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I personally find that there are a lot of problems in his writings. He may be a good storyteller, but he is definitely lacking in the "Warhammer 40k" part if you ask me.

Take Eisenhorn for example.

Dozens of inquisitors marching in a parade?

A Warlord titan running around unnoticed on an Imperial world?

A lightning fighter crashes into a Warlord and brings it down?

And what about Gaunt's Ghosts? Every story has to have heros to be sure, but almost every single guardsmen in that book is so OTP that it beggars belief. Being a hero doesn't mean you have to be able to blow up a 10,000 year old chaos dreadnought with a lasgun and a frag grenade, which Abnett often thinks is the case. The Ghost stories have a lot of character in them, but as far as character devlopment, there have been so little changes. A lot of the main characters behave exactly the same as when they were first introduced (up to Sabbat Martyr). I mean, look at Mkoll. That guy hasn't changed since day 1 when he could out-stealth a mandrake and take on chaos marines single handed. Or Feygor. Or Rawne. Or Larkin, who gets slightly more "unsettled" once (spoiler) dies.

Personally I have no idea how he gets so many praises when theres so many other good BL writers out there. Take Graham McNeil's Warriors of Ultramar. That book easily has more content, believability, and character than any of Abnetts stuff with the possible exception of Necropolis. Or C. L. Werner's Witch Hunter novels with its humor, pace, characters, and comprehensiveness of the Warhammer world.

Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying Abnett is a bad writer. There are some extremely memorable moments in his books. It's just that sometimes I feel like he has no clue what he is about as far as the fluff is concerned. I don't see how CS Multilaser can get criticized so much while the Abnett can walk away everytime without so much as a murmur.

/rant

IMHO, main charactors living through horrific happenings (that most of them are trained to live through) does not qualify as a "fluff" problem. It's how books are written, or most of them, anyway. There is nothing in any established 40k fluff that says "EVERYBODY dies horribly in their very first warzone." It does say "ALMOST everybody dies horribly in their first warzone." But remember, the Ghosts are vets, and even then they gotta keep finding new people to stay effective.

I'd talk more, but it's off to school, huzzah!

I'm reading Titanicus now and comparing it to the disaster that Mechanicus was it really shows Abnett's strengths.

THere are characters I care about, situations I can relate to and he even makes a passing effort at keeping the jargon clear.