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can you atleast put it in spoiler marks please mr Larkin. i have not read the book yet.

I liked redemption corps, and cadian blood has its charms, but the cain books are brilliant in my opinion.

Actually, in the guard omnibus, with fifteen hours in it, there is a small extra part of around fifty pages I think. That part focuses on the effort of those four veterans after the death of the protagonist.

*twitch twitch* FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU---------------

but seriously though, I mean they really have to go and do that after I already bought the books from the omnibus individually. grrrrrrr......

Sorry Gaunts Ghosts, but your scout Sergeant did not singlehandedly off a Chaos Dreadnought in any 40k universe I know of. They make for good stories, but the plausible stretch of the low attrition and how many of the random irrelevant nobodys seem to survive (I mean, cmon... Caffran? who the heck is he? some dude with a lasgun who found a girlfriend in the second book...) Lots of recurring characters in gaunts ghosts books makes me think either they have some kind of emperor watching over them or they must get the easiest assignments of any regiment. Where is the emperor's finest "SHOVEL THEM IN, there's always more!" attitude?

The entire book series is a supreme illustration that guardsmen aren't faceless automatons that charge willy nilly into a gun pit. Abnett writes about the lives (and sadly the deaths) of guardsmen and he also dispels the hackneyed: "Your worth nothing because you have zero skill and crappy equipment so that's why we have a lot of you." stereotype about the guard. There aren't that many ghosts so they have to make up a lack of numbers with an increase in quality. The Ghosts have to be that good just to survive and a lot of times they don't.

Yes, I believe Mkoll did outsmart a half dead and blind chaos dread. Actually if you want to get technical the dread kinda killed itself...

And don't give us that crock about Caffran being a nobody, a lot of the books center at least part of the story as a main character in the series.

GG are the best 40k novels I've ever read and curse me to the warp if I'm gonna sit back and let someone bad mouth Dan Abnett's masterpiece without a good fight.

WARORK, I am ready to back you up in that fight. I can't even believe people DON'T like Gaunts Ghosts, they are made of epic win.

GGs are brilliant books but they suffer from trying to fit modern warfare and survival into a Universe where THERE IS ONLY WAR and therefore death

The characters are believable and the sub-plots are superb (Kolea's in Guns of Tanith actually distracted me from the fight scenes!) but again, even with their 'Scottish-uber-ninja-stealth' status, they fight on the frontlines and should take casualties as such. The casualty list after the Battle for Vervunhive at the meatgrinder 'Haha-lol-I-wont-close' gate is WAY too biased to the Tanith, the same for when they


The casualties they take are a little unrealistic given the really heavy battles they face, but Mr. Abnett needed to keep them to stay alive so they could keep making books.

A book featuring a chapter on a unit, then its total annihilation in the space of twenty seconds at the hands of a Titan in some giga-battle would fit perfectly with the 40k'verse, but would be a repetitive and boring read.

The casualties they take are a little unrealistic given the really heavy battles they face, but Mr. Abnett needed to keep them to stay alive so they could keep making books.

I'll give you that the battles the ghosts face are rather fierce but they DO face horrible casualties, they've been folded into other units TWICE in the series and will probably be so again considering the ending of Only in Death



And another thing, at the beginning of the series:



And as for that part in the Guns of Tanith you refer to:



I'll give it that a few times in the GG series the accomplishments seem a little farfetched but I would pin that down to luck and the favor of the Beati

WARORK, I am ready to back you up in that fight. I can't even believe people DON'T like Gaunts Ghosts, they are made of epic win.

Yes......yes they are......

yeah its strange in GG it sounds like they take so many casualties, but it seems like that battle only comprised a small element of the ghosts. i believe in the first book as they charge out of the trench and attack through the lines and blow the artillery lines up, it sounds like so many of them die, but it doesn't seem to be the case

dark6spectre wrote:yeah its strange in GG it sounds like they take so many casualties, but it seems like that battle only comprised a small element of the ghosts. i believe in the first book as they charge out of the trench and attack through the lines and blow the artillery lines up, it sounds like so many of them die, but it doesn't seem to be the case

No that's not the first book...it sounds like you're talking about the book after Guns of Tanith but before Sabbat Martyr (can't remember the name)

"Straight Silver" is the one between "Guns of Tanith" and "Sabbat Martyr".

