For the Emperor

This book is the first of three in the first* omnibus collection of Ciaphas Cain stories by Sandy Mitchell - I'm reviewing each novel in the omnibus in a separate post as that only seems fair (and boosts my numbers for blog purposes).  As I do with all series, I'll do brief posts for the first couple and then a longer more reflective post once I've finished this introductory trilogy.

   Alongside the titular novel is a prelude short story called Fight or Flight, in which we are first introduced to Cain (a commissar whose dazzlingly heroic reputation is very much at odds with the reality of his character as a cunning coward who just wants a quiet life with as little mortal danger as possible - however life in the Imperial Guard never seems to quite grant him this - an amusing subversion of the genuinely heroic nature of most other famous commissars from the Warhammer 40,000 universe**) as he is introduced to his new placement with the Valhallan 12th Field Artillery, assigned a smelly aide called Jurgen, and narrowly avoids being consumed by a tyranid incursion.

   The novel itself picks up a few years later, as Cain is newly placed as commissar to the amalgamated mixed-gender regiment of the Valhallan 597th and sent to the remote backwater world Gravalax where Imperial citizens have been trading, heretically, with the Tau Empire. War over such an insignificant planet is not deemed worthwhile by the Guard so this mission is, at first at least, primarily diplomatic; wanting the humans to stop, or at minimum reduce, their problematic relations with the alien races, in such a way as to avoid violence (all of which is very much fine by Cain) - a goal set straight from the Inquisition itself. However events conspire as to raise the stakes, and Cain finds himself at the heart of a shambolic mess of risk-whichever-way-you-turn, only for things to get less confusing but even worse safety-wise when a genestealer cult is discovered who have manipulating developments from underground (quite literally - the second half of this novel largely takes place in a tunnel complex). The resolution is more of matter of muddled luck than anything authentically courageous or clever, which I suspect is par for the course in this particular commissar's career. I look forward to the next instalment.

* At time of writing there are ten Ciaphas Cain novels and many short stories out, and while I have no doubt I would enjoy reading them they're very low down my priority list given how much else I have to read - within the same universe I'm going back to my focus on the Horus Heresy.

** Looking specifically at you, Ibram Gaunt. And I suppose Yarrick.

Titanicus

This book is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by Dan Abnett - yes, I know, another one. He's my fave, what can I say. Only this one doesn't revolve around the plucky Imperial Guard or morally-questionable Inquisitors; this one is about the Titan Legions themselves. The god-machines - walking cathedrals of destruction.* I'd been aware of this novel when it came out seventeen years ago, but simply wasn't that excited about it - I mean, Titans are so ridiculously big and overpowered that how can you have any serious stakes in a story about them? Turns out I was wrong. The way you have serious stakes in a story about Titans is by A) making the enemy have even more Titans than the good guys and B) throwing in a healthy spattering of ground-level ordinary troopers and even a civilian or two so you can skip between perspectives and view the ridiculously big overpowered explosions from behind void shields 150 metres in the air or from a terrifying Normal Person's-Eye View - and Dan does both of these brilliantly. There are at least five or six separate plot threads going off within this book, and while only overlapping intermittently, they all wind up contributing somewhat to the overall resolution, and all get wrapped up largely satisfactorily. While for me this is nowhere near the re-read value of Gaunt's Ghosts, it was still a thumping good read; and it's always fun to see the Adeptus Mechanicus up close, they're so weird as a faction that I find them disturbing and fascinating and hilarious and tragic all at once, and Dan captures new angles of them in exciting and surprisingly relatable ways.

* The simplest way to explain them to non-40k initiates is to ask "have you seen Pacific Rim? well yeh, basically that, but moreso, and fighting entire armies instead of the odd kaiju or two."

For the Hypothetical Aliens

This book* is a poetry pamphlet by Ian Badcoe, a friend of mine from the spoken word events I host. As the title suggests, this collection straddles the hazy line between science fact and science fiction, as such being intended as a statement of human identity to any alien races we may whenever encounter out in the cold, wide galaxy. I really enjoyed this little book - from the loneliness of the opening poem A note on broken hearts to the following considerations about the Drake equation, then the concise empathic statement of Personal space probe and the hyper-optimistic magic of She knows whereof she speaks, a litany of pop-cultural examples of how humanity comments on itself via imagined alternative races, and finally ending with a banging mic-drop moment in The shapes of things to come. Badcoe's poetic style is dry and precise, lending itself perfectly to the material's themes; I hope that should we ever encounter aliens for real, someone will have the wherewithal to lend them a copy of this early in the communication process so that they have a bit more context for where we're coming from and what they may meaningfully expect of us.

* Unfortunately it's not available from anywhere online, so if you want a copy I recommend getting in touch with Ian himself and asking if he has any copies left to sell. I'm sure he'll oblige if so.

