The Founding: A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus

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My only complaint would be the lack of women in the Ghosts, though this looks like it could be resolved in later volumes. There are currently 2 anthologies as well as 3 short stories that have not yet been collected into an omnibus or anthology.

With just eighteen days until the fleet (large enough to wipe out the liberation force even if the fleet were a quarter its current size) arrives, Gaunt is given one last chance to redeem himself by the arrogant and pompous Lord-General Lugo: recover the Saint's remains and holy relics from the Shrinehold in the Sacred Hills for evacuation. However, things take a strange turn when Sanian actually does become the host for the Saint's spirit, after Sabbat's true incarnation perishes in the assault.From the gentle Trooper Bragg, whose inability to hit anything with a weapon gave him both the sobriquet “Try Again” and a penchant for carrying around massively heavy weapons, to the slitheringly lethal Major Rawn, willing to stab you in the back and the front simultaneously ands powered by an engine of internal fury, to Colonel Corbec, hearty, bluff and well aware of his role as Gaunt;s counterpart, the Ghosts all have their own personalities; they aren’t all just faceless numbers, but given to us as individuals with their own backstories, needs and desires.

I do think it's very clear what Abnett was doing here, it's not subtle, but neither does he beat you over the head about it. That helps us care about them and the stakes they’re working for on the page, and we can feel more as they live and die around us, on battlefields filled with horrors and heroism in equal measure. Ultimately, it is one of the Ghost's most beloved leaders who becomes a martyr in Sabbat's name, as he gives his life defending her from the final assassin.

The scale here is incomprehensible, the level of death and destruction incredible and deeply sobering. During the liberation of Urdesh Damocles Squad of the Iron Snakes accompanies the reincarnated Saint into battle. In a overall, I know there are people that compare the Dan Abnett series of Gaunts with Sharp series. The Lost sees the very future of the regiment in jeopardy as Gaunt battles the forces of Chaos across the Sabbat Worlds, from rescue missions to the horrors of the battlefield.

Here we see ravening cultists, corrupt aristocracies, warped creatures that used to be men, daemonic machinery, and all sorts of other nastiness. Seeing the universe from the perspective not of tanky Space Marines blasting and chopping everything in sight, but from significantly lower down, the scared, desperate, extremely vulnerable soldiers of the Imperial Guard, makes much more of an impact. They learn that Ferrozoica, whom Vervunhive had fought in the Trade War ninety years before, had silenced communications with its neighbours in recent months and began arming.

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review "With a firm grasp of character and a superior ability to convey action (you can almost hear the bullets roaring overhead and feel the apprehension of troops stuck in foxholes), Abnett delivers a great, readable SF novel here and earns his comparisons to an SF Bernard Cornwell. Beneath Shrine Target Primaris was a Standard Template Constructor, a relic from over ten millennia before the events of First and Only, which made Iron Men, a pattern of robotic warriors; the traitorous General Dravere, assisted by the mutated, radical Inquisitor Heldane, Colonel Draker Flense and his Jantine Patricians attempted to seize power and overturn the commander of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, Warmaster Macaroth, using the Iron Men. However, the machine was corrupted by Chaos and Commissar Gaunt destroyed it, despite the psychic puppetry of the Inquisitor, who died after his "instrument" – Imperial Agent Fereyd, the man into whom Heldane had extended his consciousness – was explosively killed. In a series of pages, in the Sabbat worlds, infested by Chaos forces, one encounters the charismatic characters from the regiment Tanith first-and-only and their sad story. However, he is forced to protect the prisoner and go to ground in the city when a Blood Pact insertion team storms the facility in an attempt to silence the prisoner.