Rating: 
Summary: BaldurDash
Review: The computer game's storyline is far more coherent than this book! I give the story two stars because I've never seen an author more adept at killing off characters in a gruesome fashion. That provided some entertainment, you see. Aside from Xzar, the few characters included from the computer game were poorly done. First of all, Jaheira is depicted as this babe. In the game she's a bossy annoying lady with a constant sour expression on her face. Khalid really doesn't say or do much. Xan is depicted as a swordsman? He's supposed to be a shrimpy little mage. And his delightfully pessimistic personality is also excluded. No "Your quest is vaaaain" in this book. Where's Minsc and Boo? They would have provided excellent comic relief. And Imoen? She's one of the most important characters, but she's not there. The book does a horrible job of explaining why Sarevok wants the main character dead. Why the Zhentarim wanted to go to the mines. Why Sarevok kills off all his underlings without any apparent reason other than to give the reader a show. And there's all this stuff about black flowers that has nothing to do with the game. In fact there's lots of things that don't seem to have much to do with the game. It's amazing that the author had more than two hundred pages and produced little more than a flawed outline of the plot of the computer game. Yes, this novel is rather loosely constructed sequence of events, but like a TV show, it does provide a sort of mindless entertainment.
Rating: 
Summary: A great novel of a great game
Review: People have to understand that Athens is not butchering this game at all. ... The game of Baldur's Gate is great, but a little hard to follow ... Athens molds an incredible story from this game that brings everything together. After reading the book, you want to go back and play the game.
Athens gives the character from the game, the name of Abdel. This character that we all see but really know little about. A huge man with nowhere to go. When Abdel's foster father is murdered in the beginning of the book, he finishes a journey North that was to be completed with his father. It is this journey when he finds out the news of his true evil God of a father and the truth of what he is.
I had a wonderful time reading this book. Every page is an adventure that only the Forgotten Realms could create. Everything comes together perfectly, We get to venture into one of the largest cities in the Forgotten Realms world that very little has been written about, helping you understand the game and the city better and giving you more history of the game. I have never been a big fan of video game tie-in books, but this book is great. Dont miss out on this fun advernture.
Rating: 
Summary: steer clear
Review: Wow, this book is really really badly written. Anyone who is a fan of the Baldur's Gate games (as I am) should stay away from this book because it is terrible. It bears almost no resemblance to the game or any of the characters in any way. The standard of writing is extremely low.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad at all...
Review: ... THIS IS NOT THAT BAD OF A BOOK... Now, if your over 19, YOU SHOULD'NT BE READING THIS BOOK ANYWAY ...I'm 14 years old and a MAJOR FAN of BG. This book may go off the plot a little bit but hey, it gives some great descriptions and will keep you hooked! Don't listen to these other reviews! This is a good book and i compliment the author! Go get this book, it's worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Not good, yet not a total failure...
Review: When I saw "Baldur's Gate:The novel" on a bookshelf, the first thought that came to my mind was the huge success and amazing gameplay of "Baldur's Gate:The PC game". I know that I shouldn't relate a book to it's movie or game, however, I had no doubt that this novel would be great! Unfortunetly, I was proven wrong...very wrong.Before purchasing the book, I read the first few pages just to make sure that the novel was well written and worth the buy. These few pages were actually quite good; they were filled with great action along with a battle that was very well described and interesting. Without hesitation, I bought the novel and returned home, eager to read this novel. Now, I do not know whether the author was trying to decieve us by applying himself to only about the first 5 to 10 pages of the book, and then quickly writting the rest of the novel, but if that was his goal, he definitely decieved me. The rest of the novel was, shortly said, very badly written. I managed to read the whole book, although there were some times when I felt like throwing it in the trash. As I read along, I found many negative points that made it a bad book, and some positive points that kept the book from being rated as a "total failure". I do hope that the following will influence your decission on purchasing this novel or not. To begin with the negative points, the complete story is poorly written. Not only are there many spelling and grammar errors, but the author does not express himself very well, and the story is not clear at all. For instance, a certain character will atack another character, and we have no idea why he did it, or what provoked the attack! This became quite frustrating, since I found myself often going back into the book and reading pages that I had already read, looking for any clues that would help me understand certain situations. One of the major facts that I found very dissapointing concerned the character's weapons, armor and accesories. I have always believed that magical weapons and artifacts in a story always made it much more interesting and fascinating to read. However, not one character in "Baldur's Gate:The Novel" carry any magical weapon. I found it quite lame when the main character's regular sword was always breaking and shattering his opponent's weapons, including one sword which was enchanted(the only magical artifact in the novel). If I properly remember, "Baldur's Gate:The PC game" was filled with magical artifacts. On the positive side of things, the story unrolls quite quickly and character devolpement is decent. The battles in the novel are, in my opinion, properly described and quite interesting, however, as mentioned before, if any of the character's had a magical weapon, it would help greatly. Overall, this is a very disapointing novel. I definitely do not recommend it, and ask you not to be decieved by the first few pages of the novel, and not to associate the book with the amazing PC game.