And Another Thing...

This book by Eoin Colfer is the sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams - who was rumoured to be working on a sixth instalment when he died, so it never got finished, so a couple of decades after the fact they roped in Mr Colfer - and honestly, he's done a far better job at it than I expected. Adams's imagination and comedic style are utterly inimitable, but Colfer makes a damn good effort and the result is a book that is very clearly not written by Douglas but still feels like a worthwhile addition to the trilogy-in-five-parts's story*.

   All** our favourite characters are back - Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, Zaphod Beeblebrox - plus Random***, who was more of a plot device in her previous appearances, takes on a much heftier role; and Thor and Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, both of whom had been bit-part jokey characters in the main series, become significant players in their own right. If you remember how the fifth one ended it should be no surprise that this one opens with a convoluted deus ex machina that conveniently (or should I say "improbably") saves everyone from another meaninglessly impersonal death, and romps aplenty ensue. I won't give away any more of the plot than that because I've already covered the first five books in such granular detail and I want the contents of this one to be a surprise if you're curious enough about how well Eoin wears Douglas's shoes**** to read it even as a hardcore fan of the original series.

   I wanted to be able to say I hated this book and that it was a betrayal of the series and its author's memory, but that simply isn't the case. This is emulation at if not its zenith then fairly high up its mountainside; and even if it's been so long since you've read the original trilogy-in-five-parts that you'd struggle to relate part six to it in any coherent way, this is a rollickingly fun read.

* Six parts now, I guess. Follow that link if you want to read a 5000ish word essay about my reflections on the core thematic ruminations implicit in the original five. I'm very proud of that post.

** Except Marvin of course, he died in an earlier book. Quit whining.

*** Arthur and Trillian's daughter in case you need a reminder.

**** A solid 8.3 out of ten. He does go a bit overboard with the Guide Notes interjections, which often feel like more of an "I had an idea that's slightly Douglas Adamsish so I have to include it" than a fully-legitimate "this is something the Guide would talk about that illuminates the current plot points unfolding, or is at the very least extremely funny". I think in terms of nailing the core essence of the main characters I'd give Colfer a much more solid 9.7 but in terms of capturing the whimsy and wit of Adams in his prime it's a somewhat shabbier 6.2 - though that said the plot of this book is actually completely comprehensible, both in terms of what it builds on from the first five and the new elements introduced by Eoin, which is, it pains me to say, more than can always be said of Douglas's own contributions to the series, which were superb obviously but did admittedly occasionally sacrifice story congruence for "mere" absurdist humour.

Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!

This book is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by Nate Crowley, following the mysterious and epic biography of that most supreme of all orkish warlords, Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka - whose story is finally able to be told to humanity in something like its fulness for the first time since their banner-bearer, a gretchen called Makari, is captured and questioned by the Inquisition.

   As you'd expect of a novel with orks at the heart (cf. Brutal Kunnin), this is a hilarious and thoroughly violent read; but as a window in the subjectivities of an orkish life, their culture, their worship of Gork and Mork, their secret shames and highest hopes, this is a true gem of a book that gives real tangible complex personality to the funniest faction in the fictional universe. Ghazghkull, from their brain trauma* to their triumphs in battle,** is as complexly sketched as the best human characters from Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series - only as an ork. With ork shames and ork hopes, ork wiles, ork vices and virtues. I would be genuinely shocked if the Black Library ever managed to release another book that does as much for the exploration of orkish psychology as this one does. And yet it is more than a character study, for Ghazghkull's life has ramifications that reverberate across the galaxy in the mighty WAAAGH of which they is prophet and leader - all of which is to say, this story isn't over.

   For fans of 40k, this is highly recommended; especially for ork players, this is a must-read. Enjoyers of tongue-in-cheek science fiction more generally will find a lot to love here too.

* As a young ork they was horribly injured, losing most of their upper skull, but they managed to hold their own brains in while for several days trekking across hostile wilderness until they found a doctor who could staple them back together and put a plate over the gap to keep the grey matter inside. However injurious though, this near-braining is credited with what gives Thraka such an intimate and demonstrable understanding of the will and ways of Gork and Mork - it is their pain that made them the prophet.

** Except against their "favourite enemy", Commissar Yarrick, who they never quite managed to defeat and so came to respect deeply - insofar as an ork can respect a human.

Brutal Kunnin

This book is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by Mike Brooks about one of my favourite factions from that universe, the ever-hilarious orks. Ufthak Blackhawk and his war clan descend upon the Adeptus Mechanicus world Hephaesto to raid and pillage whatever cool tech they can get their grubby green mitts on, only the race is well and truly on because ork pirate Kaptin Badrukk has had the same idea (also there seems to be a Chaos Space Marine farting about on his own kind of mission, which messes things up for the defending Mechanicus no end). This book is pretty light on thought-provocation and complicated themes - it's simply a strong, comedic, grisly action blockbuster of a story. If you like the general energy of 40k orks, you'll love this book. And if you have a general affinity for science fiction where it happily veers into the extreme and the ludicrous in terms of creative violence, this could be a gateway 40k book for you.

