The Founding: A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus

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Only In Death (S Tier) was kind of a sneaker hit for me. I did not expect it to be one of the best, but again: the tension and pacing is just excellence. There are devastating reveals and a constant sense of just how endangered the major characters were. In an overall, Dan Abnett is a great amazing writer. I'm not a fan of eternal battles but Dan puts into his writing humanity. And that, I confess, saves the day. He doesn't describe a battle to the boring detail of how many soldiers go to the front, how many bullets are lost, how many tanks go meeting their creator. No. Dan writes about people, for people. You feel what the character feels. That, for me, was enough to finish reading. I will admit that when at the end of the last omnibus, having Colonel-Commissar Gaunt rescued kind of disappointed me. I thought the series had reached an appropriate ending, with the 1st Tanith entering a new phase of existence, beyond the legacy of being Gaunt's Ghosts. Each novel in Gaunt’s Ghosts series starts off with an extract from a book titled, A History of the Later Imperial Crusades, which summarizes the situation in which the Ghosts have been deployed. The excerpts are often written in the past tense implies that the author wrote them after the Sabbat Worlds Crusade comes to an end.

The Tanith First-And-Only face their sternest battles yet in the third Gaunt's Ghosts omnibus, containing the novels Traitor General, His Last Command, The Armour of Contempt and Only in Death. If I had bought this as a standalone book I’d probably be 50/50 about buying then next one (so 2-3 stars rating range). Necropolis - The word means "city of the dead". I expected this to be about Necrons. I was oh so very wrong.

Now that we told you the order of the Gaunt’s Ghosts books, don’t miss these

So far the characters seem a fairly standard Mil-SF lot, including the honourable, commander who cares for his men... I managed to finish this book in a record time of one week and two days. My normal reading speed for omnibuses of this size was around 3 to 4 weeks, but this book was special. Dan Abnett has also authored three other titles that share the setting of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. The first is Double Eagle, focusing on the Phantine Air Corps introduced in The Guns of Tanith and set in the same immediate timeframe as Sabbat Martyr. The second is a fictional history of the Crusade, from the beginnings of the crusade 10 years before the setting of the first novel to a point just after Sabbat Martyr, providing an overview of the crusade as a whole. Most recently published is Titanicus, detailing a Titan Legion's struggles against Chaos invaders and internal schism alike on the Forge World of Orestes. Although not linked with the Sabbat crusade, a man from Tanith features briefly.

Finished "Ghostmaker" the 2nd book - a series of short "memories" that showcases each of the core Ghosts wrapped in a linking framework story that ends in a confusing meeting with some Eldar (whatever they are...) Gaunt’s Ghosts is one of the flagship series of the Warhammer 40,000 novel-verse. There’s fifteen or so of them now, chronicling the adventures of the titular Ghosts, a regiment of guardsmen, regular humans, trying to make their way in a universe filled with demons, super-human cyborg warriors, psychotic orcs, condescending, murderous space-elves and all sorts of other creatures with attitudes that range from grudging tolerance to apocalyptic hostility. Into this mix step a gang of soldiers with very little in the way of armour, armaments, or chances for survival. They’re the Imperial Guard, humanity’s first line of defence against all the horrors of a hostile galaxy - and they tend to be led by people who see guardsmen as fungible assets, to be thrown at the enemy until they overwhelm by sheer force of numbers, stepping over piles of their comrades on the way. There’s better interconnectivity between the stories in this omnibus. They are still thrown from planet to planet, but there’s a little bit more of a thread connecting them. Abnett’s interactions between characters is probably the stronger point than the plot, though he likes to pull the rug from under you – don’t fall too in love with anyone. This omnibus changed things. There are 3 novels (and 3 independent short stories) here - and like I would do for anything else, I put it away on my shelf for a while in-between each novel and read something totally different. But not, like everything else, because I wanted a break. No, this time I forced myself to take breaks solely because I didn't want to rush it and finish it too soon. Yes, this is the first book I can think of where I was actively slowing myself just to make it last, rather than eagerly jumping to something new. Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghost's series just keeps getting better and better as it goes along. There's very little I can say that can add to the voluminous verbiage that has already been pontificated about these books and this here omni. So let me just say very little and trust that you'll want to read this once you start the very first book.Only in Death - As the commissariat is fond of reminding guardsmen: only in death does duty end. How would the rest of the Ghosts fare if Gaunt himself were to die? Enough people see Gaunt fall off a cliff that this ceases to being an academic question. This is the Ghosts' haunted house story. The supernatural happenings in Honor Guard (the 4th book) had a perfectly reasonable explanation, so I should've known that things weren't really as spooky as they seemed, but the fighting is so intense that there's never any time to piece the clues together.

First and Only - Supposedly this is the first novel Dan Abnett ever wrote, which is of course not true, and it's an easy lie to spot: no one's first book could possibly be this good.What follows is a game of one mouse and many cats, with suspicions on all sides. There is unexpected heroism, a stunning betrayal, and a satisfying conclusion. A very different entry in the series, and a very good novel. That's my view of Blood Pact, the first novel.

P.S. The only other 40k story I have read so far is the first book in the Night Lords omnibus. It was cool to see from the perspective of the "bad guys" (in quotes because everyone in 40k are the bad guys, not least the Imperium itself), and I recommend it, but ultimately it couldn't touch Gaunt's Ghosts. Maybe that's partly because I think - just as in movies and videogames - it's more interesting to me to see the relatively vulnerable underdogs try and take out big, powerful boss dudes than to take the POV of one of those walking power fantasies crushing every mortal in sight. Okay, the Doom Slayer aside. The plot of Blood Pact somewhat mirrors that of Traitor General, with Etogaur Mabbon in place of Noches Sturm, but differs with the assassination squad holding the upper hand over their target's captors. The novel also provides greater detail of Gaunt's past tour on Balhaut during his service with the Hyrkan 8th, before the founding of the Tanith First-and-Only.

Armour of Contempt (C Tier) is a triumphant return to the setting of a previous novel - or at least, that's what the Ghosts expect. However, the deliberately dismal return is spoiled by one of the series more convoluted plot points - perhaps a necessity to satisfy lore-centric fans who chafe under the Ghosts' plot armor, but ultimately unsatisfying for me personally. Ghostmaker (F Tier) is a bizarre book. This novel contains the most convoluted plot of the entire series, and is absolutely the least enjoyable. Relative to every other book in the series, it absolutely deserves the F grade. Very little action, nearly impenetrable intrigue, non-existent character development... If I had been buying each book sequentially from first to last, I might have quit the series after this one. It was that bad.