The Gaunt's Ghosts Series by Dan Abnett

[Werthead]

Gaunt's Ghosts 14: The Warmaster

The Tanith First have completed a near-impossible strike mission to the remote enemy outpost of Salvation's Reach. As well as stealing a vast amount of intelligence material from the enemy, their attack has triggered an internal conflict within the Chaos armies between Sek and Gaur, allowing the Crusade to reach new levels of success. But a warp mistranslation on the way home throws the First into a dire new battle, as Gaunt and his team have to face a desperate Sek in battle on the forge world of Urdesh, and face a renewed threat from within the Crusade's own leadership.

The Warmaster is the fourteenth novel in the Gaunt's Ghosts series and the penultimate volume in the "Victory" arc. It was also released after an unprecedented five-year publishing gap in the series, the result of internal realignments within the Black Library and Games Workshop.

As a result, the book takes a little while to rev up to speed, with a somewhat disjointed narrative that attempts a lot of ideas - the Ghosts being shipwrecked in deep space, visited by Chaos horrors and suddenly in the thick of urban warfare and political intrigue on Urdesh - before the story comes together.

When it does, the results are impressive. We are fourteen books into this series now and we've never even met the guy in charge of the entire operation, and in fact (as Abnett's Sabbat Worlds Crusade companion book makes clear) the Ghosts have been operating on the fringes of the main war effort. Their actions have occasionally been decisive and even affected the main course of the war here and there, but only to a small degree. That revelation gives a real sense of scale to the war - in which tens of thousands of Imperial starships are carrying hundreds of millions of Imperial Guard troops, millions of support vehicles, thousands of Space Marines and hundreds, if not thousands, of skyscraper-sized Titans into battle across dozens of star systems simultaneously - which is remarkable. The Warmaster does a good job of pivoting the action, so suddenly the Ghosts and Gaunt are right in the middle of the key decisions being made for the entire war effort.

Abnett's key gifts are characterisation - finding ways of differentiating the two dozen or so characters of import within the Ghosts, plus various recurring side-characters - and action. He makes you care about the characters and their stakes. Like Bernard Cornwell before him (as tired as the "Sharpe/Uhtred in Space" comparisons are, they remain somewhat apt), he paints these soldiers as individuals with their own strengths, weaknesses and quirks, and makes you care about what happens to them (even the cowards and malcontents). That continues through The Warmaster, with an astonishing array of subplots being furthered in a remarkably constrained page count.

The Warmaster (****) does a good job of bringing together plot threads from the previous books in the series and making it feel like the war has reached a decisive turning point. The temptation to carry on this series forever must be strong, but in this book it does feel like the end of the Crusade is starting to lurch into view. On the minus side, aside from the slightly choppy opening, the ending to the book does feel a bit perfunctory for a Gaunt's Ghosts novel, although the reasons for this become clearer in the following book (Anarch), which is less of a successor and more of a direct continuation of this novel. No five-year wait this time for the next part of the story, fortunately. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

 

[Rodders]

Nice review, Werthead. Another one for the to be read pile.

 

[Werthead]

Gaunt's Ghosts 15: Anarch

Ibram Gaunt is now the First Lord Executor of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, the adjunct of Warmaster Macaroth. His unit, the Tanith First and Only, is now among the elite forces defending the forge world of Urdesh from the invading Chaos troops under the command of Anarch Anakwanar Sek. Urdesh has become the crucible for the entire war, with both Macaroth and Sek in-theatre and determined that only one will walk away. But the battle for Urdesh marks another flashpoint, the awakening of a threat that has been growing within Gaunt's own ranks for decades...

I imagine the pitch meeting for Anarch went a bit like this:

"You know the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones?"
"Indeed."
"How about that, but..." *leans forwards* "...as an entire novel?"
"Ooh."

Anarch is a book that takes absolutely no prisoners, preferring to slice them into a thousand pieces of screaming blade death instead. The fifteenth Gaunt's Ghosts novel and the concluding book in the "Victory" arc takes a whole host of character arcs, subplots and storylines that have been percolating across the entire series (a long time; the first novel, First and Only, was published twenty years ago) and sets about tying them off with utterly ruthless, remorseless efficiency.

The story unfolds on several fronts. In the first, one of the First's most veteran soldiers, Mkoll, has been taken prisoner by the Archenemy and subjected to interrogation. This storyline follows Mkoll as he endures the trials of captivity and tries to find a method of escape. In another, enemy troops who infiltrated the capital of Urdesh in the previous novel, The Warmaster (to which this is less of a successor and more of a direct continuation) set about attacking Imperial forces whilst a special, elite unit tries to steal back the vital artefacts seized in Salvation's Reach. Different companies of the First have to blunt both attacks, which is where we get a lot of "classic" Ghosts action: last-ditch plans with little chance of success, heroic holding actions, brave last stands, improvised defences etc. This is all stirring stuff, although the body count is higher than some may be expecting.

