The Rebellion by Jean Rabe set in the Dragonlance realm is the first book in The Stonetellers trilogy. The second book will be released in August, 2008 and is titled The Death March. I should preface this review by saying that I have enjoyed Ms. Rabe's previous work, in particular the Dhamon Saga; which in my opinion is a very well written trilogy and certainly showcases Ms. Rabe's talents as a writer.

The plot of this book is rather straightforward in that it follows a group of goblin and hobgoblin slaves in a mining camp run by Dark Knights. The mine must continue to run smoothly in order to provide the steel for Dark Knight swords and armor. When devastation comes to the camp all the slaves unite and rebel against their slavers. Throughout the book the former slaves struggle to find their way out of the mountains, the face attack from monsters, as well as a couple other things that I won't mention. There are very few sub-plots in this book, in fact the biggest sub-plot in the novel isn't touched upon until the last fifteen pages of the book. While that is perfectly fine, since this is the first book in a trilogy, as a reader I would have liked to see a few hints leading up to it. All in all it's a pretty simple plot line, so far since there will be more books, but it just seems like an average story at best.

The characters in this book fall into two categories. One, you have the group of goblin and hobgoblin slaves. They are largely cowed into doing the will of the Dark Knights. Ms. Rabe makes it a point to make sure the reader understands the squalid conditions and the work they are expected to do. There are quite a few `main' characters from this group, Moon-eye, Mudwort, Direfang, Graytoes, and Saro-Saro to name a few. The second group is the Dark Knight contingent of which only three or four become `main' characters. They are Grallik, Kenosh, and Horace. Throughout the book I had a very difficult time connecting with any of the characters, both human and goblin. They just seemed so two-dimensional to me. It seemed as though Ms. Rabe tried to instill emotion in them, yet, quite honestly, I could really care less about them. They seemed to be dragged along by the story, instead of the characters creating the story.

The book as a whole is just average. There is obviously a bigger story in the works here as evident by some of the comments the goblins make during the book and what they want to accomplish. However, the execution of this novel leaves the story flat and uninspiring. The dialog in this book is simply atrocious. I fully understand that the author was trying to create `goblin speak', yet it came of as barely readable. There are times when Mudwort uses very broken dialog, then a few pages later uses big words and talks in complete sentences. The characters seemed to actually take away from the story. Reading this novel I felt as thought the characters were the third wheel, at times, got in the way of the story.

Ms. Rabe does have talent as a writer, the Dhamor saga proves that. In my opinion, this book does not do Ms. Rabe's talent justice. Her prose is solid, and her descriptions are very good. The story and characters are simply uninspiring.

I am a big fan of the Dragonlance world, and would say that other core fans should probably read this if for no better reason than that there are events that will probably occur in this series that will be very important. However, for the normal fantasy fan, I can't in good conscience recommend this book tot hem. There are many other fantasy books out there that I would recommend before this one. ( )