Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, by T. Kingfisher | Free Audiobook
The first tie-in novel, in the voice of the man who played him
Astarion Ancunin studied the law, argued cases in a courtroom, and had plans for his life. What he became instead is a vampire spawn owned by Cazador Szarr, and the city where he once held a magistrate's post has very little to say about it. He drinks rat blood instead of wine, walks the night streets fetching bodies for a master whose orders cannot be refused, and has kept exactly one thing for himself: the conviction that this has to end somehow, even if he has no idea how.
So Cazador sets his household a contest, with a reward none of them can afford to ignore, and the answer lies downward: something old and powerful is hidden in the deep places under the city, and whoever brings it back will be favoured. Astarion needs an ally he has no reason to trust to have any chance of reaching it, and the ally who turns up is Hahn den Suriel, an Aasimar paladin with more charm than sense and reasons of his own for being in that house. It is precisely the kind of arrangement a spawn is forbidden to make, for reasons involving trust, the rules of the house, and the fact that an undead heart was not built for this.
Two things set this edition apart. T. Kingfisher wrote it with access to Astarion's original creator, Stephen Rooney, and the audiobook is read by Neil Newbon, the actor whose performance in Baldur's Gate 3 won him award after award. It runs 10 hrs and 1 min, and it is the first tie-in novel written for the game.
Adapting a character that a fandom has spent years defending is a risk, and the early reviews say T. Kingfisher did not play it safe: she gave Astarion a past, a plot of his own and a new character to bounce off, and the book is being described by Polygon as one that horrifies and delights in equal measure. There is one caveat, and fans need to hear it before they start.
Start with the part that has no controversy around it: this is a good book, not a merchandise exercise. Grimdark Magazine, reviewing it before release, calls the plot "very good" and describes the hunt for the blood of a dead god as carrying "a distinctly Indiana Jones-esque flavour. And you know what? It works." The same reviewer notes that the humour survives the darkness, that Kingfisher "never once loses his trademark wit", and that the scenes with Astarion's fellow spawn, the siblings he shares a house with, are the best in the book: "clashing personalities, toxic family dynamics and the wildly different ways in which they attempt to survive Cazador's cruelty".
The new character is the pleasant surprise. A paladin invented for the occasion, Hahn den Suriel, is called "a power move" by that reviewer, who writes that "so much joy, humour and casual tragedy is packed into den Suriel and Astarion's brief tempestuous partnership". Anybody worried about fan-fiction energy should know that the author consulted Astarion's original creator, Stephen Rooney, while writing it.
And then the voice. Neil Newbon won awards for playing this character, and the audiobook exists because of him: he narrates it, which means the character sounds the way your memory insists he should. That is an unusual advantage for an adaptation and it is the main reason to take this in audio rather than on the page.
Now the caveat, which is specific and worth taking seriously. The novel spends considerable time on Astarion before he was turned, and canonising a deliberately mysterious past is a gamble. The Grimdark reviewer puts the trade-off plainly: those sections are interesting, but the present-day plot is strong enough that "I'd have happily traded these flashbacks in exchange for more of that", adding that they wanted far more of Cazador's cruelty than the book gives. The same review warns that canon divergence is unavoidable here, and that "readers expecting things to line up perfectly with the game are straight up not going to have a good time". Some of the choices made will be argued about for a while.
The fandom's nerves were visible long before publication, with threads asking what on earth was going on with the book and whether it was a good idea at all. That is the honest picture: a strong novel that treats its source with real care, in the best possible voice, and a guaranteed argument about which details should never have been settled. If you want a game tie-in that went right, the site's Witcher collection is the other obvious place to look.
Baldur's Gate 3: Astarion is the first tie-in novel written for the game, and the audiobook has an obvious selling point: it is read by Neil Newbon, the actor who played Astarion and won awards for it. The author, T. Kingfisher, wrote it with access to the character's original creator.
The story follows Astarion before the events of the game, as a vampire spawn owned by Cazador Szarr, who enters a competition for his master's favour that sends him looking for the blood of a dead god buried beneath the city.
It runs 10 hrs and 1 min, published by Random House Audio. Worth knowing before you start: the novel makes choices about his past that the game deliberately left blank, so a perfect match with canon should not be expected. With the free trial, you can pick any title you want, this one included, cancel whenever you like, and the audiobook stays with you.
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