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I'm about halfway through the Gaunt's Ghosts series and every single novel is frontloaded with tons of sub-plots and detail and build-up, but every novel sort of fizzles out towards the end
like he lost interest/hit the deadline and sort of resolves everything in a single chapter, or sometimes even sentences. There is little to no decompression, and the resolutions of most sub-plots are extremely unsatisfying.

Is Black Library cracking the whip, or does he just have too many projects going on at once and runs out of ideas?

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
I'm about halfway through the Gaunt's Ghosts series and every single novel is frontloaded with tons of sub-plots and detail and build-up, but every novel sort of fizzles out towards the end
like he lost interest/hit the deadline and sort of resolves everything in a single chapter, or sometimes even sentences. There is little to no decompression, and the resolutions of most sub-plots are extremely unsatisfying.

Is Black Library cracking the whip, or does he just have too many projects going on at once and runs out of ideas?

He has stated that he would write them to everyone is dead or he has run out of ideas about them.

I'm not talking about Gaunt's Ghosts per se, most of his books I've read are long on build-up but come up short on denouement.

I know exactly what you mean. He establishes all these ponderous and intricate mega plots with various sub-plots and sub-stories, and then wham bam, "this happens" and everything is over.

He writes good dialogue and characterization, but my theory is that he gets lost in fleshing out his "Abnethammer 40K" universe, and loses sight of the story, until the deadline comes knocking and he has to throw something together.

He's good at building stuff up, but he just keeps building until its impossible to come up with a good ending. Kind of like LOST.

 LoneLictor wrote:
He's good at building stuff up, but he just keeps building until its impossible to come up with a good ending. Kind of like LOST.

I come up with loads of better than LOST that does that. But that's me. Smallville is one example. But that's a personal example.

KnowItAll wrote:
I know exactly what you mean. He establishes all these ponderous and intricate mega plots with various sub-plots and sub-stories, and then wham bam, "this happens" and everything is over.

He writes good dialogue and characterization, but my theory is that he gets lost in fleshing out his "Abnethammer 40K" universe, and loses sight of the story, until the deadline comes knocking and he has to throw something together.

It's so true. You can actually see predict the point in the story where he's going to hash out an ending, usually when you're on the final few pages and nothing has been resolved quite yet.

Yeah he totally failed to wrap up the otherwise decent Titanicus, it was like the ending presented was his outline notes or something.

Also, he has massive issues with scale. He thinks a battle involving 20-60,000 people is a huge fight. In the Great War those were sometimes daily casualty figures, and that isn't in grimdark 40k, this is just plain ol' Earthhammer 2k.

A friend once described his writing as:

"It's like he writes all of his books by hand, in a notebook that has a limited number of pages. Then he gets down to the last two pages and says "Oh, crap, I have to wrap this up!"

The biggest offender I felt was Necropolis. Turning point for the Ghosts series, but that ending suuuuucked. I was hoping for a neat subplot with Curth and Dorden investigating the corrupt merchant's murders, but then boop, it's all wrapped up with a bullet.

Yep Dan can't write a good ending however i still like the books, reminds me of the Lost Symbol book ending sucked but it wasn't bad.

Dan is a good writer, one of BL's best, but IMHO his endings are the most rushed and least satisfying, of whom I would consider BL's best (Abnett, ADB, McNeill, maybe Swallow if Fear to Tread is not an outlier, seriously, that book was so good).

*Seconded

Because Abnett feels that he needs to have a feth-tonne of action and conversation, then realizes he used up his page allowance from BL and deletes the real ending to replace it with a 2 second ending

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Also, he has massive issues with scale. He thinks a battle involving 20-60,000 people is a huge fight. In the Great War those were sometimes daily casualty figures, and that isn't in grimdark 40k, this is just plain ol' Earthhammer 2k.

To be fair, just because those are "daily casualties" doesn't mean that they aren't huge fights. Even in 40K, 60,000 troops would be about 20 regiments, maybe even more. That's pretty massive, considering one or two regiments is considered enough in-universe to win most wars.

So I'd say that it's just 40K in general that sucks at scale.

Also, keep in kind that Abnett is the man who described a battle so hilariously huge in Necropolis that it even got a mention in the TV Trope for massive battles.

BlaxicanX wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Also, he has massive issues with scale. He thinks a battle involving 20-60,000 people is a huge fight. In the Great War those were sometimes daily casualty figures, and that isn't in grimdark 40k, this is just plain ol' Earthhammer 2k.

To be fair, just because those are "daily casualties" doesn't mean that they aren't huge fights. Even in 40K, 60,000 troops would be about 20 regiments, maybe even more. That's pretty massive, considering one or two regiments is considered enough in-universe to win most wars.

So I'd say that it's just 40K in general that sucks at scale.

Also, keep in kind that Abnett is the man who described a battle so hilariously huge in Necropolis that it even got a mention in the TV Trope for massive battles.