One disconnected comment I will make is that this novel pretty much establishes as official lore that most Mechanicus agents and ALL orks are canonically non-binary and use they/them pronouns. At least from the narration's point of view. Which I thought was joyously unexpectedly woke of the Black Library, but makes perfect sense within the canon (as most Mechanicus personages are so technologically adapted in their physicality that concepts like gender were left behind several dozen upgrades ago; and orks? well, orks are literally fungus).

the Infinite and the Divine

This book is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by Robert Rath, and I have to say it's hands-down the funniest book from within that fictional universe that I've read.

    Without wanting to give too much away... Trazyn "the Infinite" is a collector of things. He has entire planets that are basically his own private museums. Any nifty or esoteric new artefact that he can acquire is highly desirable. Meanwhile Orikan "the Diviner" is a fore-seer of futures. He has honed skills in temporal manipulation to the point that the line between him predicting a prophetic truth and him making it happen is - well, blurry. Both of the characters are necrons, and though in their original organic forms they were fairly close friends, over the millions of years of soulless existence their relationship has turned into a bitter and spiky rivalry. When the promise of a new treasure emerges, one that Trazyn craves for his own collection as deeply as Orikan suspects he can wangle to be instrumental in the future of the race, the pair enter a series of calamitous and frankly hilarious clashes of one-upmanship in trying to get their hands on this mysterious object, and while as you probably expect from a 40k novel about beings who are literally millions of years old the story does build to a shocking and epic climax, the meat of this novel is in the games Trazyn and Orikan play in outwitting and outmanoeuvring each other over literal millennia. The lives of lesser beings such as humans are used as far as they can be and then discarded without a century's thought. I'm not joking when I say how funny this book is - some of the dialogue is solid gold. I'd always thought of the necrons as characterless ancient-Egypt-wannabe robot whatevers but Rath in this novel really drives home how crazy eccentric you can get as an immortal stick kicking about in the Milky Way when they last time you had actual flesh stegosaurus was still doing its thing on Earth, and here you are, still just building a museum full of cool stuff you can find, or devising algorithms to see a few millennia into the future. There is a particularly funny moment when Trazyn, in one of his historic visits to a human world, was mistaken for a Space Marine and so had a statue to him built by the grateful locals; Orikan is unimpressed and the pair have a very silly argument about ego. There is an even funnier moment when Orikan has set up a convoluted ritual and Trazyn sabotages him by using a Pokéball* to unleash a genestealer on him for a prank, which not only ruins Orikan's ritual but means that they next time the pair visit that planet a few decades later the genestealer has successfully planted a tyranid cult and doomed the world. Sorry if these are spoilers but I felt like I needed to give a couple of examples of exactly what these guys get up to. They're essentially just a very elderly pair of close friends who have been through enough dumb stuff alongside each other over the years that they kind of hate each other but love to do so because they find the rest of the galaxy dumb enough in comparison to themselves that, both always ending up generally on top of it, they can bear each others' interference in their own inclinations. They kind of remind me of that duo of old men in The Muppets who are just constantly heckling from the balcony. They're the equivalent of those guys for the 40k universe.

    Anyway - even if you have zero familiarity with Warhammer 40,000 if you're halfway able to dive into unfamiliar science fiction and let it just wash over you, I reckon you'd probably really enjoy this. You'd probably enjoy it more if you are familiar with the universe - it doesn't have a great deal of wider lore implications but there are a bunch of easter eggs in there, but whatevs if that's not what draws you to it and you just want a funny story about a petty feud between a pair of ancient robots having dramatic unforeseen consequences.

* Necron tech is so ridiculously advanced. Yeh basically Trazyn has these tiny little cubes of matter-condensing meta-space that do function more or less exactly like Pokéballs - mind you, Pokéballs that can capture entire armies to be stored at Trazyn's behest until he's in a tight spot and needs to fart out six random enemy cohorts to distract whatever's inconveniencing him. Dude doesn't give the slightest of shits.

Dark Creed

This book is the third instalment in Anthony Reynolds's Word Bearers trilogy.*

    Plot-wise I'll be more sparing this time than I was with the prior two as this is where the series culminates and I don't want to spoil the whole thing. Basically, having worked out how to use the necron artifact obtained in the first book, Marduk now has to side with other hosts of the Word Bearers legion amidst questionable political internal intrigue, in order to squash the White Consuls, a chapter of loyalist Space Marines, defending the target planet of Boros Prime - a task that seems to be largely going well, until the necrons themselves turn up to reinstate their claim upon their artifact.

