The Rebellion

Dragonlance: The Stonetellers #1

by Jean Rabe

Jean Rabe returns to the world of Dragonlance with a tale of slavery, rebellion, and the struggle for freedom!
When a series of earthquakes strike a Dark Knight mining camp, goblin and hobgoblin slaves take advantage of the bedlam and revolt. A fast and deadly rebellion erupts, pitting the Dark Knights against their slaves... and against the still-rumbling ground. Casualties on both sides climb as a leader emerges among the slave force --Direfang, a hobgoblin foreman with deep scars and a long, brutal history of servitude. He must rally the surviving goblins and hobgoblins and lead them out of Neraka, turning his rag-tag force into an army that will not allow itself to be enslaved again.

Genres: Dragonlance, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Fiction, High Fantasy

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

When I am not writing, I toss tennis balls to my cadre of dogs. My house is filled with books and dogs, you can smell both when you walk in the front door. It's a good smell.

I have 36 published novels and am currently writing in the mystery genre. My latest mystery, The Dead of Winter, was a finalist for the Claymore Award and is the first in the Piper Blackwell series.

I live in a tiny town in the middle of Illinois that has a Dollar General, a pizza place with exceedingly slow service, a veterinarian (good thing, eh?), and train tracks...lots of train tracks.

Reviews

[Jim C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the first book of a trilogy that takes place in the Dragonlance universe. In this one, there is a large group of goblins and hobgoblins who are slaves to the dark knights. These slaves are being used to mine ore. An opportunity arises where they can rebel against their masters and fight for freedom.

At first I wasn't buying into this book. Goblins and hobgoblins are usually portrayed as evil and I wasn't sure of them being the heroes for this trilogy. I was about a third into the book when I realized that I was rooting for them to be free and live how they want to live. I applaud the author for turning my opinion around and doing a commendable job on making a disliked race likable. She even managed to give the goblins and hobgoblins different personalities and make them interesting characters. The highlight of this book is the setting as it is very gloomy and dark which ties in perfectly with the theme of this book.

This book was a pleasant surprise as I wasn't expecting much because of the members of the species that was being represented here. While this book is a little similar to other Dragonlance books where a race is looking for a place to call home, it does offer a different perspective of the actions that set it in motion. The battle scene was excellent in this book and there is enough hanging threads for the next book in this trilogy. I am looking forward to it.

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I loved some of Rabe's other books, this one wasn't the best. I'm not a huge fan of goblins. Hey, come on. Goblins have always been the bad guys. Rabe tries to write them as the good guys, but it just doesn't work. In my opinion anyway.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean, everyone knows I love Dragonlance, but this book was incredible. Set after the War of Souls, a band of goblins chafe as slaves in a Dark Knight mining town and attempt to use the disruption of earthquakes as a means of escape. At first, I wasn’t expecting too much, although I thoroughly enjoyed Rabe’s previous DL entries, especially the Dhamon Grimwulf saga. But this novel really crept up on me with how well-done it was. It’s a very small story, despite having a fairly large cast of characters. We don’t see larger political intrigues or full-scale battles or continent-crossing or time-travel—-all we see is the struggle of the goblin and hobgoblin slaves. Sometimes vile and occasionally despicable, the goblins are still the heart of the story, and I loved seeing their lives and culture fleshed out in a way traditional fantasy doesn’t do. Typically goblins are evil, and they rarely have character traits beyond that. But Rabe really did what The Doom Brigade and Draconian Measures did for draconians, which was to build up their internal worldviews and develop sympathies in the reader for them. In that regard, I think this book fully succeeded, and I look forward to following their journey in a quest for a place to call home in a world that rejects them automatically as monsters. Is that prejudice justified? Sometimes, but Rabe proves there can be more.

[Yong En · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot more than most Dragon Lance books I've read. I saw in the other review that it was weird to see goblins as protagonists or "good guys", but that's actually exactly why I liked it.

It's easy and convenient to write off these creatures as filthy wretches who are defined by their penchants for destruction. But it's a lot more meaningful to acknowledge that they live equally complex existences as the humans do and face their struggles with as much emotion.

I really liked that there was a lot of effort put in in ensuring the goblins had sound personalities and lived (or died) through a good plot in the book.

[Fernand Da Fresh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would've been a great book if it didn't bog itself down by showing the same events from separate perspectives on after the other. Really killed the momentum for me. Besides that, I liked the setup for the story. The setpieces were thrilling to read, and the actual prose writing itself wasn't too bad truthfully. Maybe one of the other novels this author wrote might do it for me better.