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Baldur's Gate: A Novelization

Baldur's Gate: A Novelization

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Complete and utter trash, the worst book I have ever read!
Review: I was so unhappy with this awful book, I actually ripped it apart and threw it away! And I am someone who can read any book, no matter how much I dislike its characters, plot, etc, but this book unnerved me so much, I felt sick reading it. I loved the game so much I had high expectations from the novel. Boy was I ever off the mark! If I could, I would rate this 500 times lower than 1 star! Rechaulk your bathtub instead of reading this pure piece of garbage.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Short, juvenilistically written, and not what I expected
Review: I bought this novel after finishing playing both Balder's Gate, and Balder's Gate II-Shadows of Amn.

As is my usual habit, I did not read any reviews of the book beforehand, and now I really wish I had.

This book has none of the epic feel of the games. It ignores some of the best events and plot devices of the game (Imoen's weakness, Minsc's incredible one-liners) in favor of creating an artificial relationship between the main character (Abdel? Who came up with that name? It sounds almost Indian... not what one would expect of someone growing up on the Sword Coast) that doesn't exist in the first game at all.

I can only guess that the writer of the game never actually played the game the novel was based on. And especially was not given information about Baldur's Gate II -- or he couldn't have killed certain characters and ignored the existence of others.

Given that no book based on a game can fit with the entire plotline, I suppose some of these problems can be overlooked... but they add up.

When you add into it the author's inability to make you CARE about any of the characters, good or ill, and his lack of actual writing talent, the book becomes downright awful. It took me less than 3 hours to read it from cover to cover, and I was relieved when it was finally over.

The writing style is disjointed, and as someone who has done some editing in my life, looks like every third page was cut so that the book would be shorter. The descriptions are choppy and uninteresting, and the story just doesn't flow at all.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend buying this book if you previously enjoyed the game (or even just the first one). It just doesn't live up to the epic story that Baldur's Gate is supposed to tell.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Reviewers are really missing something!
Review: Baldur's Gate:A Novelization will never live up to be a popular book,a book that lives up to the game,or the best book since the bible(as some reviewers have said).This is just a book to get you familiar with the Forgotten realms fantasy world.The reviewers here are missing the point.Some of the reviewers didnt even finish the book.In my opinion,this book was very fast and very fun.I wasn't ready to read such a complicated book like "Dune:House Atriedies" so instead, I read a simple,fast,and energetic book like this.

Sure,there were some things that were in the game that were not in the book, but if Mr.Athans put every little moment from Prolouge to Chapter 7 in the game,the book would be about 700 pages,and not a mere 246.Mr.Athans,since this is your first book,maybe a little warning,but at least you did your best.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very nice to read book, lots of action
Review: To make sure this book isn't boring for the ones who've played the game, the author made sure that the adventure in here was slightly different at points than what would happen in our adventures. This book is chock-full-o action, and is suspensful lots of times. I found myself reading on when I promised myself I'd stop many times.

The book has 250 pages of story, action, suspense, and whatever you interpret it to be. The characters are from the game, except ones like Abdel and other added characters. It offers a small twist on what actually happened in the game, to make it seem more realistic.

If your a D&D player, this is a great book to buy, maybe even make an adventure out of. If your a Baldur's Gate player, this great story is indispensible. If your just a person looking for a good book that has to do with the knights and magics and yellow scrolls settings, this is one of those books!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great story but missing a few things.
Review: This novelization of Baldur's Gate is fantastic! The story is solid, the characters true, and the consistency memorable.

The only thing about this book I don't like is the lack of important events or people from the game mentioned in the book. Here are a few examples:

1. Imoen didn't join the party in the beginning. 2. Abdel should have run away from the original fight, not fought in it, also mentioning that Sarevok should have been in the original fight with Tamoko. 3. Where's Elminster on the way to The Friendly Arms and going into Baldur's Gate? 4. Where's the doppelgangers impersonating everyone under Candlekeep? 5. Where's Xan's Moonblade? 6. Where's Drizzt? Everyone knows you can really summon Drizzt. (A cameo appearance by Drizzt would've completely made this story!) 7. Others...

The book is worth reading, the love between Abdel and Jaheira well written, but a few important things (to me, anyway,) were left out.

Ash

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Baldurs Gate: A novelization
Review: This book is awesome. It sums up the entire game with 249 pages. With interesting twists and turns in the storyline, you can't let go of this book. Virtually every sequence in this game is mentioned in the book, wether just slightly, or in large detail. The book is based on Abdel, an adoptee of Gorion, a monk of Candlekeep. When Gorion is killed by a band of hired sellswords, Abdel rushes to find the culprit. He joins up with several people along the way, including an insane wizard, a comical halfling, a neurotic fighter, and a beutiful warrior. Its an really good book. I'd recommend it to anyone that likes the game, Forgotten Reals books, or D&D. It sucks that Xan dies...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A very good book!
Review: Baldur's Gate is a very good book! Abdel, the main character, is a sellsword and begins an adventure when his foster father, Gorion, takes him on a trip. Abdel has no idea where his foster father is taking him and has no idea why they are going on this trip.

Abdel ends up meeting with other adventurers and friends of his foster father and begin an adventure that prevents a war. Secrets about Abdel (that not even he knew) are revealed and he finds out who his true parents are. Characters die, new ones brought into the story, and a little romance is even thrown in.

The characters in the story are very interesting and some of them have strange personality traits. The Characters range from halflings to humans to elves and personality traits range from grumpy to quiet to spontaneous.

This book was not the best book I have ever read but I thought the book was great. I have read many books that I loved and this book is not an exception. To everyone out there that like fantasy books I suggest you read this book. I do not think you would be disappointed!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: interesting reviews...
Review: I was trying to get a sense of what this novel was about and so I checked the reviews and was slightly amused to find 43 reviews rampant with idiocy. Its fairly obvious that one particulary stupid individual has spent a large amount of time writing extremist reviews, in different names, of some obsure book based off a computer game. Most of the discussion seems to be about insulting the other readers (which I suppose I am guilty of) or comparing the author to Hittler. I would suggest that both sides of this debate (if that is an accurate label for a discussion so warped by stupidity) should perhaps find better outlets for their childhood aggressions and discontinue doing situps under parked cars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Disgustingly bad writing
Review: Maybe it was a mistake to read this book immediately after reading Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" for the first time, but this book was truly horrible. It was very choppy and lacked flow. The main character was one of the least likable I've ever seen, and I truly didn't care whether his entrails were sucked out by spiders or not. And anyone who's played the magnificent game of Baldur's Gate should agree with this: Athans really should have gotten Minsc into the book somehow. :)

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Awful awful awful.
Review: This book was terrible. The end of the book read as though it had been written by a five-year-old. It just STOPPED. "OK, so I'm fighting with my brother who is eviler than me, and oops, he's dead, the end." The rest of the story was no better. No character development, and what development was attempted actually made me understand the characters less. Don't waste your money. Read "White Plume Mountain" from the Greyhawk series instead. It's a short, quick story, but at least the humor works and the ending is interesting.


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