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Heyo, sacrilege I know, but I'm only getting around to reading the Gaunt's Ghosts books now. I just finished the first Omnibus, The Founding. Overall I enjoyed it, but I'm still left with some concerns and some questions.

My main concern is the almost excessive amount of combat in the novels. In First and Only and Ghostmaker, I could handle the onslaught, because it was broken up with interludes that offered insight into Gaunt and the main Ghosts. However, Necropolis, good as it was, was an absolute nonstop feast of carnage. To its credit, that seemed to be the intent, given the ridiculous scale of the conflict it needed to cover in a rather short page count. But I'm worried that the proceeding novels will fall into repetition, constantly throwing these huge numbers and massive battles into the stories with little regard for pacing or offering reprieve for the reader.

The only other Sabbat Worlds material I have read was the short story collection. So I ask you, does Gaunt's Ghosts let up at any point, slowing things down or settling into a more personal scale? Or does it continue to escalate to the point where Vervunhive seems like a minor skirmish?

You get much smaller scale stuff later on, one book is just 48 long and has no " battles" a few fire fights but only a few participants. It's also the first book to make me well up at the thought of loosing a character.

Stick with them, they get better and better. Dan just sucks at spaceships.

As time goes on the battle's tend to become more personal.

There are indeed quite a few large set-pieces, as is befitting for the setting, and warporn has always been a big part of the series, but in the later stories, the big war becomes more of a backdrop, with the Ghost's being involved in more specific, small-time roles.

I won't spoil anything, but to vaguely provide some examples, in the second omnibus, a sizable chunk of the overall story arc focuses on a black ops type mission, where only Gaunt and a few of the ghosts embark on a secret mission behind enemy lines. The two stories that take place after the second omnibus has thus far focused more on Gaunt and his sub-plot, and less of "WW2 all day erry-day".

 Badgerous One wrote:
You get much smaller scale stuff later on, one book is just 48 long and has no " battles" a few fire fights but only a few participants. It's also the first book to make me well up at the thought of loosing a character.

Stick with them, they get better and better. Dan just sucks at spaceships.

Would that short story be In Remembrance or The Iron Star? Both of those made me feel more for the characters in such a short time than the entirety of Necropolis.

I get that Necropolis is really the turning point for the series, with the Verghast element introduced into the Ghosts, but it really could have done with some more fleshed out subplots. I thought that Dorden and Curth were going to have a neat little murder mystery side story, but that got put on the backburner and quickly resolved in half a page at the end of the book.

Neither. ... there is a scene in the last few pages of blood pact that really pulls on the old heart strings.

I mentioned it on Facebook and tagged dan Abnett in it. I got an apology for making me practically burst into tears on a bus full of chavs at 11pm lol

I like the battles in the first Omnibus, particularly Necropolis. Isn’t the backdrop of unending war what WH40k is all about?

There are some with constant war and some that aren't. There are certain characters. It get's pretty fething dramatic with some characters... leaving. Some of these worked well and some of them were TOO GOD DAMN FAR!!! Seriously sometimes it's just pointless. But enough of that. You are right, some like necropolis just go on and on. But some don't. And I think that you just have to tough out what you don't like and get on with the series. I have read a lot of BL, and the gaunts ghosts books are still my favorite.

Regarding the characters and biting the bullet; I think Abnett started off great with that, but by this point I just yawn at the character deaths.

Like The Walking Dead, the thrill of "who's gonna die next" is only interesting when anyone can die. Once it's established that everyone will die, the story loses its luster.

 btr75 wrote:
I like the battles in the first Omnibus, particularly Necropolis. Isn’t the backdrop of unending war what WH40k is all about?

I didn't dislike the fighting in Necropolis, I just felt that there was too little in between the battles to give them more punch when they appeared. I felt that there were several potential subplots in the story that were set up early, only to be forgotten until the end or dropped altogether. Stuff like Curth and Dorden's investigation into Worlin's massacre, or more time focusing on Gol Kolea's guerrillas outside the Curtain Wall to break up the Zoican wave.

There is only so many times I can see the words Ochre, Vast, Sheer, and Scale before it gets numbing.

I want to see what happens next, I'm just worried that I'll start to get bored if every half page another gargantuan battle breaks out.

I can totally relate to the feeling of combat fatigue, as it were. It does get a lot smaller scale after Necropolis though and theres more breathing time for character subplots. The action can be a bit harrowing at times, but that makes the subplots that much more special in my opinion.

I think we should probably me blaming Black Library for a lot of the faults, rather than the authors. Great authors are artists, you cant force art. I have noticed many of my favorite authors lose there edge as a a series progresses, and they usually say things like "I didnt intend for the stories to keep going etc." They get stuck into contracts and have to deliver. I think I great example of this was the latest Gaunt's Ghost novel, Salvations Reach. I think Dan Abnett ran out of time at the end and so the last part feels rushed.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:

 btr75 wrote:
I like the battles in the first Omnibus, particularly Necropolis. Isn’t the backdrop of unending war what WH40k is all about?

I didn't dislike the fighting in Necropolis, I just felt that there was too little in between the battles to give them more punch when they appeared. I felt that there were several potential subplots in the story that were set up early, only to be forgotten until the end or dropped altogether. Stuff like Curth and Dorden's investigation into Worlin's massacre, or more time focusing on Gol Kolea's guerrillas outside the Curtain Wall to break up the Zoican wave.

There is only so many times I can see the words Ochre, Vast, Sheer, and Scale before it gets numbing.

I want to see what happens next, I'm just worried that I'll start to get bored if every half page another gargantuan battle breaks out.

I agree that some of those sub-plots went to pot. I would have liked to see a little more with them. Editors probably wanted to reduce the word count.

The Ghosts, or at least some of them, get ever more suetastic. It starts to get a bit annoying lately.

Personally Necropolis was one of my favorite novels in the Gaunts Ghosts series. I will give you that it wasnt as personal with the characters. In my opinion it gave a great insight into the war overall instead of giving you a single focus on just what happened with the Tanith. You see it from an overall perspective and you see much more of the effect of the overall war over Vervunhive.

Generally speaking, as the force is continuously whittled down, the focus becomes increasingly centered on the key members, and increasingly non-conventional roles, largely due to their inability to function effectively on the front-lines.

In fact, there's one whole book where they're forced into an old meatgrinder, and Gaunt spends a great deal of time trying to get his unit out of it before they're ground into a fine paste, focusing less on the warfare, more on the changing nature and role of the ghosts.