    So, I've covered the plots - now for some reflections.

    Having recently completed a re-read of Dan Abnett's stellar Gaunt's Ghosts series (see the April posts from this year for most of these) I was in a real Warhammer 40,000 hype mood, and having spent so long with Imperial loyalists wanted a bit more of a taste of the bad guys. Hence the Word Bearers - whom I've always thought were the most interesting of the traitor legions. I mean, most of them just slash and kill and destroy, but the Word Bearers actively root themselves into places to set up religious cults in a very sustainable manner. It's grim-dark to the hilt still, but it's a tad more interesting. And Reynolds writes them this way - they are evil characters, sure, but there is a degree of genuine faith and fervour there that makes you as a reader genuinely come to appreciate how compelling it must be to exist as a nigh-immortal warrior in the service of empirically-demonstrable gods. Reynolds writes action well, if a bit repetitively - I suppose there are lexically only so many ways you can describe what happens to someone's skull when a bolt-round enters it without either becoming overtly floral or simply repeating yourself - and his dialogue is, I will say, serviceable. None of the characters are particularly likeable (except Burias - he's my dog in this fight) but that's to be expected of a series about a traitor legion; sadly though this often means there is a real lack of humour. The only real human moments come from the scenes that centre on the point-of-view of antagonists, i.e. Imperial soldiers and personnel, and I will say that Reynolds in these scenes does show a real versatility in conveying the scope and destructiveness of conquest in the 41st millennium in a way neutral enough to make you genuinely sympathise with both sides, even if one is defending humanity while another serves the powers of Chaos.

    To conclude - I really enjoyed re-reading** these. If you're a 40k fan you'd probably get a kick out of them, unless you're one of those weirdo closet fascists who genuinely sides with the Imperium out of an ethical prerogative and can't just appreciate the fictional satirical setting for what it is. This is an action packed, twisty and fun trilogy, and even if you know nothing about 40k I bet you could still enjoy it as a well-packaged anti-hero blockbuster.

* That said, I read all three as part of the omnibus edition, so technically it was all one book, but three separate novels, hence I hope you will appreciate the three separate posts. Also included in the omnibus is a bonus short story called Torment, which is a harrowing and grim walkthrough of the punishments Burias is forced to undergo following his betrayal of Marduk.

** Yes, re-reading - I'd read the whole trilogy in separate instalments borrowed from my local library back when I was but a youngling still several years away from starting this damn blog.

Dark Disciple

This book is the second of Anthony Reynolds's Word Bearers trilogy. I'll continue in the same manner as the first post commenced.

    Having secured the artifact (which seems to be of necron origin, though this is still basically a mystery to the main characters it is obvious to the readers who are familiar with 40k lore), Marduk (now no longer First Acolyte but acting Dark Apostle, following the tragic death of Jarulek at the end of book one - sorry, spoilers) is now tasked with tracking down an elusive Imperial adept of the Mechanicus who might be able to help decode and thus make utilizable the artifact. This leads them to the planet Perdus Skylla - though things rarely go exactly according to neat little plans, and not only does this adept prove incredibly inconvenient to track down, but the planet in question is A) currently under seige from a cohort of Dark Eldar who are enslaving as much of the population as they can for torture farms & B) directly in the path of an encroaching tyranid hive-fleet which will annihilate and consume everything possible. Marduk has to find a way of masterminding this adept-retrieval mission in such a way that not too many Word Bearers get either kidnapped for endless torture or simply eaten, all while contending with his own army leader Kol Badar and possessed icon bearer Burias-Drak'shal, both of whom are starting to have their own questions as to the legitimacy of their new leader.

Dark Apostle

This book by Anthony Reynolds is the first in the Word Bearers trilogy - I'll do a full reflection in the final post but here will just give a very brief overview of what's going on.

    Basically, the Word Bearers, who were at founding the XVII Legion of Space Marines but have since turned heretic, are still fighting their endless war against the Imperium. If that all sounds like jargon-blabber then what are you doing reading my blog if a post or two hasn't made you need to google one or two Warhammer 40,000-related terms. Marduk, the First Acolyte of the 34th Host under Dark Apostle Jarulek, harbours secret ambitions, but is patiently biding his time for these to come to fruition, as the Host is undertaking some major actions: mainly the invasion and thus conquest of a planet called Tanakreg, where the Word Bearers plan on building a gehemahnet (essentially a giant tower built of rock and reconstituted corpses) to summon a huge build-up of warp energy and thus burst open the planet, concealed within which, according to legend, lies an artefact the likes of which could be an ultimate game changer for the Legion as a whole...

    And yeh, they basically manage it. But a few things go awry. I won't spoil it.

