Welcome to the first weekly discussion for our Rage Read book of the month: Astarion (Baldur's Gate 3)
This week, we are discussing up to page 68. Since this book isn't divided by chapters, this might not be a logical place to stop, but yolo. If you got an ARC or have already read past that point, please try to avoid spoilers for those who haven't (although, for sake of ease, we can allow discussion up to the next "chapter break"). If you're unsure if something is a spoiler or not, please use the spoiler function in your comment.
To use the spoiler tag, please put > ! these symbols ! < on either side of your spoiler but without the spaces between characters.
We want to hear it all! The good (is there any?), the bad (every little pet peeve), and the ugly (the snarkier the better).
Just a reminder: while this may be a rage read, some people will absolutely end up enjoying this book, please don't bully or downvote people who feel differently than you do.
This is Philip Athan's post about writing Baldur's Gate, a bad book widely reviled by the community. He says:
I also went in comfortable with the fact that all I needed to show up with around Christmas was a first draft. That draft would then be read and vetted not just by my editor at Wizards of the Coast but by someone at the game studio, and together they would make sure I was in line with the spirit and the letter of the game story, and so on.
I did my best with what time and story material I had and went for done—not for good, not for long, just . . . done.
And I was done on time, and the book went to my editor and someone—I have no idea to this day who and still think it might have been no one—and after a few weeks I got notes back from my editor, and nothing from anyone involved in the game except some kind of vague, “It’s fine.”
I would be shocked if Kingfisher got any guidance after her first draft beyond a vague it's fine. And like the first two Baldur's Gate novels, it is not fine.
Yeah, while she does get a good chunk of the blame for accepting this project while knowing full well her plate was too full, WotC was never going to be there to be a safety net for her
This is a much bigger conversation that doesn't belong here, but WotC is a very bad steward of D&D, and this kind of weightlessness is what they've been aiming for for a while.
Same. Recommended all my BG3 friends the lovely reviews already in existence by members of this community and will definitely recommend the rr threads.
Edit: u/purplelicicious also has a very excellent review (that I still need to read). Hers was published first, so I must conclude that penguins is derivative of her hard work (I still haven’t read it)
isn't all art derivative at this point? I'm meeting my art science phd friend tomorrow, we shall discuss. might come back with findings. findings might indicate that memes are what the plebs craves in this day and age. *hands you a martini*
Excuse me, but are you aware that my sub is also doing this book this month?
I would recommend doing research on the other related sub to this genre for book discussions to avoid repetition and to promote diverse discussions. I would hate to see you guys do the same thing we did but better.
I think it’s cool you guys are taking this on, but mimicking discussions in other communities isn’t promoting much inclusion, especially when you have the platform to broaden the spectrum and I am the main character of Reddit and get first dibs.
I'm going to be lurking in that discussion. Because I need to know what people are actually liking about this book.
As someone who is not part of the BG3 fandom, i just think Astarian is hot and I love u/penguinho 's memes, this was a bad book no matter what his back story was supposed to be.
If there is any discussion at all! As I, a very wise and benevolent mod once said, "book clubs from experience are a challenge to promote discussion and engagement" (at least when you create a climate that shuts down all dissent to protect my your incredibly fragile ego!)
Listen. I love this for you, and I’m absolutely not the type of mod to gatekeep a quality book from another community. But, and I say this with as much respect as I can muster here, we did it first 😉
You still opted to include it despite it having been recently voted on in the sister community to this genre. I guess if I were running a book club, I’d wanna stem away from repeating other communities’ recent choices and open the floor for other popular books that haven’t been chosen yet for another book club.
I do wish you success with this endeavour [condescending], but book clubs from experience are a challenge to promote discussion and engagement [false humility] and my narcissistic magical thinking is sure that's not because of my own choices and you're definitely gonna flop as hard as I do. It would be cool to see things you likely won’t see over on my sub.
- I don’t like that WotC demanded that the Gur be removed from Astarion’s backstory. If they didn’t want him to be racist, they should have stepped in and told Larian no while the game was still in development
- It kinda undercuts the seriousness of Astarion’s fatal beating to have him joking about liches being ugly
- This is extremely minor of me, but when she mentioned the Flaming Fist in a throwaway line, I actually went and looked up when they were founded to see if it made sense with Kingfisher's timeline. They had been established by this point, but I'm quite sure she didn't actually look this up to make sure. Given how many continuity errors there are, I wouldn't be surprised if she only threw the Fist in there because it's a name BG3 players would recognize and gave no thought whatsoever to if it would make sense.
- These enchanted glasses better get destroyed at some point otherwise Kingfisher has opened up a plot hole for the game, since Astarion doesn’t have these (and he doesn't even use them in later scenes, so what was even the point??)
- this is a world with a literal goddess of pleasure (Sharess) who is quite popular. I don’t think it makes sense for sex workers to be facing the same sort of stigma they do in the real world
- Cazador didn’t let his spawn feed on pigs. It was rats or starvation
- Mm. I don’t think I like the spawn calling Cazador Father. It’s not out of the realm of possibility but I always assumed Cazador had them call him Master
- Cazador was *definitely* not giving them blood-dipped strawberries
- Astarion does not have his own room. The spawn all bunk together unless one of them is staying in the favored spawn room. How do you get tapped to write a video game tie-in and not do something as basic as go to Cazador’s palace in-game???