Rating:
Summary: Just terrible
Review: The novelization of Baldur's Gate is terrible, period. I hate stereotypes and cliches, and this book was nothing BUT. I didn't like the writing style. Hell, it was just plain poorly written. I didn't like the dialogue. I didn't like the liberties that were taken with just about everything. The book only remotely follows the game's story; what's added is ridiculous, and some of what's left out deserved to be kept. Then there's the main character. Abdel is so blatently a Big Tough Hero that it's painful. He's a walking, talking, two-dimensional cliche with absolutely no personality. Some game characters were left out, which is fine, but the characters that WERE included were terribly portrayed. They show up to be a living plot device for a while, then die. Every one of them. Khalid and Jaheira...I never liked them much in the game, but I was appalled by how butchered their characters were. Khalid became a jerk, and Jaheira became a Meek Little Fantasy Chick to compliment the Big Tough Hero. I didn't think any female character could scream so much in one book. I kept wondering how much of the "story" was the author's personal wish fullfillment. If you want a decent novelization of a game, read the Resident Evil or Myst books. If you want to experience Baldur's Gate, play the game and leave this book on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: I'll keep it short, it's a BAD piece of literature
Review: To say the least, it looks like the author was simply aiming to make some quick cash by naming this book after one of the most, if not the most, successful CRPGs. I've played Baldur's Gate many times and very disappointed when I read the book since I was expecting so much more from a book that supposed to be based on such a great game like Baldur's Gate. The characters in the book are miles far from the characters in the game, same goes for the plot. This book and it's sequels turn the Great Saga of Child of Bhaal into something cheap and pathetic not worth reading even for those who have never heard of the GREAT game. Those reviewers who claim this book is good because it's fun and action packed, well, D&D isn't about action, yes battles are an integral part of D&D but they aren't the centre of it. D&D is mainly about creating and building a character and a story around him/her and as the story grows so does the character into something better than he/she were in the beginning of their story. In short it's about characters and their deeds and not about blood spilling. Those who played the game and couldn't find the story in it, I'm sorry to say that you lack the basic imagination to see it and shouldn't be reading fantasy books or playing fantasy games if you need to be spoon fed the story in them. Don't buy this book, buy the game, play it and if you find that the story presented in the game lacks a detail or two use your own imagination to fill them in.
Rating: 
Summary: STOP BS'ing THE BOOK!
Review: Yo! Im frankly amazed at all the bad reviews, and all ive got to say is this: YOU ARE BS'ing THE BOOK! I bet you money you didnt even read the whole thing! This was very amazing, ive bought all sequels, and was very pleased in the amount of work put into these books in making them as very "Baldurs Gate" like as possible. So you say Abdel is different, huh? Well, no duh, genius! In every Baldurs Gate Game, you create a character (unless using an old one) and play through the game with him. This is one of the very best novels about games ive read. It stays true to the storyline, no matter how many characters it goes through along the way (and trust me, it goes through A LOT of characters...) but thats okay, cuz when i played, almost everyone in my party died, except for the Hero and Imoen. If you think this book is bad for being different from the book, put your head down, count to 100, and take deep breaths. Its called being original. I think the people that put down this book were just impatient that day, or not feeling well. I gave this book to my friends, and they liked it. Youll be cheating yourself if you dont get this book. Ignore the bad reviews, they are BS'ing you. This book is a treat for adventure and action fans everywhere. Especially if you like long stories, invlving romance and characters conflicts, and great bouts of action. The only part in this book I didnt understand, was when they got captured after Khalid died. That was...sorta fast. My grade for this book is 91/100.
BUY THE BOOK!BUY THE BOOK!BUY THE BOOK!BUY THE BOOK!BUY THE BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Fails on every level
Review: I will tell you up front, I went in knowing the book was bad so had low expectations. Those expectations were not met. I would not, could not believe how bad it was. The book fails as both a novelization of the computer game, and as a story. First, I didn't expect the book to be all that close to my own adventures in the game. Obviously the game is too big. However the author kills the NPCs twice. First with character assasination, the characters in the book do not resemble the characters in the games one bit. Secondly literally killing them, it is almost a revolving door. Join the hero's party, die, next NPC please. As a story it is truly, truly awful. Even given the level of gaming franchise fiction this is a low water mark. The most well developed character Abdel is barely two-dimensional if that. We see virtually no struggle with his legacy. It is magically overcome by the love of a woman. The plot is a mess as Abdel runs from location to location without reason. The background is almost totally left out. Our heroes run off to places because one line of explanation is given that there might be something in the next location.
At 250 pages this is not that short a novel. Some exposition could have been given rather than run from one fight to the next. Now Eddings in his Belgariad/Mallorean takes a lot of heat for the plot essentially being location to location to location. The way Edding's does it though appears masterful compared to Athans. After 250 pages what we have learned about most of the characters is they are dead, Jaheira lacks morals and Abdel is boring. Even Robert Howard's Conan stories have more depth to them and they are pure hack and slash. What we have here is a very poor novel which takes place in a world where the places have the same names as that in Baldur's Gate, and the characters do but nothing else is even the same. Please ladies and gentlemen, even if you enjoyed this book as light-reading throwaway literature it is not a 5 star book. It is a 3 star book for those who enjoyed it, a one star book for those who didn't.
Rating:
Summary: Truly an awesome book!
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read! I bought it mainly because it was based on a game I had played before. After I read the first chapter though, I was in a state of awe. Personally, I love a book with gore in it, and this has a good dose of it. What I love a lot about it is the fact that it starts out with plenty of action, having the main character, Abdel, in a big bloody fight with robbers. Most other books are unlike this. They seem to always start with boring little non-action packed stuff, then comes to a climax in action, then gets boring again, and then it ends. Not Baldur's Gate though. It has action in it around 90% of the book! I definetaly reccommend this book to you!
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