Assassin’s Creed is a very successful video game series wherein the player takes on the role of the titular killer, bopping about some historical setting and causing various mayhems with an equally diverse and occasionally unlikely slew of weaponry and abilities (there’s also a bunch of sci-fi adjacent plot elements involving evil corporations and alien gods, but no one likes those bits). Some of the games are even quite good, usually the ones that focus on exploring cool historical locales and let you skip anything that takes place in the modern world.
The games’ critics point out how repetitive and full of busy work they can be, with lackluster storytelling and one-note protagonists. These criticisms are both fair and the main reasons why playing Assassin’s Creed is one of my favorite things to do while listening to an audiobook. Because you gotta be doing something with your hands (or at least I do) to keep your mind from wandering, but if the thing you’re doing takes too much brain power, you will be forced to skip back repeatedly after losing a sentence to a particularly difficult crossword clue. Assassin’s Creed games, even the good ones, are primarily played with your hands and not your brain, which makes them perfect secondary stimuli for audiobook enjoyment.
While I believe you can listen to any audiobook while playing any Assassin’s Creed game, might there be perfect pairings out there? Probably, but these aren’t them. These are just my recommendations for an audiobook (all of which I’ve read) that matches the setting, time period, or general vibes of every mainline Assassin’s Creed game (not all of which I’ve played, but it is the same game thirteen times, innit), just in case you need something to distract yourself from the, well, everything.
Assassin’s Creed
The first Assassin’s Creed game came out in 2007, and it was revolutionary for the first hour and half you played it. Even after the mechanics and missions quickly got repetitive, the setting (12th century Syria and surrounding locales) felt fresh and the overarching mysteries were merely hinted at, leaving you to imagine (and be disappointed by) all the grand reveals that were to come in future installments.
Nicked by M.T. Anderson is also concerned with the underground dealings of mystically-motivated Medieval people, specifically, a misunderstood monk tasked with the extremely distressing task of stopping a plague by stealing the bones of Saint Valentine from a rival city (this is based on a true story, by the way). Anderson’s books are all extremely weird, and you should listen to them ASAP.
Assassin’s Creed: Ezio Trilogy
I’m lumping these together because otherwise we’d be here all day. The Ezio Trilogy has you running amok in Renaissance Italy, one of the best settings the series has ever explored. These games also have some of the best storytelling of the Assassin’s Creed franchise (I’m claiming this because, unlike many of the games to come, I actually remember some of the story beats). Assassin’s Creed II also opens with a QTE sex scene, likewise unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry.
For more tales of sneaky people running around a fictionalized version of Venice, listen to The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. It is the best-executed book in the heist/fantasy crossover genre and narrated by the stellar Michael Page, whose fantasy Italian accents are things of beauty.
Assassin’s Creed III
If Renaissance Italy is one of the best settings for an Assassin’s Creed game, Revolutionary-era America is probably the worst. Fully half of the fun in these games for nerds like me is the ability to climb around on historical buildings, and Independence Hall just doesn’t hit like the Hagia Sophia, alright?
Play this one while listening to Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, because it will last you the entire game and if it doesn’t, you’ll probably be ready to drop Assassin’s Creed III by the time you’re done.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Does anyone else feel like Assassin’s Creed has never stopped chasing Black Flag’s high? Not because it’s necessarily the best in the series (though it might be), but because the games were obsessed with boats for years after?
Anyway this is the pirate game, and of course it needs a pirate book. While I am tempted to recommend Keira Andrews’ Kidnapped by the Pirate for how unabashedly gay the cover is (I mean… just look at it), I’ll instead go with the safer if expected choice, the recent darling of the historical fantasy genre The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakroborty.
Assassin’s Creed: Rogue
This is the one where you’re a bad guy, and we’re stuck in 18th-century North America again. Okay, okay, nuance: This is the one where you’re a disaffected assassin who switches sides to join his order’s historical enemies, and we’re stuck in 18th-century North America again. A direct sequel to Black Flag, Rogue has a lot of its DNA but isn’t nearly so successful or sure of itself.