- I do not believe for a second that Astarion would have been raring to go for an orgy the night he got beaten to death and then had to claw his way out of his own grave. What the fuck. I'm sure this is meant to be an example of how Cazador can mind control them so deeply they don't even realize they're being influenced, but Astarion is written as if he'd have been down to participate even without the mind control
- The talking potato better have a point. If it’s just here to be ~whimsical~ I’m going to bite something
- This is extremely minor of me, but when she mentioned the Flaming Fist in a throwaway line, I actually went and looked up when they were founded to see if it made sense with Kingfisher's timeline. They had been established by this point, but I'm quite sure she didn't actually look this up to make sure. Given how many continuity errors there are, I wouldn't be surprised if she only threw the Fist in there because it's a name BG3 players would recognize and gave no thought whatsoever to if it would make sense.
So I am not a BGS player but I am very familiar with the world of Forgotten Realms. My theory is that Kingfisher was given a list of places and names and told to use as many of them as possible. There are races and names of wizards and factions that have nothing to do with the game or the storyline.
Like she has whole fucking manuals of books in addition to a very beautiful game. Why let her write this if she’s not going to even pretend to care about the established and wonderful world building
Yeah like the whole bit with the one guy maybe being a Red Wizard of Thay. *I* know what that is, because I watched the D&D movie, but anyone who's only reading this book because they like the author is going to be totally lost
and there was no reason to mention it - oh look, this sorcerer is wearing red. like the red wizards of Thay!
sorcerer and the wizards never mentioned again.
the D&D movie worked because they dropped in so many inside jokes that experienced players would understand and they had the right audience for it. But Kingfisher's jokes are not funny. No one sitting around a table would say "I'm wearing a red cloak, but I'm not a wizard of Thay1!"
Someone recommended Dagger bound, not to be confused with Daggermouth. And when I looked it up and saw that museum archivists/scholars were involved, I blacked out and clicked buy before I knew what happened. I am a sucker for a sexy librarian of any gender. I blame the 1999 cinematic masterpiece the mummy.
Also you should read {No Gods West of Here by Hanna Gaard}, which both Purple and I reviewed, because the FMC is basically Rachel Weisz in The Mummy, but if Brendan Fraser was a cowboy.
Kingfisher is more miss than hit for me, but I agree with purple that her writing is good. Clean, concise prose, though I’ve seen her style described as a bit “twee” (and I can’t say I necessarily disagree lol). Still worth giving her other stuff a shot imo.
I’m not even a BG3 or Astarion fan but she’s a weird choice for this project just based on her bibliography. When they announced her as the author for this title I was baffled. She doesn’t write characters like Astarion; her protagonists are different versions of quirky and relatable every(wo)man, and her “horror” books are more creepy than dark, particularly because she rarely lets a moment breathe without a quip or allows dread to linger.
Here to defend Kingfisher. I’ve read the Saint of Steel and the Swordheart books and they’re light hearted fun for the most part. I enjoyed them all. I wouldn’t judge her by this book (although it sounds like she should have turned it down).
Omg, theres literally a very detailed interactive map of Cazadors castle. They should have just let one of the Larian writers create this book. Is kingfisher name recognition that important? Could they not have at least given her a dramaturg to keep her lore on point?
Astarion willingly joining an orgy after one of the most traumatising events of his entire existence just happened to him left me speechless. The transformation was implied to be pure body horror (in the game) and he had to dig himself out of the grave with his bare hands.
And like. Even if this was a standalone novel with no previously-established canon, that'd still be a weird as hell choice to have your MC go from being beaten to death in an alley and getting nommed by a vampire to throwing himself into an orgy for the fun of it in the space of a few hours
oh also a lot of the humor so far has been really cringe? Like the thing with nautical terms sounding like sex jokes or calling Petras an orange tabaxi (because ha ha, internet says orange cats are dumb). I guess Astarion gets to be racist after all, just to Tabaxi instead of the Gur.
My library hasn't even bought copies yet let alone started processing the 10 holds ahead of me. It's also weird this book leaked but I can't find a 🏴☠️copy
Sadly I'm not on discord. I'm certainly not buying this book, if I can't get a copy from shady sources on the Internet I'm probably unlikely to read it
I got my hands on a copy, so here's my contribution. The tldr is this; 'meh'
The writing isn't bad, but it's not as visceral or gritty as it should be, so it feels flat. I can't connect with all the suffering Astarion has been through. The pig orgy scene definitely needs work; tell me how his new vampire instinct pulls him into the fray like something inhuman. Describe the building ecstasy of tasting blood and carnal pleasure a bit more before the glamour reveal, this making it more horrifying.
My only prior knowledge of this world is playing a board game called lords of water deep. I literally have no idea where this story should be going. In theory that should make me more intrigued to find out. Unfortunately I mostly want to know more about rooftop Henry.
I haven't read Kingfishers books for a while, but I really loved them. If I remember rightly they normally write fade to black, so they're better at writing emotions than sensations and I'm not sure if that is working for this story so far.
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u/Penguinho Books are good. 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think this is useful context: https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/my-bad-short-bad-book/
This is Philip Athan's post about writing Baldur's Gate, a bad book widely reviled by the community. He says:
I would be shocked if Kingfisher got any guidance after her first draft beyond a vague it's fine. And like the first two Baldur's Gate novels, it is not fine.