Well GW isnt really versed in military matters, their regiment sizes differ greatly. 40k has regiments from around a couple thousand men to tens of thousands, which are roughly the same combat strength. So Abnett could just be describing only one regiment in battle. This makes the grimdark setting feel silly, if it states that a few regiments could be enough for a planet (think a reasonable population and 5% of that as traitor pdf per world). Considering how amazingly huge the IG is supposed to be you would almost think they could push their borders outward with ease. Yet it is having difficulty just maintaining the Imperium. Abnett also suffers from the lack of perspective on the smaller (planetary) scale. But he isnt the only one, GW doenst seem to have the slightest idea of size. Iirc it stated in 5th that the daily death toll is in the millions, which is really insignificant on a galactic scale for the IG. Its just a shame that Abnett has trouble with this sometimes, hes a very good writer. I like his HH books best though, maybe because the series doesnt need a proper ending untill they cashed in enough

I guestimated 20 regiments because iirc the "average" regiment is a couple thousand troops.

But, yeah.

Like the opinion seems to be here.

I love Abnett, his stories, and Gaunt's Ghost in particullar, but his endings are awful.

More then once I had to reread the last 2-3 pages of a story because I actually missed the ending

BlaxicanX wrote:
Even in 40K, 60,000 troops would be about 20 regiments, maybe even more. That's pretty massive, considering one or two regiments is considered enough in-universe to win most wars.

Sixty thousand men isn't that big in campaign terms. But when sixty thousand men are deployed to a single battlefield only a few kilometers wide, that's a big fight.

Sandy Mitchel also has problems with scale as well. Apparently four to six regiments of guardsmen are enough to throw back a Tyranid splinter fleet invasion.

Abnet is a little better than that, at least.

At any rate, I agree, his endings always do feel a bit rushed. The rest of the book is a great read, but it feels as if they could always use a few dozen more pages.

 Melissia wrote:
Sandy Mitchel also has problems with scale as well. Apparently four to six regiments of guardsmen are enough to throw back a Tyranid splinter fleet invasion.

Abnet is a little better than that, at least.

At any rate, I agree, his endings always do feel a bit rushed. The rest of the book is a great read, but it feels as if they could always use a few dozen more pages.

If Chenkov and his ability to create an entire dam by just executing enough of his own men while still maintaining combat strength is anything to go by, "regiment" can often mean millions of men. Standard unit size seems to be a concept lost on the Imperium.

 Melissia wrote:
Sandy Mitchel also has problems with scale as well. Apparently four to six regiments of guardsmen are enough to throw back a Tyranid splinter fleet invasion.

Abnet is a little better than that, at least.

At any rate, I agree, his endings always do feel a bit rushed. The rest of the book is a great read, but it feels as if they could always use a few dozen more pages.

There is a section of either the IG or Tyranid codex of a Cadian regiment (read 1) driving off a Tyranid fleet

 Galdos wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Sandy Mitchel also has problems with scale as well. Apparently four to six regiments of guardsmen are enough to throw back a Tyranid splinter fleet invasion.

Abnet is a little better than that, at least.

At any rate, I agree, his endings always do feel a bit rushed. The rest of the book is a great read, but it feels as if they could always use a few dozen more pages.

There is a section of either the IG or Tyranid codex of a Cadian regiment (read 1) driving off a Tyranid fleet

And they didn't loose a single company in the fighting.

Anytime you read a number describing any sort of logistics or population size in any GW publication the story will come off better if you "insert your own best guess here".

 Kain wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Sandy Mitchel also has problems with scale as well. Apparently four to six regiments of guardsmen are enough to throw back a Tyranid splinter fleet invasion.

Abnet is a little better than that, at least.

At any rate, I agree, his endings always do feel a bit rushed. The rest of the book is a great read, but it feels as if they could always use a few dozen more pages.

If Chenkov and his ability to create an entire dam by just executing enough of his own men while still maintaining combat strength is anything to go by, "regiment" can often mean millions of men. Standard unit size seems to be a concept lost on the Imperium.

The regiments in the Cain books were a couple thousand soldiers plus their vehicles.

 Melissia wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Sandy Mitchel also has problems with scale as well. Apparently four to six regiments of guardsmen are enough to throw back a Tyranid splinter fleet invasion.

Abnet is a little better than that, at least.

At any rate, I agree, his endings always do feel a bit rushed. The rest of the book is a great read, but it feels as if they could always use a few dozen more pages.

If Chenkov and his ability to create an entire dam by just executing enough of his own men while still maintaining combat strength is anything to go by, "regiment" can often mean millions of men. Standard unit size seems to be a concept lost on the Imperium.

The regiments in the Cain books were a couple thousand soldiers plus their vehicles.

I personally find that taking any number of troops given in a book and multiplying it by a hundred to a thousand tends to resolve things.

Yeah, but the problem there is that Cain was said to know most of the officers and non-coms in the regiment, although he did not always know the basic grunts (since they were often fresh recruits, as officer deaths were replaced the named characters being promoted, such as with Grifen and Magot).

It's a problem that Abnet faces much less with Gaunt, to his credit.

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, but the problem there is that Cain was said to know most of the officers and non-coms in the regiment, although he did not always know the basic grunts (since they were often fresh recruits, as officer deaths were replaced the named characters being promoted, such as with Grifen and Magot).

It's a problem that Abnet faces much less with Gaunt, to his credit.

Cain get's around a lot? *wonk*

/inside jokes.

Well, technically he did, in both senses of the term.