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...