Anarch

This book is the fifteenth, and most recent instalment of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. I have read this one before since I started doing this blog so there is a post about it already, but I didn't really put much effort into overviewing the story there, and besides I promised that on this new read-through of the whole series the final post would give more of my honest personal reflections rather than mere summations and hints. So, I may have said that previous books in the series were the most harrowing or the most intense - and I stand by those assertions - but this one is the most truly traumatic. This one picks up mere moments after the last book closes: Gaunt is both in his element and floundering about trying to make his element work in his new role with the war council, and most of the Tanith First are still defending a hopeless scrap of almost-indefensible land of very little tactical value. Things are a mess: Rawne has abandoned post to go and defend the traitor Blood Pact general who, everyone's pretty sure, Sek is trying to have killed again; Major Pasha has been sent to defend a Mechanicum research outpost where a significant Chaos artefact is being held; scout-sergeant Mkoll is nowhere to be seen. What's worse, Yoncy keeps talking to her big brother Dalin about woe machines (remember them? from Verghast?) as they're hiding in the cellars of the city palaces where all Imperial command forces are currently stationed. What ensues in the rest of the book I will not say outright, except for that there are four main strands - 1. with Pasha's group, trying to defend (and then retrieve) the artefacts from Very-Hard-To-Kill daemon troops sent directly from Sek; 2. with Rawne's mob, trying to keep the traitor general safe from other Very-Hard-To-Kill daemon troops sent directly from Sek; 3. with Mkoll, who is off doing his own thing trying to infiltrate Sek's base of operations as best as he can; 4. with a bunch of civilians and a handful of Guard looking after them in the palace cellars (and trust me, this is the subplot that gets traumatic. I'm fucking thirty years old and I had to sleep with the lights on for two nights (of course it didn't help that there is building work going on next door and a lot of their tools sound like bonesaws)). There are a lot of major losses in this book, and all of them hurt. Except for one. I won't say anything about the context - but when Gaunt's daughter gets her first canonically-confirmed kill, I cheered. Also, it should be said - this is the first time in a Gaunt's Ghosts novel that an Inquisitor has been actually helpful and not just a deceptive political shithead. Made a nice change.

   Okay, so that's a summary of that one.

   But I said I'd give some reflections on the series as a whole. Well, I think what's so great about the Gaunt's Ghosts saga can be broken down into three primary factors:

1. Honouring the grimdark: Warhammer 40,000 is the franchise archetype of a 'grimdark' setting. That means there are not meant to be places in this fictional universe where you can go to find hope, or peace, or joy, or even rest. It is total horror and war and carnage. And I think Dan grasps that with both hands; by making the Crusade that is the backdrop of this whole series one against Chaos specifically, it means that there isn't some mindless alien threat of dumb orks or hungry tyranids, or mindful alien threat of hopeful t'au or hope-deprived eldar, or wherever on this spectrum necrons would go; it's Chaos, and they're primarily human. Though, rather than being recognisable as human, they have given themselves to dark daemonic powers - and so there is an uncanny horror to all the conflicts that our protagonists find themselves in. It's one thing to shoot a greenskin in the head because it was about to chop you to bits for nothing but fun; it's one thing to fire a plasma rifle at a kroot because it was about to dismember you for 'the greater good'; it's another thing entirely to have to defend yourself any way you can against a slavering, mutated beast that you know full well was less than a month ago a perfectly normal citizen of the neighbouring hive-city. Dan has stared into the grimdark and concluded that Chaos is the worst enemy, and the way he writes it, you have to agree.
2. Humanising the Imperium: in his prologue to the first omnibus collection of these novels, Dan stated that he didn't want to start with Space Marines, because they're so super-human he wouldn't know how to characterise them. So he started with the Guard; the humble, unaugmented grunts of all Imperial combat. And I wholeheartedly think this was the right choice. I mean, obviously since, he's written many of the stories in the Horus Heresy series, as well as several standalone books, about Space Marines - and he manages to characterise them while retaining their superhumanity - but as a starting point, the Guard is where you go. I mean, First and Only kickstarted the entire Black Library. It was his, and their, first novel. And the series remains going strong to this day nearly two-and-a-half decades later. Don't get me wrong - the dystopian horrors of the Imperium and its necessity of constant war still shine through in gut-wrenching ways. But despite it all, Dan's characters still manage to make each other - and you, the reader - smile, or even laugh, when there is a respite from the bullets and shells.
3. Taking liberties with both the above, and whatever the feth else Dan wants to: what kind of writer follows rules to a T exactly? No kind of writer, exactly. If he wants a story that's a bit safer and a bit sillier, while still being a grimdark war story, he'll give you Blood Pact. If he wants to include superhuman characters to show their contrast against the rank-and-file guardsmen, he dumps three Space Marines into Salvation's Reach, or five Chaos Marines into Traitor General, to show off the sheer disparities in capability of these kinds of being; or he'll give you a powerful psyker as in the Inquisitors from several different stories or the tragic [redacted] being from Only in Death. Warhammer 40,000 is a very big very messy universe lore-wise, and I am sure that if Dan wanted to finish the whole Sabbat Worlds Crusade on a triumphal note but then have the Tanith First go off and fight a wholly different enemy - he could pull that off as well.

