For the love of god please don't! That book is awful. If someone really wants to get familiar with the story (which is great, but massively underused) it would be better to watch or read (my preference) a Let's Play, just like Jonesy89 suggests.

Absolutely agree with the previous posters: please do not. The book is a travesty that has little to no bearing on the Baldur's Gate video games.

Except the novel improves on the game by fixing the biggest gaping plot hole, the starting date. The game starts in 1368, roughly 10 years after the time of troubles which is when Bhaal took the skin boat to tuna town with a whole lot of women.

Wrong. All that is known is that Bhaal 'walked the land' *before* the Time of Troubles. He foresaw his own death and took mortal form. This could have been any time before 1358 -- there is no record of him doing it all in 1358.

Hahahaha, dude that's probably the nastiest pun about sex I've seen so far.

Maybe the book fills some plot holes and maybe it creates some new ones. It's besides the point.
My point was that it has no literary value whatsoever and it'd be a waste of time, effort and money. I prefer to judge a book primarily as a book. I don't care about its genre or the ties it has on other media as much.

Of course the game story is not perfect by any means, in that regard I would agree. But if you don't look too close it provides what it promises.

Hickory. Man. You never cease to amaze me in BG and DnD lore. That just cleared up a huge RP hole I had with my characters. I was always aiming them to be rather young and then growing up in BG. But the whole tuna town thing happened any time in the past. So you could be a 200 year old elf and have no problems RP-wise.

Of course, a 200-year-old elf being raised by an old, but not that old, Gorion is a bit odd. Maybe Gorion's an elf too!

Thanks!


P.S. I read most of the book in one sitting at a B&N. It's not a horrible book. It's an empty shade of a book. Worth just a little less than a penny, not worth the shipping, and certainly not worth the paper it was printed on. That said, for a penny, I'd probably pick it up. Maybe use the cover as wall art or something.

I forget, where is that coming from? Everything I learned about Bhaal indicated that he walked the Realms during the Time of Troubles when all the other gods did, not before. Out of curiosity, what did the book do that made it so bad? All I know is that a few of the characters were interpreted differently, but not much beyond that.
I dunno, I'm partial to Oglaf's metaphors: "paddling the pink canoe" as you "pound pork nails into a shaved peach" has a nice ring to it, and reminding your partner that they have "great pelicans" before you "gut the love salmon" and "bake the skin loaf in the fuzzy oven" is guaranteed to leave some kind of lasting impression (although whether the impression is desirable in nature is questionable). I would provide links, but Oglaf is barely sfw on its safest days, and those were not among them.

Heh, yeah, there's holes aplenty in the race thing, but one interpretation says that the creation of the Bhaalspawn was not a physical thing, but more of a divine 'essence' thing. I don't suppose the story writers at the time gave it that much thought, to be honest. It doesn't seem that way, at least.

Makes sense, I guess; Zeus already set the precedent for bizarre impregnation with the whole "impregnating someone as a shower of gold" schtick.

Sorry, that's not "known" until the start of Baldur's Gate 2 and arguably is BioWare's attempt at fixing its lore screw up.

From the game itself:
"... Time of Troubles. A chaotic period, when gods were made flesh, and forced to walk the earth. One such deity foresaw his own death, and walked the land before the cataclysm. He left a score of mortal offspring, intended to be the fuel for his rebirth. That god was Bhaal ..."
As opposed to a very poor authors destruction of an entire storyline? Please!

I'd forgotten about that; must have been in one of the books in game I didn't read. As for the novel, I was mildly curious before, but now my interest is thoroughly aroused as to what in the hell it did so wrong.

So true, so true!
Thanks for all the metaphors and for getting Oglaf on my radar. Unfortunately I could only educate myself from the wiki, as the main site seems to be down at the moment.
Hopefully by tomorrow the problem will be sorted out and I will be able to check it out in all its glory.

Upset? That's quite the assumption. I merely find there is little to no correlation between the actual storyline and that crap novel, that's all.