What is successful, though, is Dion Graham’s reading of David Grann’s The Wager, which tells the true and truly strange story of a famous shipwreck and mutiny in 1742. While Grann is an excellent non-fiction writer, this pairing is mostly recommended on the strength of Graham’s narration. The man could narrate his trip to the vending machine and I’d happily listen. (It’s also a book about switching sides in the 18th-century… I couldn’t help myself.)
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
I’ve never played this one, so we’re flying blind here. My gut says something by Adrian Tchaikovsky, because Unity takes place during the French Revolution and Tchaikovsky’s books are all about that shit (underdogs taking on the system, I mean. And also I love him). Guns of the Dawn is probably the most aesthetically appropriate, but you also can’t go wrong with The City of Last Chances (if you want something epic in scope), Alien Clay (if you’re feeling something sci-fi), or Ogres (because it’s one of the best things he’s ever written).
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
Mobsters! Mystery! Victorian England! A sleeper hit, truly.
There are plenty of audiobooks that I could recommend that would hit this game’s exact setting and time period, but I’m instead going to pair this one with something set in the same city but several decades prior. C.S. Harris’ What Angels Fear, the first in her Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries, has just the right amount of menacing melodrama to perfectly match Syndicate’s underworld shenanigans and twenty more books in the series, just in case you want something to listen to while you 100% it… and every other game in the series.
Assassin’s Creed: Origins
Origins was something of a reboot for the series and one of its best-received. It’s also massive, so you’re going to need a real tome to get you all the way through.
Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay takes place in a fictionalized version of the Byzantine Empire, which is pretty far removed from Origins’s Ptolemaic Egypt, but it shares that some goal of wanted you to awed by the past, by the scope and majesty and drama of it. Unfortunately the audiobook is an Audible exclusive, so if you don’t want to give you precious book money to the unfeeling monolith, try Tigana instead.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
Honestly a surprise it’s taken us this long to get an Assassin’s Creed game set in ancient Greece. (One of the other criticisms of the series is how Eurocentric it is, and ancient Greece is like Eurocentricity 101.)
This is the entry that inspired this list, as I happened to be playing Odyssey when A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Emma Southon came up in my audiobook rotation, and it is the near-perfect accompaniment to Odyssey’s setting and vibes. The audiobook benefits massively from its narration by the perfectly posh Sophie Ward and should be listened to immediately by any fan of Horrible Histories, preferably while getting lamped across the world map by the Erymanthian Boar.
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
Viking assassins sounds awesome, which is probably why this game got made, but unfortunately 9th century England suffers from the same problem as 18th-century America, with the added bonus of now being literally in the dark ages.
John Gwynne’s The Shadow of the Gods will transport you into a much more exciting Norse-inspired world, but do be warned that if you read this book you will have troll testicles described to you… twice.
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage
I haven’t played this one either, so how about instead we end with a recommendation for some of my favorite audiobooks of all time, since you can’t go wrong with them? For fiction, try Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (another Audible exclusive, I’m afraid), one of the most—and maybe only—optimistic sci-fi writers of the 21 century. This one is extra fun because the audiobook uses music to enhance the story, something that you obviously don’t get if you’re just reading a paper book. If you like nonfiction, listen to Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. You might think you know about the story this book tells, but the full breadth of it is wilder and weirder than any single article or documentary could ever get into.
Cover Photo by Flickr user SobControllers (CC BY 2.0)

You. You get me. During lockdown I ate audiobooks while I played Animal crossing. It’s that double stimulation that soothes the ADHD just right.
Love these pairings! I’ve never tried Assassin’s Creed, but there’s lots to be said about games that can be played while listening to/watching something – at least half of how I play games nowadays. Sam is absolutely right about the stimulation, though sometimes I overdo it and then have to stop and go lie down lol.
Also I just read Project Hail Mary and loved it!