The Founding: A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus

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What's a Chaos Marine? What's an Obliterator? Why are they "quasi-mechanical"? Instead you are expected to already know all those things and thrill with delight when an Obliterator shows up.

Only in Death - As the commissariat is fond of reminding guardsmen: only in death does duty end. How would the rest of the Ghosts fare if Gaunt himself were to die? Enough people see Gaunt fall off a cliff that this ceases to being an academic question. This is the Ghosts' haunted house story. The supernatural happenings in Honor Guard (the 4th book) had a perfectly reasonable explanation, so I should've known that things weren't really as spooky as they seemed, but the fighting is so intense that there's never any time to piece the clues together. Another one I didn't expect to read, but got it from a friend. I enjoyed my read as previously stated, it reminded me a lot of Cornwall's Sharpe's Rifles series although a bit more confusing. Abnett throws in a lot of names and eventually you get a sense of the core cast as the red shirts die off: Gaunt (obviously) a political commissar turned military commander; Colonel Cobnec, his easy going XO; Major Rawne, who hates his commanders guts, Mad Larkins the sniper, Mkoll the scout, Milo the adjudant, etc. Gaunt is a real leader, he inspires and makes his followers aspire to be just like him. He cares a lot about his men and does not water lives anyhow unlike Imperial Guard commander who essentially sends them in a “meat grinder” through a battler of attrition. First and Only is an enjoyable story with endless conflicts and space travel.There’s better interconnectivity between the stories in this omnibus. They are still thrown from planet to planet, but there’s a little bit more of a thread connecting them. Abnett’s interactions between characters is probably the stronger point than the plot, though he likes to pull the rug from under you – don’t fall too in love with anyone. Setting all of that aside: the book simply isn't good. It has a weird structure: the first 20% or so is quasi-WW1 themed set piece of trenches and artillery barrage. Gaunt's Ghosts, a regiment of perhaps 2,000 men, manage to single-handedly win the war for the entire planet. All of which kind of has nothing to do with anything in the rest of the book. There's another long interlude -- another long action scene that has no point -- where some members of the regiment steal alcohol from the mafia. This kind of padding just feels...weird? The Iron Star, originally published 2008 – ISBN 978-1-84416-716-6 (not included in ISBN 978-1-84416-819-4)

Necropolis is a significant point in the series; at the end of the novel, the under-strength Tanith First receives an influx of replacement soldiers from the militia and general populace of Vervunhive. A number of major characters are introduced in the novel. A short story titled In Remembrance directly follows the siege of Vervunhive, and is included in The Founding (the first Omnibus).So far the characters seem a fairly standard Mil-SF lot, including the honourable, commander who cares for his men... On the former: this just throws you in head first and expects you to be familiar with not just the broad outlines of the Warhammer 40k universe but also a decent number of small details. There is very little of the handholding that a normal author would put in a book to help a reader understand the technical, social, and cultural nuances of the future. Each novel in Gaunt’s Ghosts series starts off with an extract from a book titled, A History of the Later Imperial Crusades, which summarizes the situation in which the Ghosts have been deployed. The excerpts are often written in the past tense implies that the author wrote them after the Sabbat Worlds Crusade comes to an end. Gaunt's Ghosts is a series of military science fiction novels by Dan Abnett, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It was inspired by the Sharpe series of books written by Bernard Cornwell. [1] Following the events of Blood Pact, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and his Ghosts are returned to active duty, and are given one of their most formidable assignments yet; a mysterious space hulk known as Salvation's Reach. According to the turncoat Mabbon Etogaur, the Sons of Sek, a breakaway faction within the Blood Pact commanded by the warlord Anakwanar Sek, have secretly been using Salvation's Reach as an R&D installation; concealing their activities there from all factions, even their overlord, Archon Gaur.