single one in the rest of my library because I always get rid of them. They're usually just not very good. But this one... sadly, this is one of the worst.

I read every path of this book and there are roughly four major pathways, and while each has a little uniqueness to it, none of them are very exciting. Also, there are many times you are given two choices, but both end up leading to the same destination. (E.g. choose A or B. Doesn't matter, they both lead to C!) A few other times a pathway will simply tell you to go back and choose again. How exciting.

On a world building level, how is it that in a world with dwarves, dragons, and assorted other fantasy beings, our protagonist is stunned to meet a pixie and declares pixies to not be real.

Worst of all is the writing. Here's one quick example as we head toward a river: "Soon you hear the sound of rushing water..." and then: "Broad and brown, it flows sluggishly." (p.134) If it's slow moving, then where's the rushing water? There are other examples, but that was probably the worst case of contradiction.

Anyway, this will be thrown back into the wild and then, in another few years, I'm sure I'll grab another one of these things to drive myself crazy. Ah, nostalgia.

(Oh, I should add that I was a teen when these books first came out and I had the first two Endless Quest books, but realized quickly, even as a teen, not to buy the others. I guess I lost that wisdom over the years (failed wisdom roll).

[Filbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading the Endless Quest gamebooks in the order they came out, and this is my favorite so far. Rose Estes seems to have really gotten into the swing of writing these with this one, which features three primary branches to the story that are all fun and satisfying to follow to their conclusion. It's also her first not to feature a hodgepodge of brutish, interchangeable goblinoids as the enemy force, instead pitting the reader against dwarven opponents who run the gamut from corrupt to misguided to noble. Revolt of the Dwarves really shows the potential of gamebooks as fiction, even if it's aimed at kids.

Also, it features characters named "Wolf Born Boulderbender" and "Whimsicality P. Delphinium", which are truly next-level fantasy names.

[Jesse Ames · Rating 2 out of 5]

This little D&D inspired CYOA styled book is a bit too coy for its own good. I imagine the target audience is an eight year old boy, sure. But even for said demographic, the adventure may prove mildly entertaining, but only just. Even a young boy might be bored with the subject matter here. One spends more time talking to giddy pixies and dealing with a puppy, rather than outwitting nasty dwarves and staving off a rebellion. The challenge is simple as well, I hit upon the best ending via my first path through. While not a terrible CYOA, Revolt of The Dwarves squanders its D&D subject matter too flippantly for my taste. The author didn't seem to understand her demographic well in this case.

[Remo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recuerdo que leí esta serie en paralelo al Elige tu propia a aventura original. Tenía como novedad que había pequeños detalles que lo hacían más parecido a una partida de rol, aunque no tanto como los de la serie de Lucha ficción, por ejemplo. A partir de la primera entrega eran básicamente los de ETPA pero con temática fantástica. Su calidad literaria era tirando a baja pero mantenían el interés y había bastantes finales, por lo que las relecturas daban para muchos ratos dentro de lo que en este tipo de libros era habitual. Entretenidos, sin duda.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing special but fun enough for what it is (a fantasy choose your own adventure book for kids). You do get the tiniest bits of extra world building and lore from trying out different choices but not enough imo. This probably works best to just read through once or twice and be done with it, but I 100%ed it like the pro gamer™️ I am and felt the diminishing returns.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun little romp into my old stomping grounds. Going through a lot of my old books to weed them out and I found this little gem. Haven't read an Endless Quest book since I was in my teens. It was nice to know that the magic still felt alive.

[Rochelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Grew up reading (and re-reading) the ENDLESS QUEST books by Ms. Estes. Her crisp and descriptive writing and brisk pacing set the tone for my own imaginative tales. Illustrations in this one by fantasy stalwarts Jim Holloway and Larry Elmore perfectly enhance the stories.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un regreso a mis lecturas de infancia. Me encantaban estos libros en los que tus decisiones te llevaban al final (normalmente malo😅)
En este libro hay más finales en los que sobrevivir.

[Derek]

"- Do you try to find another way?"

Yes. You always do this.

Even when Jim Holloway is not trying to be comical, somehow his art becomes comical.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

While missing volumes 2-4 of the Endless Quest series, I'd previously read the first (Dungeon of Dread) and found it to be rather long on prose and short on choice. Revolt of the Dwarves has less of a problem with not giving opportunities to decide which path to take, but unfortunately the vast majority of those choices end up being illusory.

Revolt of the Dwarves essentially has three paths that start near the beginning of the book. Two of those paths plow straight toward their ending, while the third (and likely written as the main path) has a few chances to break away at the end of it. All of these are loaded with very limited types of choices as they progress: You make an obviously foolish choice and get a bad ending immediately, you choose the only present safe option to progress the story, or you choose one of two seemingly-different safe paths that will both take you to a common page as their resolution. It's as if the author wrote three branches of the story, and then went back and trickled a handful of choices that went nowhere to fit the gamebook format. It's a different problem from the first Endless Quest book, but it's still a problem that detracts heavily from the experience.

With books 1 & 5 under my belt, I can say that thus far Endless Quest is adequate if examined in a vacuum, but when compared with other gamebooks released at the time it was a rather lazy effort early on.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "right" choice is usually easy to guess, but the results are still always surprising.