The Guns of Tanith

This book is the fifth instalment of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts, and sees our beloved scouting regiment take on an aerial assault of a cloud city called Ouranberg, which doesn't sound too dangerous, right? I mean, it's not like the enemy isn't dug in with anti-air batteries or anything, or it's not like the fleet of dropships tasked with delivering the troops to the assault sites can't see where they're going through the pollution fog-banks or anything, is it? Ugh. This is one of the most sickening novels in the series so far, with an injustice at the end that will leave your screaming at the page. I think I'm going to take a break from re-reading these, and come back to the series when I feel a bit better about the phrase "expected losses".

Honour Guard

This book is the fourth Gaunt's Ghosts story by Dan Abnett. Buckle in. The Tanith First-and-Only, with their new Verghastite cohort making up the numbers after the regiment sustained heavy losses in the last book, are sent to the shrine-world of Hagia, which was home planet to Saint Beatti, who was the key player in an ancient Imperial crusade against Chaos centuries prior to this current crusade we're following the Ghosts through. Anyway, the regiment is tasked with escorting a bunch of pilgrims from the dangerous population centres to the holy sites up in the mountains, and as you'd probably expect already, this doesn't go as smoothly as any of them would've hoped. I must say though it's fun to see the culture-clashes between Tanith and Verghastite start to play out, some for better, some certainly not...

Necropolis

This book is the third Gaunt's Ghosts instalment by Dan Abnett, and it's a doozy. The Tanith First are sent to the hive-world Verghast, where what had been thought prior to be a local war between competing aristocratic heritages has metastasized into a full-blown Chaos uprising. A number of Verghastite locals are introduced - Captain Ban Daur, mine-worker Gol Kolea, hab-ganger Tona Criid, smeltery-worker Agun Soric, to name a few - gee, I wonder if any of them will join any of the Imperial Guard regiments should Vervunhive prevail in defending itself against the onslaught of cultists and woe machines? No spoilers. This is the grimmest book yet. Death wipes its arse on every page, and you find yourself genuinely thinking everyone might die. I've thought before that Abnett has a slightly-irritating habit of ending his books too quickly - they build to a massive climax about two-thirds through, then that climax sustains its intensity until there's literally only like five pages of novel left, and you're wondering "what the feth is going to happen?" and then it happens and you're like "oh." Which is probably true to war. Victory is always unforeseeable until it occurs, and once it's occurred, you've won, so there's no need for the chroniclers of war to keep the cameras rolling.

Ghostmaker

This book is the second book in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series, and it's a little different to all the rest. Instead of a singular self-contained novel, this contains one big novella at the end (which I won't spoil as it's devastatingly fun) set on Monthax - and then seven or eight shortish stories, each focusing on a particularly interesting character from the regiment. Major Rawne, sniper Larkin, sergeant Varl, colonel Corbec, heavy-weapons operator Bragg, trooper Caffran, regimental mascot & piper Milo, scout-sergeant Mkoll... oh man, I love these feth-heads like they were people I know. Abnett as an author has a horrible habit of sketching people so realistically that you get to anticipate them, empathise wise them, and then see them die in ghastly, unpredictable ways. But more on that as the series progresses.

First and Only

This book is the first novel in Dan Abnett's ground-breaking Warhammer 40,000 series, Gaunt's Ghosts. I absolutely love this series, and much like I did with several other series last year I fully intend to reread all of them. Which means I'll be doing very short, blunt posts merely overviewing the plot and then in my post about the last one I can let myself breathe enough to give a bit more reflection.

   So, in a nutshell: the forest-world Tanith has been called to muster three regiments as a draft into the Imperial Guard, which is both an honour and something to pretty much expect of any world. Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, hot off the back of a major victory, is given command of these regiments - but as soon as the Guard's ships arrive at Tanith, a major Chaos attack ensues. Gaunt does everything he can to save the men, and ends up escaping with only the First regiment (aye, hence the title). The Tanith, thanks to their forested home-world's habit of having trees move over time thus making navigation very tricky, have an innately acute sense of direction, and are also great stealthers thanks to their hunting lifestyle: this makes the Tanith First-and-Only a perfect scouting regiment. However, as soon as they arrive at their first major testing ground, Gaunt realises that not only do they have the ferocious Chaos foes to deal with - their main problem might simply be the snobbery and idiocy of other Guard regiments...