Where the book goes cheerfully nuts is in the supposedly impregnable Imperial compound itself, when Abnett reveals a hitherto unknown talent for full-on, Event Horizon levels of body and existential horror. Not only is the battle in the undercroft of the palace utterly horrific and surprisingly visceral, but it's also ruthless on a scale we've not seen before in this series. Gaunt's Ghosts has occasionally played into the long-running military series cliche of killing off barely-named recruits and background soldiers whilst major players live to see another, lucrative day, with the occasional major death to keep things fresh. Anarch cheerfully says to hell with that and starts scything down major, long-running characters with at times almost wild abandon.

Killing characters for the sake of it can be rather pointless, but here Abnett gives almost each death meaning and resonance, concluding storylines stretching back as far as the first novel but particularly from the third, Necropolis (to the point where a re-read of Necropolis, or at least reading through a detailed plot summary, may be advisable to refresh the memory). Not only do some old favourites bite the bullet in this book, but some other characters, long missing on side-adventures, reappear and rejoin the team in this novel, which at least helps balance things out. Still, things will never be the same again for the Ghosts after this book, always a relief in a long-running series where the temptation to not shake things up and keep playing it safe must be strong.

Anarch (****½) is one of the finest novels in the entire Gaunt's Ghosts series, being atmospheric, foreboding, horrific and fantastically-written, as well as featuring Abnett's signature excellent action set-pieces and strong characterisation. It brings the entire series to a climax but not a conclusion; the Crusade is not yet victorious and more battles lie ahead. Abnett is busy helping finish off the Horus Heresy mega-series and then his own Bequin trilogy, so it may be a few years before we rejoin the Ghosts, but Anarch leaves the series on a fine - if bittersweet - note. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

 

[Werthead]

The Sabbat Worlds Crusade by Dan Abnett

On the 266th day of the 755th year of the 41st millennium, the Imperium of Man launched a full-scale invasion of the Sabbat Worlds: one hundred and sixty star systems with a combined a population of 17 trillion souls. Over the preceding two centuries, the region had fallen prey to the depredations of Chaos cultists and other followers of the Ruinous Powers. Over the course of the next thirty-seven years, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade would cost billions of lives but deliver trillions from the grip of the archenemy, through a combination of bold strategic ingenuity and desperate fighting on the ground, in the air and in space. A small but important role would be played by one company of the Imperial Guard in particular: the Tanith 1st, popularly known as "Gaunt's Ghosts." This is the story of the war on a grand scale.

For the past twenty years, Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series has been one of the most popular (and almost certainly the best) military SF series in the world. Its mix of effective characterisation and impressive military action has been highly compelling, effectively replicating the appeal of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels but in the future, and in the Cthulhu-meets-Aliens milieu of the Warhammer 40,000 space fantasy setting. The Sabbat Worlds Crusade is the sub-setting for these books, effectively a corner of the wider 40K setting which Abnett has made his own, depicting a vast war on a mind-boggling scale.

Despite the detail and attention poured into that war, it has remained firmly in the background. Abnett has instead correctly focused on the events and characters up-front in the novels, making them compelling reads with the background material interesting but not essential to enjoying each book in turn. Over the years the background has gotten fleshed out, via two short story anthologies and a previous companion book published when the series was barely half its current length. This book is a reprinting of the previous companion volume but on a much grander scale, with all-new material on the latter half of the war bringing the story up to date as of the fifteen book in the series (Anarch).

The first thing to note is that this book is a thing of beauty. It is hefty, published on high-quality paper and features a colossal amount of high-quality artwork from the talented art department at Games Workshop. Some of the artwork is reprinted from previous book covers, but a lot of it is new, most notably a handsome (if somewhat stylised) fold-out map of the entire Sabbat Worlds region. The book also features a ribbon book mark and the pages are edged in gold, making it a handsome volume for your shelf without completely destroying your wallet.

The text is mostly a linear account of the war, opening with the causes of the conflict and the deep-seated historical background before focusing on the politicking of Warmaster Slaydo to get the war approved and underway. The opening stages of the war to the decisive battle at Balhaut are recounted in detail, before Slaydo's death and the rise of the far more mercurial and temperamental Warmaster Macaroth to replace him, which coincides with the rise of Ibram Gaunt and the Tanith First and Only, as recounted in the novels. The book then continues to outline the course of the war, through events readers of the main novel series will be familiar with and other battles that have never been mentioned in the books.

