The players of Gilean Book

I love the epic tales of Dragonlance where a group of heroes goes up against impossible foes, but I also like these little vignettes were we see how life is for the mundane person of Krynn. How do the country folk of some backwater burg that's never even seen a dwarf fare when there's some traveling group in town performing tales from the War of the Lance?

In that vein, this little collection of novellas (calling them "short stories" would be wrong since all of them clock in for at least 50 pages long) was really fun and delivered on nerdy fantasy lit.

Based off a short story from a previous Dragonlance collection, The Players of Gilean tells of a mysterious troupe of players lead by a doughy old but cunning man (or traveling god depending on interpretation) named Sebastius, and wherever he leads them, the power of the theater manages to right whatever wrongs need to be vanquished. Sometimes they stop two armies from fighting or exorcise a lingering spirit, or sometimes they do something as simple as punish two very awful little boys who were terrorizing a town of like 50 people or perform a very boring play for a wedding.

Basically the question you have to ask yourself is this: Do you like the idea of reading about kender, minotaurs, elves, dwarves, and occasionally centaurs and gully dwarves act out in plays or fuss around with stages and costumes? Do you like the idea of the stage being the climax of a story? If so, then these stories will delight.

What I really liked about the traveling trope of actors was that they weren't sleazy, thieving, or scheming carnies that were renowned for tricking entire towns with their guile - something I came into this book expecting knowing the track record of Weis and Hickman-written traveling performers - but they were incredibly professional in their performances and took their jobs very seriously. Some of these players, like the gully dwarf who is their sound effect guy, are astonishingly good. I think if they were con artists, this wouldn't be as fun.

Even though the stories were very enjoyable, There were some minor problems, and I think it was because there were different authors involved with these novellas involving the same troupe. The first problem was that, save for Sebastius, the leader of this enchanted brigade of performing artists, none of the players appeared in more than one story. This didn't bother me too badly, even if one of the stories felt like build-up to a warlord giving up his life of war and commanding armies to be a performer, because every short story had decent protagonists, but the loss of continuity was noted.

The second problem was minor inconsistencies could be spotted in-between the stories. Now, despite the different authors, these stories all take place within the same universe. For instance, they have an illusionist who can conjure up entire sets in one story, making the descriptions of the other plays in the other stories seem out of place. One story has dwarves play gully dwarves because the Aghar clan is seen as unreliable with theater work (and this is one of the better scenes in the book because the dwarves are described as being as unhappy as wet cats about this), only for a gully dwarf to appear literally in the next story.

Finally, the third problem was the level of ambiguity involving the troupe and how the different writers tackled it. It was sort of weird reading three stories where these players have a reputation about them to the point where some of their escapades become legends, but no one outright says anything about it and they just look like really smart traveling performers...and then suddenly run right into the fourth story that flat out says that all the performers get a magical tattoo that prevents them from aging or growing old and that Sebastius is rumored to be a god.

Out of the short stories, I ended up liking Enter, A Ghost the most because, in a way, it was the story I was expecting the most when I picked up the book and read the little cover blurb. We have traveling performers, we have an evil ghost draining a town of its vitality, and the ghost is finally defeated on the stage while the audience thinks its just a part of the play. Cliche and goofy, yes, but it did it in an earnest, fun way.

In the grand scheme of Dragonlance, this is a very throwaway extra-curricular assignment that doesn't really expand on the Dragonlance universe so much as give you more of what you love, and I will admit all of these stories are blanketed with an enjoyable level of fantasy novel cheese, but I was delighted by all the stories I read in this. Like any good play, it made for a fun little diversion.