   That's all you're getting for now. If I ever feel the urge to re-read these again, and I'm still running this ridiculous blog, they will probably be much shorter posts. Although, I don't know - Dan may well still have a dozen or more books in this series up his sleeve. And who knows where they will go. I mean, they still need to win the Crusade, right? Or then there was the Warmaster's promise that when the Tanith liberate a world and the moment is right, they could settle on it in exchange for their home planet, and that's gotta happen at some point, right? RIGHT?

The Warmaster

This book is the fourteenth in the Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett - I have read this one since I started this blog, so there is a pre-existing post about it if you wanna check that out, but I probably have some new stuff to say since when I last read this one it had been nearly a decade since I'd read the previous instalment, whereas this time I've read the whole series (nearly, so far) in about a year. In this one, the Tanith First - though having been presumed long-dead by Imperial Command since their warp-drive went slightly skew-whiff and they lost ten years during retranslation into real-space - arrive on the forge-world of Urdesh, where both Saint Beatti herself and Anakwanar Sek himself are present, so you can imagine there's a fairly major number of intense skirmishes going on. While the Tanith First-and-Only (newly reinforced with an influx of volunteer troops from both Verghast and Belladon) are caught in the thick of the fighting, having been tasked with defending a wide-open area between a residential scrub and the docks, where their only support is artillery that's useless once the enemy gets too close - the chief driving conflicts of this book are political. Gaunt's old friend Lord General Van Voytz is pleased to see the Colonel-Commissar back from Salvation's Reach after a decade of doubt - but there are deeper machinations at play. The war council is growing tired of the unpredictability and reclusiveness of Warmaster Macaroth, the man who has been in charge of the whole Sabbat Worlds Crusade since (well, just) before the start of this series of novels. And they're hungry for a replacement. And they've nominated Gaunt, given his war record and reputation for no-nonsense behaviour. Without giving too much away about how it all goes down, Gaunt goes to find Macaroth to try and have a frank conversation, which is apparently quite successful* in achieving - something. The book ends on a cliff-hanger - well, two - with the First in a perilously pinned combat situation with Blood Pact forces in the south side of the city, and Gaunt in a curious new roles amongst the ever-political war council.

* Abnett's characterisation of Macaroth, even given just a scene-and-a-half in which to be actually present in the story, is masterful and hilarious and exhilarating and humbling, I have to say.

(also, I don't want to give spoilers for the next one yet, which I will have to do in the post for that one for the sake of catharsis, but - if you've not by the end of this book figured out that there is something Very Very Wrong with Yoncy - then your grasp of subtext is such that I'm amazed you bother to finish reading any fictional works at all.)

Salvation's Reach

This book is the thirteenth instalment of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. In this one, the Tanith First are tasked with a top-secret mission from Crusade Command itself - they are to infiltrate a place* and retrieve as much useful data as they can from it and destroy as much of the rest of it as they can. Obviously, this is an extremely hard mission, so the Tanith even have three Space Marines tagging along with them.** With no spoilers, the mission doesn't go to the exact plan, but it goes to plan well enough to be considered a success - even if a stow-away spy gave away their ship's location early on and there was a resultant space battle*** that could have risked the lives of many senior Imperial commanders - and they get away largely intact. There are a handful of upsetting character losses, but one of these was a long time coming and is couched by the fact that it's defended by a heroic sacrifice; and really the only major takeaway from Tanith losses in this one is "absolutely feth Meryn."

* I couldn't think of a better word and didn't want to fatten that sentence up too much by describing what it actually is. Salvation's Reach is an area of remote space where the wreckage and junk leftover from millennia-worth of void-battles has aggregated together under its own gravity, collided, fused, and become a misshapen small-planet-sized Thing floating about far away from anything else. The reason it's of interest is that Anakwanar Sek, the chief lieutenant to the Chaos commander Gaur, in this current Crusade, has been using the place as a secret lab and testing ground for all manner of warp-craft, war machines, and new terrible means of killing and traumatising Imperial forces. So there you go.

** It's a minor point, but one of my favourite things in this book is the fact that Nahum Ludd manages to assert authority over these three Space Marines even when they're in the thick of combat-readiness. Pretty badass for a junior commissar.

*** This is also one of my favourite bits - the Chaos ships that follow them out of the warp all shout their own names over and over through the vox, like giant evil metal Pokémon. The best of which has to be TORMAGEDDON MONSTRUM REX! - I mean, if that isn't one of the silliest most extreme names for an evil spaceship you've ever heard I don't know what to say to you.