Something I was very impressed by is that Abnett doesn't fall into the common companion volume trap of making the book a redundant retelling of the events of the books. This is the very thing that Raymond E. Feist did in his Riftwar companion book, Midkemia: The Chronicles of Pug, neglecting previously unknown lore in favour of telling the reader a story they'd already read and making the entire project redundant. You've already read the novels, you don't need to read a summary of them again. Abnett instead focuses on other theatres of conflict and other battles, mentioning the Ghosts only in passing when their activities have a discernible impact on the overall course of the war, which is surprisingly limited. That's not to say the Ghosts are ignored though. Sidebars and chapters on weapons, vehicles and kit feature the Ghosts prominently, many of whom get their first official artistic depictions in this volume.

The writing is pretty solid, although your investment in it will depend on your enjoyment of detailed military accounts of completely fictional campaigns. There clearly isn't much character work going on here, Abnett relying on the reader's familiarity with the novels and a few sidebars fleshing out commanding figures in the campaign. There is some interesting stuff for future books though, with one account of a major aerial dogfight feeling like setup for Interceptor City (the much-delayed sequel to Double Eagle, Abnett's Battle of Britain-aping dogfight novel), and the final chapter setting up the next and final phase of the Crusade, the battles that will no doubt feature in the final arc of the Gaunt's Ghosts series, although that's still a few years off.

Amongst companion books, The Sabbat Worlds Crusade (****½) is very decent. It gives the reader lots of new information and puts the events they are familiar with in a new context. It provides setup for future books and features a lot of fantastic artwork. The production value of the book is exceptional and it certainly makes for a very impressive gift for a fan of the novels. Negatives are pretty minor: you're not going to get much out of this if you haven't read the novels (natch) and some may bemoan the lack of a further level of detail (like full orders of battle, although these can be found in the entries on the crusade in the various 40K wikis) or summaries of the novels (again, these can be found online). Some may also question the wisdom of publishing this volume now rather than when the series is fully complete, especially since only four to six novels appear to remain in Abnett's plan for the series.

The book is available now from the Black Library.

 

[Overread]

I love lore books and I've been tempted by the Sabbat Crusades book even though so far the only bit of the Gaunts Ghosts I've read is the short story in Inferno (original) that started them off all those years ago.

 

[BAYLOR]

I love lore books and I've been tempted by the Sabbat Crusades book even though so far the only bit of the Gaunts Ghosts I've read is the short story in Inferno (original) that started them off all those years ago.

The first Warhammer stories I read was the Eisenhorn Trilogy which a friend kept recommending to me . So one day, I picked up the Eisenhorn Trilogy of books with low expectations. I couldn't put it down , I quickly blames right through it. Dan Abnett is one hell of a good writer ! I went on to read Ravenor which was equally good . Then I read the first Omnibus of Guants Ghost and I was hooked on this series too. Overhead , my advice is to get into this series , you won't regret it all. Gaunt's Ghost is great military science fiction.

 

[Rodders]

☝☝☝☝☝☝

What he said. Abnett’s writing is brilliant and he’s not adverse to killing off your favourite characters.

BTW. Nice review Werthead.

 

[Vince W]

The first Warhammer stories I read was the Eisenhorn Trilogy which a friend kept recommending to me . So one day, I picked up the Eisenhorn Trilogy of books with low expectations. I couldn't put it down , I quickly blames right through it. Dan Abnett is one hell of a good writer ! I went on to read Ravenor which was equally good . Then I read the first Omnibus of Guants Ghost and I was hooked on this series too. Overhead , my advice is to get into this series , you won't regret it all. Gaunt's Ghost is great military science fiction.

The first W40K books I read were by the lamentable Gav Thorpe. I almost gave up on them but decided to give Eisenhorn a try and was very impressed. As an Ultramarines player I tend to stick with books focusing on Adeptus Astartes of varying chapters but I keep meaning to give Gaunt's Ghosts a try. Maybe if I'm lucky enough to get some vouchers this year I'll pick one or two up.

 

[Werthead]

Double Eagle by Dan Abnett

The liberation of the Sabbat Worlds is in full swing. The overextended Crusade invasion front is now under flank attacks, with the world of Enothis proving a pivotal flashpoint. With the war raging over a vast continent, the battles hinge on the forces of the Aeronautica Imperialis, the atmospheric fighter and bomber wings flown by the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Guard. The Phantine XX, fresh from their victory on their homeworld, are deployed to Enothis to help mount a last stand against the Archenemy.

