Baldur’s Gate is a video game franchise based on the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role playing game. It is also the name of one of the main cities in the game. The most recent iteration of the video game, Baldur’s Gate 3, was released in 2023 and remains extraordinarily popular, not least because of the complexity of the story and characters within. One of those characters is Astarion, an elf vampire spawn. He, thanks to his snarky personality, good lucks, and tragic backstory, is a fan favorite.
Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to engage in friendships and romances with a number of characters, Astarion among them. By befriending Astarion, you learn about his past as a vampire spawn enslaved to the sadistic vampire Cazador. But although the game reveals the broad strokes of his past, there is plenty to learn about Astarion, and that is what this book is for.
Astarion tells two stories, interwoven as the narrative progresses. One of them is how Astarion came to live in the city of Baldur’s Gate, starting from his childhood growing up in a vineyard, his introduction to his noble background by a summons from his great-grandmother, and his training in the arts of aristocracy, law, and thievery. The other is his long history as one of the vampire Cazador’s spawn – how Cazador found and turned him after he was beaten nearly to death in an alley, the many torments Cazador inflicted on Astarion and his spawn siblings, and the details of one particular episode from this past.
This episode is a contest between the spawn, on who can bring Cazador the most exotic sample of blood, and the promised prize is to finally be turned into a full-fledged, independent vampire. This contest leads Astarion into the depths of the undercity beneath Baldur’s Gate, where a dead god’s yet living blood is rumored to lie. There he meets the aasimar paladin Hahn den Suriel. Aasimar are the descendants of gods or celestial beings, angelic and holy, and paladins are those who have sworn an oath in service to a particular god. Den Suriel serves the god Lathander, who commands his charges to destroy undead wherever they are found. Astarion tricks him into a partnership before den Suriel can discover Astarion’s vampiric nature, and the paladin is trapped between his oath to ally with Astarion and his oath to eradicate the undead. Still, the two form a friendship, and there is an undeniable sexual tension between them that further complicates their relationship.
The Astarion novel is a prequel to what happens in Baldur’s Gate 3, and expands on the character that fans already know and love. Astarion is morally grey, refined, attracted to luxury and beauty, and doing his best to endure the torment of an existence where his very will is bound in service to the sadistic nature of the vampire who saved his life by condemning him to undeath. We learn how his appreciation for aesthetic and the good life developed, his hopes for himself and the world he moved in, and how brutally those hopes were broken when Cazador turned him into a spawn. We see some of the horrors Cazador subjects him and his fellow spawn too, and how the spawn try to maintain their own well-being in the face of such torment and despair.
We also see what lengths Astarion is willing to go to for the chance to escape from this life. There is every possibility that this contest of blood is just another mind game conceived by Cazador, to torment instead of reward. But what if Cazador is in earnest? What if he really means to set one of his spawn free? Astarion can’t afford to not do whatever it takes to win – no matter what he loses, or who he breaks, in the process.
I play Baldur’s Gate 3 with my wife and roommate, and we have appreciated the intricacy of the game. Every decision you make has the potential to affect the story being told and your relationships to the various characters. It’s a huge and vastly complicated game, and an enormous amount of work clearly went in to bringing these characters to life through animation, cut scenes, and stellar voice-acting. But there’s only so much of each character’s past that can really be explored in the story, particularly when you’re playing with other players instead of solo, and that’s what makes the novel Astarion so interesting. It offers lovers of the character a chance to delve further into his story and his past.
T. Kingfisher is a talented writer whose work I admire. She has a way of writing simple, clever, humorous, yet evocative prose, and she pays great attention to characters and characterization. What she brings to Astarion’s story, in the exploration of his childhood, upbringing, and previously unexplored aspects of his servitude to Cazador, is significant. Fans of Astarion will surely enjoy this chance to grow closer to one of their favorite characters. Fantasy and horror fans can enjoy the novel independently of the game, though a certain familiarity with Baldur’s Gate and D&D helps with comprehending some of the details of the world. Whether you’re a fan of these games and Astarion or not, the story told is one that is entertaining, funny, sexy, but ultimately tragic. In that way, it is a fitting exploration into a character like Astarion, who can ultimately be described in just the same way.
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