Blood Pact

This book is the twelfth in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series - and while still harrowing and full of threat in many places, I think this is probably one of the most entertaining of the bunch. It reads like a bloody Guy Ritchie film, with all the various players faffing about and colliding and trying to second-guess each other against a backdrop of apathetic violence. This story is, with very little stretch of exaggeration, Traitor General in reverse: that is to say, Imperial forces are holding a traitorous general from the Blood Pact (an elite Chaos force) prisoner - and a crack-team of Chaos infiltrators have come to Balhaut (where as it happens the Tanith First are on a well-earned break after the horrors of Jago) to come and assassinate him. I know I'd read this before but for some reason remembered hardly anything of what happens in it - sure, there are moments of extreme violence and horror - but it's also a very funny book. The meddling of the Inquisition again rears its head with interesting consequences, and the band of outlaw Tanith who contribute heavily to saving the day are probably my favourite subplot. I also really appreciate Gaunt's commandeering of an agoraphobic coroner to help them win out over the loyalist Blood Pact infiltrators. A lot of fun. And no serious losses on the Good Guy front! I know that's a spoiler but it's very rare to have a Ghosts novel where you can genuinely relax in knowledge of that. One final thing - I know in his Inquisitor novels (see Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Bequin etc) Abnett has shown us intriguing glimpses of the non-frontline "normal life" of Imperial worlds before, but it's cool to see how the Tanith First adapt (or in Rawne & co.'s case, refuse to) to life among such relatively safe normality.

Only in Death

This book is the eleventh in Dan Abnett's increasingly-stomach-wrenching Gaunt's Ghosts series, and in my opinion it's probably the best of the lot. I mean, it's so intense, that I started it out of why-not-ness immediately after finishing the previous instalment - and then, feth sleep, I read the whole damn thing in one sitting, only getting up to pee or refill my canteen.* Sent to the arse-end of the dusty planet Jago, the First end up tasked with guarding a mountain fortress called Hinzerhaus - which deserves special mention, as it's No Joke the main character in this book. Hinzerhaus is creepy as all fuck**. This book is incredibly atmospheric and 97% of that comes from Hinzerhaus. (Well, okay, quite a lot of it comes from an old friend who has been sent off to become incorporated into the Imperial psyker forces as well, but I won't spoil that.***) It may feel like something of a slow-burn, this one - but when things get going, they Get Going, and I genuinely felt "they all might actually die" with a seriousness I'd not felt since Vervunhive in book three. Anyway, I'll stop rambling here for want of not giving spoilers - except to say 1. I hope Maggs got therapy, 2. Baskevyl was the MVP of this book by a long shot and everyone would've died if it wasn't for him, love it (one of my favourite characters), and 3. the chapters with Mkoll and Ezsrah on their little quests is just - ah, chef's kiss. Yes, this is the best Gaunt's Ghosts novel. So far, anyway.

* Which I only did once. Having drank half a litre of water over about two hours, I then spent the next eight hours carefully rationing my next half a litre, out of solidarity with the regiment. If you know, you know. I did get a little dehydrated but I think it added to the experience.

** An atmosphere intensified perfectly straight from the opening line of the book - "There was a rumour circulating through the troops, nobody knew who had started it - that scouts from another force had discovered a huge valley full to the brim of dry and dusty human skulls, all with their tops sawn off." (slight paraphrase there, I've already reshelved the book and can't be bothered to get it back off just to ensure accurate wording. that's the vibe)

*** Although I wish I could. You deserve a warning. The fate of that character made me openly weep it was so sad and touching and just fethed-up in the way only something in 40k could be.

The Armour of Contempt

This book is the tenth Gaunt's Ghosts instalment from Dan Abnett, and it's probably the most horrific - not the most upsetting, merely totally grim & dark in its portrayal of war in the grim darkness of the far future. Here we get to see the Tanith First-and-Only (with newly-incorporated Belladon troops) return to Gereon to finally liberate it from Chaos forces. The narrative is kind of split in two - one stream follows the main regiment as they try to make contact with whatever remains of the resistance, so they can help them overthrow the incumbent Chaos leadership; the second (and far more intense) follows those members of the regiment who have been on RIP (retraining, indoctrination and punishment) protocols and are therefore assigned to be - eh, yeh, essentially cannon fodder in the worst front of the whole planetary assault. This book more than any other Ghosts novel is full of sucker-punches: you'll think something awful is about to happen and then it hasn't, or you'll think safety has been achieved and then BAM-feth. Witnessing what has become of Gereon after so many years of Chaos occupation is tremendously disturbing. And again there is another heart-breaking loss at the end which I won't spoil. One uplifting thing I will say about this book is the reintroduction of Merrt as a major character - he quickly went on to become one of my favourites. Oh, and there's meddling by the Inquisition, which Gaunt's lot haven't had to deal with for a while, but it's entertaining to see how they handle it.