But no, Dark6spectre is actually referring to "First and Only". It was on an industry heavy planet, against the "Shriven"(who were an insurgent faction of subhuman workers who fused themselves into their industrial worksuits as armor and were being organized by a few renegade Iron Warriors).

Kanluwen wrote:"Straight Silver" is the one between "Guns of Tanith" and "Sabbat Martyr".

But no, Dark6spectre is actually referring to "First and Only". It was on an industry heavy planet, against the "Shriven"(who were an insurgent faction of subhuman workers who fused themselves into their industrial worksuits as armor and were being organized by a few renegade Iron Warriors).

They sound very similar when summarised...
Big gun gets blown up.
Trench warfare.
Sounds bad but they come off remarkably intact.

WhiteBishop wrote:GGs are brilliant books but they suffer from trying to fit modern warfare and survival into a Universe where THERE IS ONLY WAR and therefore death

The characters are believable and the sub-plots are superb (Kolea's in Guns of Tanith actually distracted me from the fight scenes!) but again, even with their 'Scottish-uber-ninja-stealth' status, they fight on the frontlines and should take casualties as such. The casualty list after the Battle for Vervunhive at the meatgrinder 'Haha-lol-I-wont-close' gate is WAY too biased to the Tanith,

You're forgetting a key point. They didn't fight "meatgrinder" styled at that gate. They pulled back, and dug themselves in the space

the same for when they

Spoiler:

get ambushed by the Blood Pact in Guns of Tanith, attacked from all sides and with their back literally up against the wall. Result? About 30 dead and a couple of hundred wounded. The other arrogant unit take hundreds of dead and around a thousand wounded.

The casualties they take are a little unrealistic given the really heavy battles they face, but Mr. Abnett needed to keep them to stay alive so they could keep making books.

Someone already pointed out how you're wrong here, but it's worth noting that the Blood Pact didn't attack entirely in force.
Most of the Blood Pact heavy weaponry and infantry forces were on the other side. The forces that were stuck on the side with the Ghosts were shock infantry, poorly armed(mostly melee weapons) and poorly armored no less. The whole goal of those troops being left behind was they were supposed to have sprung their trap earlier and forced the Ghosts and Urdeshi to push up past the Void Shields.

One of the Verghast spotted the Void Shield generators, and the Ghosts didn't fall for the bait. The Urdeshi did, and got torn to shreds accordingly.

A book featuring a chapter on a unit, then its total annihilation in the space of twenty seconds at the hands of a Titan in some giga-battle would fit perfectly with the 40k'verse, but would be a repetitive and boring read.

Except at the level of combat we're talking about here, Titans aren't really employed. Just to request a Titan Legio for combat is absurdly hard and requires calling in all kinds of markers and favors with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Why waste that on some rinkydink world that was just full of pissed off peasants?

We didn't see Titans even entering the picture until "Armour of Contempt", when the Imperium(under the authority of an Inquisitorial Council no less) opted to reclaim Gereon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

purplefood wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:"Straight Silver" is the one between "Guns of Tanith" and "Sabbat Martyr".

But no, Dark6spectre is actually referring to "First and Only". It was on an industry heavy planet, against the "Shriven"(who were an insurgent faction of subhuman workers who fused themselves into their industrial worksuits as armor and were being organized by a few renegade Iron Warriors).

They sound very similar when summarised...
Big gun gets blown up.
Trench warfare.
Sounds bad but they come off remarkably intact.

Because the Ghosts didn't engage in any trench assaults in "Straight Silver". There was also no "big gun" in "First and Only". It was a battery of Earthshakers and their local equivalent in an emplacement, where the Ghosts and Vitrians sent primed and tampered with shells up to the Shriven gun batteries.

