Baldur's Gate

By: Philip Athans

Narrated by: Fleet Cooper

Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

Bhaal must be stopped! Someone is sabotaging the iron mines of the Sword Coast, pushing powerful realms toward a bloody war, and a young mercenary toward an unimaginable secret. Evil gods, giant spiders, murderous doppelgangers, flesh-eating ghouls, and wicked Zhentarim come to life in the action-packed novelization of the Baldur's Gate computer game form BioWare and Interplay.

©1999 TSR, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Poor Novelization of Good Source Material

I know the bar is pretty low for these kinds of books, but this is an extremely boring and poorly written novel. The author wastes so much time with dull and unnecessary tangents. The entire romantic subplot is tedious from start to finish and not at all reflected in the game. And how can you write a novelization of this RPG without Minsc or Imoen? The plot of the video game is a tight narrative, and the author should have just stuck with that. His changes might be forgiven if they added something, but all they did is subtract from the source material.

Awful

Awful. Just simply awful. There is absolutely no plot lines, just a series of events that seems to happen. There is no character buildup and the supposedly protagonist is like the least developed, one dimensional character Ive ever come across. Stephen Seagal movies seem Shakespearian in comparison. Avoid avoid avoid!!!

Just play the game, the book is too goofy.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The main character is simple and boring, easily forgettable. His dialogue and actions remind you it's a guy playing a video game,impish and far too casual. The story was great in the game, but this re-telling fails.

Does not follow the game's story at all

What would have made Baldur's Gate better?

The story seems to be completely made up and does not follow the story what so ever.

What could Philip Athans have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Author needs to seriously play through the game before attempting to recreate the story in novel form.

Which character – as performed by Fleet Cooper – was your favorite?

Performance was ok at best. Characters we somewhat believable however, I get the impression that the narrator never played the games either.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

No redeeming qualities in this book. I can not even finish it.

Any additional comments?

This is a Baldur's Gate flavored story with characters and locations from the game but does not justify the epic story that was the original game.

no

just no. didn't like the story, it was an extreme disappointment. I wish I could like it better but just no.

Doesn't offer much.

Sadly, there isn't much to this book. The narration is only alright, while the story itself fails to capture much beyond the bare-bones of the original story of the game, and absolutely nothing of its feel. This would presumably be fine if the book was good in its own right, but here it fails as well, killing off most characters before they leave an impact beyond offense of their misrepresented personalities. However, the biggest nail-in-the-coffin of this book is the main-character himself, whom completely fails to be a likable protagonist, and only manages to be bareable by the very end. No one has any reason to go through this book, and if a person likes Khalid and Jaheira, it should be avoided like the plague for its crimes against these characters.

A slap in the face to anyone who enjoyed the game

Do yourself a favor and skip this one. It barely follows the story of baldurs gate. Most of the companion characters are missing, including minsc, and imoen. The companions that are in the book are poorly written. (Don’t get me started on jaheira and Khalid) ghorions ward “abdel adrian” is more a mindless brute who just follows around his companions rather than the main character that he should be.

I loved this book!!

Would you consider the audio edition of Baldur's Gate to be better than the print version?

Can't tell, i haven't checked the written version.

What did you like best about this story?

I loved the way it moves through the video game campaigns, and how it narrates the battles.
In addition, I really enjoyed Abdel's personality.

Which scene was your favorite?

It might be a spoiler, so spoiler alert here.
I loved that scene when Jaheira asks Abdel if knows who killed Khalid.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Into the Maw of Madness

Any additional comments?

The narrator is awesome! He probably makes all the difference, he gets really involved, in character, and makes the story so much fun.

So bad.

The story flowed like a clogged toilet. Poorly written with no sense of direction to the story. The dialog is poor and the character development is almost non existent. Pass on this one.

Not the game at all

This was terrible for me. As a long time player/lover of the games this was painful. The best part was the Narrator he was pretty good. My only complaint was he mispronounced names withou consistency. One time he said a name correct later he would butcher it. Oh this is asking alot but since it was a game with audio he could have matched voices better.
Anyway the story took names and places and a few storylines but the rest was totally off. They didn't have to follow page by page but i think they just ran completely off track.
I could go on forever on how bad it was but I won't. Lets just say it was painful to Indore the entire book. There were a ton of reviews that said it was bad but it was the intro or sample that made my decision. It was the best part. Let me say its like when you see a commercial for a movie and think looks good but then see the movie only to realise that commercial was the best part. Yeah its like that.
I can not recommended this book whether you are a fan of the video game or d&d you will be disappointed I'm sure. If you are not you'll probably still dislike it I'm sure.

It was ok

Apparently Phillip Athans had a deadline of two months to write this book. If this is true then it might explain the poor writing, however he was replaced for the third book so this suggests TSR/WoTC had ran out of patience after his second attempt.

I am currently running Murder in Baldurs Gate, a 5e D&D adventure that has Abdel and the Bhaalspawn as its main plot, I wanted to read this solely for background having not played the Baldurs Gate computer games for which the book is based on.

For those who don't know the Computer game is set in the D&D campaign world created by Ed Greenwood.

Now onto the performance of the Narrator.

His voice acting is great, he has a wide vocabulary of accents he can dip in and out of, and believe me this is a skill, as a Dungeon Master this has always been something I have struggled with, there are those that can do accents and those that can't this guy can. This is the only reason he gets 3 stars.

However he is just a poor reader.

Simple sentences have incorrect intonation, he emphasises words in sentences that don't need emphasising, it's a real shame, I hope he listened back to his performance and realises for the second book because I'm not looking forward to it.

If you are a fan of D&D then it might be worth reading/listening, if you have no clue what I have babbled on about then don't bother, trust me, it's awful.

Terrible Novel

Baldur’s Gate, the computer game was truly a great game with an engaging story and a plethora of fascinating characters, that as a rare exception to the genre would have loaned itself to an equally excellent novel. It amazes me that with so much narrative gold, a dreadful mess of a story has been created by the author. Two dimensional characters are order of the day. Jaheira one of several strong female characters in the game is reduced to a needy, witless damsel. The main character is unlikable and the narration jumps almost randomly from scene to scene.
The narrator tries his best, but his heart obviously isn’t in it. This is exemplified by the changing pronunciation of the lead characters name from Abdhul to Abdel to Abdal.
An unfortunate waste of an opportunity… save yourself the heartbreak of witnessing the defilement of one of the high points in the dungeons and dragons legacy reduced to this drivel, avoid this audiobook.

waste of time

the book seems to be written by a twelve year old kid.. the story is bad and all over the place with no Flow nor any Connection to the characters

A disappointment

It is an confusing mess.
The story is nothing like the game, not that I expected it to be, but it has literally nothing but the main plot as a liking.

Its writing is confusing with wierd leaps in the story which does not make sense.

The narrater does his best but there is nothing to do about it it is a terrible story that HAD a lot of potential. 😢

Disappointed

Just not very good, it takes a good story and removes all the best bits and the characters are just annoying with no redeeming features... First book in years I've given up on.

Unexpected Gem

I wasn't sure what to expect when I fired this one up. But I was very pleasantly surprised. A good listen, well read, and performed well for the most part. Fleet has a very interesting style and made it easier to decern characters.