Double Eagle is a spinoff from Dan Abnett's signature Gaunt's Ghosts series of science fantasy military adventures, in particular the fifth novel in the series, The Guns of Tanith. Fortunately, references to the events of that novel are slight and familiarity with that book, the Gaunt's Ghosts series in general or even the wider Warhammer 40,000 universe is not required to enjoy this novel.

Double Eagle is, basically, the Battle of Britain But With Lasers. Previous Warhammer 40,000 books largely focused on the ground war involving the human Imperial Guard and the genetically-engineered, superhuman Space Marines, with occasional nods to the armoured divisions and the space fleets, but this is the first book to really delve deep into the air force. Influences from World War II movies and books about the air war over Europe and the Pacific are clear, although (as is often the case with WH40K) there are sacrifices to realism in pursuit of the rule of cool. Despite being set an unfathomable 39,000 years in the future, the aircraft in use by both sides are far slower than, say an F-15 Strike Eagle and they seem to have less fuel than a Hurricane (given how curtailed dogfights are before someone has to bug out).

Once you accept that - and you have to if you want any hope of enjoying the many excellent stories in this setting - then you can kick back and enjoy the book. This is Dan Abnett doing what he does best: assembling a collection of flawed, relatable characters, putting them through the grinder of war and telling a great-action-packed page-turner in the process. Double Eagle starts a bit slower than many of his books - the result of a need to introduce a dozen or so major new characters (and reintroduce a couple of characters from The Guns of Tanith, which most readers may have forgotten about) rather than being able to pick up with a well-established cast from an ongoing series - but soon kicks into gear as we witness the air war for Enothis unfolding in its full glory.

In fact, I wondered if Abnett had made a bit of a mistake by having such a large cast and the need for each main character to have their own story arc, given the need to also depict the war in its full scope and explain the intricacies of air combat, all in a very tight page count. However, Abnett, as usual, delivers with aplomb. The widely-scattered characters and storylines converge satisfyingly at the end of the book for a major battle and most of the storylines are wrapped up quite satisfyingly

Double Eagle (****) won't be winning awards for originality, but it is Abnett delivering another perfectly-executed barrel roll of action, strong characters and addictive writing. In fact, Double Eagle scores more highly than much of his work because, being so independent of other series, it works very well as a stand-alone novel that can be used to sample his writing style and skill. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

A sequel, Interceptor City, has been promised for fifteen years but is still a fair bit down on Abnett's schedule (as he is currently working on the Horus Heresy's concluding arc and on his third Inquisitor trilogy). However, Double Eagle does not end on a cliffhanger and can be enjoyed on its own merits.

 

[BAYLOR]

The first W40K books I read were by the lamentable Gav Thorpe. I almost gave up on them but decided to give Eisenhorn a try and was very impressed. As an Ultramarines player I tend to stick with books focusing on Adeptus Astartes of varying chapters but I keep meaning to give Gaunt's Ghosts a try. Maybe if I'm lucky enough to get some vouchers this year I'll pick one or two up.

Gaunts Ghostsis among the best military science fction ive ever read.

 

[Rodders]

Gaunt's Ghosts 12: Blood Pact

I finished this today and wow, what a thrill ride. I felt the premise was similar to Traitor General, but just on the opposite side. Still, a hugely enjoyable book which reminded me just how great Dan's writing is. I think I might go back and reread the series.

 

[Rodders]

I've finished Salvations Reach, The Warmaster and am now onto Anarch.

Some of the passages that Dan writes are just so exciting, I can feel my heart beating in my chest. Really great stuff.

 

[BAYLOR]

I've finished Salvations Reach, The Warmaster and am now onto Anarch.

Some of the passages that Dan writes are just so exciting, I can feel my heart beating in my chest. Really great stuff.

I woulds to see this on the big screen.

 

[Rodders]

As a result of reading the newer books in the series, i thought i'd have a re-read and i am not disappointed. Necropolis is still the stand out book, so far, but i remembered finding the books in "the Saint" omnibus a little slow when i first read them. On second reading, I thought the first half of Sabbat Martr was a little slow, but it picked up. I have very much enjoyed reading them all so far.

Currently onto the Lost Omnibus starting with Traitor General. I remember these books to be an absolute thrill ride.

Werthead, it looks like Dan is taking a breather from the main story, but i have just received a copy of The Vincula Insurgency (A Gaunts Ghosts Dossier). I look forward to your review of it.