In "Straight Silver", half the regiment was sent to a forested area waaaaaaaaaaay outside the main warzone, to look for an avenue of assault into the opposition's territory. It sparked a running firefight with the Blood Pact who were engaged in the same thing.

The other half of the Regiment, however, remained in the trenches. But didn't do any "over the top", WW1 styled trench fights. They launched two or three nighttime infiltrations, and did a few defenses of their trenchlines.

In both cases, they were facing a force that was far far less equipped and prepared as they were. The main enemy in "Straight Silver" was using bolt-action, solid slug weaponry that was getting stopped cold by the light body armor the Ghosts wore. Their only casualties to that were if someone was hit outside of the torso or hit by explosives.

The first Gaunt's Ghosts book was solidly mediocre (of course, by Black Library terms, that's practically high praise, considering it's also put out the likes of Faith and Fire and the Grey Knights trilogy), and the second was horrible (mostly for being a bad story wrapped around an anthology of bad stories...). The third started off much the same, so I just stopped reading there. Abnett's other books I've read (the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies) have been excellent, though.

Gaunt's Ghosts was mostly annoying for its "everyone with power but Gaunt, the Paragon of Mediocrity, is maliciously slowed and trying to kill him and his regiment because WHARGLBARGL, and his whole regiment is comprised of angsty super-special snipers with almost magical powers of direction and sneakery! And they totally die like flies and that's so tragic for them cause they're the last of their planet and everything, how about pages on pages of them thinking about how tragic their lot is because ANGST ANGST ANGST."

The Ciaphas Cain novels were the only Guard-based novels that made the logical leap that "hey, maybe officers who got promoted, were totally promoted because they had so much as a rudimentary grasp of strategy and tactics, and maybe those soldiers who are veterans of numerous bloody campaigns anyone with even rudimentary motor function and hand-eye coordination actually can shoot straight with a recoil-less, not-affected-by-air-resistance-or-gravity lasgun!"

purplefood wrote:No that's not the first book...it sounds like you're talking about the book after Guns of Tanith but before Sabbat Martyr (can't remember the name)

The first half of First and Only can also be described like that. They charge through no-man's-land into the mutant lines, and there's artillery, though I don't recall if they deal with it or if it's just destroyed with the rest of the mountain when they take out the weird stone things.

nuff said.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The first Gaunt's Ghosts book was solidly mediocre (of course, by Black Library terms, that's practically high praise, considering it's also put out the likes of Faith and Fire and the Grey Knights trilogy), and the second was horrible (mostly for being a bad story wrapped around an anthology of bad stories...). The third started off much the same, so I just stopped reading there. Abnett's other books I've read (the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies) have been excellent, though.

Gaunt's Ghosts was mostly annoying for its "everyone with power but Gaunt, the Paragon of Mediocrity, is maliciously slowed and trying to kill him and his regiment because WHARGLBARGL, and his whole regiment is comprised of angsty super-special snipers with almost magical powers of direction and sneakery! And they totally die like flies and that's so tragic for them cause they're the last of their planet and everything, how about pages on pages of them thinking about how tragic their lot is because ANGST ANGST ANGST."

The Ciaphas Cain novels were the only Guard-based novels that made the logical leap that "hey, maybe officers who got promoted, were totally promoted because they had so much as a rudimentary grasp of strategy and tactics, and maybe those soldiers who are veterans of numerous bloody campaigns anyone with even rudimentary motor function and hand-eye coordination actually can shoot straight with a recoil-less, not-affected-by-air-resistance-or-gravity lasgun!"

Whoa.........rage much?

Call it what you want, put it down as horrible and mediocre, its still one of the most successful series in BL and rightly so in my (and about a million other people's) opinion

Ciaphas Cain is good, but I for one think you have it backwards, Ciaphas Cain is more like a comedy, I really dont take it seriously. GG is the real deal, the saga, the odyssey of Gaunt and his regiment, the epoch of 40k

you wanna bash something? go find one of those bland SM novels, those were the ones that had me bored to tears, except for a few good parts.

Scrazza, thats the shiz.....

