Baldur's Gate 3: Astarion

Any book about an already belovèd character has a lot to prove. The huge fan community around Baldur's Gate 3 has built its own canon around the sometimes sparse information in the game. It's impossible to satisfy all fans, however, choosing such a skilled and practiced writer like Kingfisher for this tie-in was a good choice. This book is really competently written and nails Astarion's voice and displays a completely new story while also picking up some threads from the game. Unfortunately, the plot had to end up somewhere that leads to the start of the game, which isn't as satisfying or neatly wrapped up as we are used to, but this is the fate of a tie-in. I wouldn't have minded the book being a bit longer either. Kingfisher mentioned in her afterword that this was her fourth book for the year and as such a huge Astarion-geek I just have to imagine how grander this could've been with some fewer time constraints during writing. That is, however, complaining on a high level since this fulfilled everything you could want from a game tie-in novel, especially the great writing, which you don't see that often in commissioned work. 4.5 Stars rounded up!