His Last Command

This book, number nine in Dan Abnett's increasingly-upsetting Gaunt's Ghosts series, takes place about a year-and-a-half after the Gereon mission. Despite an extremely rocky path getting back into Imperial safe-space, Gaunt and his team find yet another major problem to deal with: in their commander's absence, the Tanith First-and-Only have been subsumed into a Belladon regiment under the control of one Colonel Wilder. Which would be enough to contend with, if it weren't also for the fact that the Sparshad Mons antique "city" thing the Guard are trying to clear Chaos forces out of is a completely insane place, and terrifying monsters keep appearing out of nowhere. Gaunt and his team's reappearance disturbs things not only for Wilder and the Belladon but also for the Tanith and Verghastite troops who had assumed them all long-dead. This vein of doubt and discomfort runs throughout the book, as does the increasing apparency that - having survived on a Chaos-held world for fifteen months, these prodigal comrades are on another level of proficient in dealing death and destruction (not to mention, quite seriously-questionably corrupted from their long exposure to Chaos). The Guard win the day, but it's a close call, and one only made possible by the heightened specialisation of the Gereon team and their return into the Imperial intelligence networks. The ending of this book is heart-breaking, even if it's characters you barely know.* Is that a spoiler? Probably. Sorry.

* True fact - this was the first Gaunt's Ghosts book I ever read. I found it in my local library, a fourteen-year-old who had been painting and playing Warhammer 40k for about four years, but had never read one of its books - and even with no familiarity with the characters or context, the sheer scale and depravity of war I was exposed to in these pages blew my tiny young mind. Needless to say, I read it twice, took it back, paid my late fee, and as soon as I could afford it started buying up the whole series from the start. And part of me still wishes I hadn't, because however good they are, Dan keeps stabbing me in the feel-bone.

Traitor General

This book is the eighth in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts saga, and let me tell you it's the most harrowing yet. Not by a long shot the most upsetting, but the most consistently intense and unnerving throughout. Gaunt and a small crack-team of elites from the regiment* are tasked with a top-secret mission to infiltrate Chaos-held world Gereon, meet up with the local resistance, and then find and eliminate - oh, you guessed it from the title? - an Imperial Guard general who has turned traitor. This is a hard swallow, this book. The portrayal of a human life under the Imperial regime is often bad enough but under Chaos - it's fething insane. Anyway, I won't tell you how the team get on with their mission, but I will say that this book contains some of the most outrageously badass scenes** in the entire series, and also introduces one of the coolest characters, Ezsrah ap Niht, into the regimental fold. So there's that.

* I won't say who, but you wouldn't be at all surprised, if you're familiar with the series so far, that it includes Criid, Varl, Larkin, Mkoll, Bonin, Brostin, Rawne, and Mkvenner.

** I mean, Mkvenner could probably have done this whole book on his own. He is ridiculous.

Sabbat Martyr

This book is the seventh of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. Fuck me. I can't do this. Yes I can. So. The Ghosts are sent to the tactically-insignificant world Herodor - where, to everyone's surprise, the reincarnation of Saint Beatti herself is present to lead the crusade into glorious victory. Except Gaunt doesn't believe it's really her. Regardless of whether it is her or not, the Tanith and Verghastite troops have to contend not only with a typical Chaos assault of the main hive-city, but also with a subversive ploy by the archenemy to assassinate the Saint using a small coterie of incredibly-dangerous specialists. And while the ensuing fights that the Ghosts and these specialists get into are incredibly cool and punchily well-prosed, again, this book ends with a loss that puts George R.R. Martin to shame for its sheer misery and meaningless wastefulness.

Straight Silver

This book is the sixth instalment of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. Yes, I've finally calmed down from the fuckeries at the end of the last one to come back to re-reading my way through. I may regret this. Alternatively, I may just force myself to get through them all as fast as possible so then I can just sit back and let the trauma fade for several years before I feel the need to revisit the series. Anyway, here the Tanith First are sent to Aexe Cardinal, where a horrifically-overblown trench war has been raging for decades. Aristocrats are in charge, which makes for a delightfully Sharpe-ish* butting of heads over tactics, priorities, and whatnot; aristocrats also make up a hefty proportion of the non-Guard troops involved in the war, which largely explains why it has been going on so long. Incompetence and cowardice are on full display, and Ibram Gaunt is in full swing as a leadership-empowered Commissar - which doesn't make him or the regiment very popular. I have to say that the depictions of a trench war in this book are absolutely heart-rendingly gross; they made me feel the realities of what an absolute shitshow that kind of thing must be like far worse than any World War 1 film ever has.

* Dan always has said that the inspiration for doing the Ghosts was "Sharpe in space".