There are plenty of other competent officers in the GG series but as a person who thinks everyone should be competent (which they should really) Gaunt clashes with the idiots.

Getting into a high command position in the Imperial Guard isn't necessarily relating to your competence.

It's like Napoleonic and pre-WW2 British military. The commanders, more often than not, were born into it, with very few examples of "commoners" being promoted to it.

Kanluwen wrote:Getting into a high command position in the Imperial Guard isn't necessarily relating to your competence.

It's like Napoleonic and pre-WW2 British military. The commanders, more often than not, were born into it, with very few examples of "commoners" being promoted to it.

Actually after the Crimean war the British military was pureply professional. You had to earn a promotion. However the only ones up for promotion were those suitably educated which were the upper class who had a tradition of joining the military which meant that a Major might have a dad who is also a general.
During the Napolonic wars however you could buy your way to any rank you wanted if you had enough money.

40k is built around Pyrrhic victories. Every Space Marine novel ends with "They won! BUT AT WHAT COST!?" It's just something to expect from 40k fiction.

Brother SRM wrote:40k is built around Pyrrhic victories. Every Space Marine novel ends with "They won! BUT AT WHAT COST!?" It's just something to expect from 40k fiction.

Not all of them end with that but i get whatyou mean. All the IG novels seem to end with "We are basically dead people, we will die at some point, we didn't die this time, but we will"

purplefood wrote:

Brother SRM wrote:40k is built around Pyrrhic victories. Every Space Marine novel ends with "They won! BUT AT WHAT COST!?" It's just something to expect from 40k fiction.

Not all of them end with that but i get whatyou mean. All the IG novels seem to end with "We are basically dead people, we will die at some point, we didn't die this time, but we will"

So, Basically, what you are saying is that Guardsmen are all depressed soldiers, tired of life? given up all hope of survival?

...

Well, yeah, I have to agree with a portion of that.

Peepshow wrote:Anyone read "Desert Raiders"? By far the best IG book I have read but I've yet to find someone else who has.

Yep...enjoyed it too...though

WARORK93 wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The first Gaunt's Ghosts book was solidly mediocre (of course, by Black Library terms, that's practically high praise, considering it's also put out the likes of Faith and Fire and the Grey Knights trilogy), and the second was horrible (mostly for being a bad story wrapped around an anthology of bad stories...). The third started off much the same, so I just stopped reading there. Abnett's other books I've read (the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies) have been excellent, though.

Gaunt's Ghosts was mostly annoying for its "everyone with power but Gaunt, the Paragon of Mediocrity, is maliciously slowed and trying to kill him and his regiment because WHARGLBARGL, and his whole regiment is comprised of angsty super-special snipers with almost magical powers of direction and sneakery! And they totally die like flies and that's so tragic for them cause they're the last of their planet and everything, how about pages on pages of them thinking about how tragic their lot is because ANGST ANGST ANGST."

The Ciaphas Cain novels were the only Guard-based novels that made the logical leap that "hey, maybe officers who got promoted, were totally promoted because they had so much as a rudimentary grasp of strategy and tactics, and maybe those soldiers who are veterans of numerous bloody campaigns anyone with even rudimentary motor function and hand-eye coordination actually can shoot straight with a recoil-less, not-affected-by-air-resistance-or-gravity lasgun!"

Whoa.........rage much?

Call it what you want, put it down as horrible and mediocre, its still one of the most successful series in BL and rightly so in my (and about a million other people's) opinion

Ciaphas Cain is good, but I for one think you have it backwards, Ciaphas Cain is more like a comedy, I really dont take it seriously. GG is the real deal, the saga, the odyssey of Gaunt and his regiment, the epoch of 40k

you wanna bash something? go find one of those bland SM novels, those were the ones that had me bored to tears, except for a few good parts.

Scrazza, thats the shiz.....

Like I said "mediocre" is practically high praise when talking about a book from the Black Library.

