Why the hate for Abdel Adrian? I only know of him from the FR wiki where he is described in positive terms.
Personally, don't have an opinion as I know nothing (and don't particularly care for) novelization of an RPG game.
To me changing an RPG protagonist into pre-defined character is just problematic. The point of an RPG is to come up and role-play as your character. If than IP owner makes your choices irrelevant and potentially replaces your character with someone pretty different, it will not be welcome by people who played your RPG (at least myself). Same principle also applies to retconing player choices in RPG sequels.
That's of course quite a challenge but not one that is not insurmountable. Annoying enough, BG3 was walking the line rather well until act3. Than they bring back characters who should be dead, and don't even respect who they were in previous games, not to mention manouvering around possible outcomes. As clunky as BG2 was in that regard (But I thought I killed you!) at least it acknowledge some discrepencies between BG1&2.
Name dropping Abdel just seemed completely unnecessary. He means nothing to not fans of BG1&2, and will annoy fans of BG1&2 as it means their character is considered non-canon.
he is intensely unlikeable, cheats on Jaheira with a villain from BG2 and so forth.
With... Irenicus? That's something BG3 would be very much into.