And honestly, the first Gaunt's Ghosts books are quite mediocre, with the second being outright bad. No one's ever answered my question as to whether or not the later ones are any better, and I stopped reading when the opening of the third wasn't all that great. Abnett's other books, however, have been excellent.


The Ciaphas Cain novels really aren't given over to comedy. They're lighter, yes, but only because they don't have the governing bodies acting solely for the purpose of being as useless and malevolent as possible, with the Lord General actually displaying the competence you'd expect a general to possess, and other guard officers generally using their troops in ways befitting of their numbers (actually pretty low, mostly because Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale and assume a few thousand is plenty to take a planet, because a planet is totally like, a small town or something ), equipment (nearly indestructible tanks, perfectly accurate guns with nearly bottomless clips that make modern assault rifles look like pea shooters, massive numbers of low-orbit troop carriers), and skill level (veterans of numerous bloody conflicts with a few handfuls of new-but-highly-trained recruits).

Kanluwen wrote:Getting into a high command position in the Imperial Guard isn't necessarily relating to your competence.

It's like Napoleonic and pre-WW2 British military. The commanders, more often than not, were born into it, with very few examples of "commoners" being promoted to it.

That doesn't seem to match anything but noble-born regiments, and even there they're mostly of the same social standing and wealth to start with, so the ones that end up on top still have to be better leaders than their peers. Other regiments are comprised of, and led by, commoners and criminals conscripted when their world is tithed, and again, the only way one is going to stand out above their peers (and survive long enough for it to matter) is to distinguish themselves as capable leaders. Incompetent leaders die with their troops, or at the hands of their troops, or at the hands of the nearest Commissar.


Of course, "and their leaders weren't slowed, and their skill and tactics matched what one would actually find in a military body in their position, and so they crushed everything they saw by barely batting an eye at it due to their overwhelming numbers and godlike equipment, and so were celebrated as valiant heroes, the end" makes a pretty terrible story, and considering the scale and resources of the Imperium, is all you'd get if you didn't make the leaders idiots or only focus on small, isolated forces facing impossible odds.

@ Kanluwen

You're forgetting a key point. They didn't fight "meatgrinder" styled at that gate. They pulled back, and dug themselves in the space

I thought that was after the break through by the baddies? Anywho, I haven't read the book in a while now, I just remember the slag heap bit and Corbec's men getting shot by hugging the walls.

Someone already pointed out how you're wrong here, but it's worth noting that the Blood Pact didn't attack entirely in force.
Most of the Blood Pact heavy weaponry and infantry forces were on the other side. The forces that were stuck on the side with the Ghosts were shock infantry, poorly armed(mostly melee weapons) and poorly armored no less. The whole goal of those troops being left behind was they were supposed to have sprung their trap earlier and forced the Ghosts and Urdeshi to push up past the Void Shields.

One of the Verghast spotted the Void Shield generators, and the Ghosts didn't fall for the bait. The Urdeshi did, and got torn to shreds accordingly.

Oh, right, I must have read that bit wrong then , I thought they passed through the barrier, it was raised, but they were ready for the ambush, unlike the Urdeshi. And I thought that it was a concentrated attack with proper weapons, not a scattered last-ditch assault by hidden defenders, oh well *shrug*

Except at the level of combat we're talking about here, Titans aren't really employed. Just to request a Titan Legio for combat is absurdly hard and requires calling in all kinds of markers and favors with the Adeptus Mechanicus. Why waste that on some rinkydink world that was just full of pissed off peasants?

We didn't see Titans even entering the picture until "Armour of Contempt", when the Imperium(under the authority of an Inquisitorial Council no less) opted to reclaim Gereon.

This was kind of meant as a joke, that it would be completely pointless to write a book about one unit-per chapter, you would never make an attachment. The closest GG gets to the battles of epic proportions seen sometimes is in Armour of Contempt at Gereon, but I'm sure its not that much fun to write about or read about.
The scale of battles Dan Abnett writes about are more in line with modern warfare battles, such as Operation Desert Storm or the Falklands War, which are far more interesting to read about than a meatgrinder that lasts weeks. It would just be like reading a casualty list really if not...