The Reading Canary: A Reminder

Series of novels - especially in fantasy and SF, but distressingly frequently on other genres as well - have a nasty tendency to turn sour partway through. The Reading Canary is your guide to precisely how far into a particular sequence you should read, and which side-passages you should explore, before the noxious gases become too much and you should turn back.

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future There Are Still Some Nice Guys

In many respects it isn't surprising that in the earlier days of Games Workshop tie-in fiction - back when such things were published by the Games Workshop Books and, a little later, Boxlight under licence - there were far more books set in the Warhammer Fantasy world than in the universe of Warhammer 40,000. The Old World is at its core a twisted reflection of our own world at a reasonably nebulous point in history, which allows authors both the freedom to decide whether they want to write about pseudo-medieval brutality or pseudo-Victorian murder mysteries, and gives plenty of scope to writers to present a believable society. The 41st Millennium, however, is a very different matter: in an empire spanning the galaxy, ruled by a regime that is far more intrusive and restrictive than the (essentially benign) Empire of Warhammer Fantasy, beset on all sides by a million different things that could snuff out civilisation in an instant, and possession ridiculously powerful weaponry to match, it's somewhat more difficult to get things down to a more human scale, which is somewhat necessary if you want to write a novel with a cast list which doesn't go like this:

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
A bunch of Space Marines
A horde of Chaos Demons
Some people caught in the crossfire

And yet, under the auspices of the Black Library, Games Workshop's relatively new in-house publishing arm, the tendency seems to have been turned around - there's as much, if not more fiction coming out set in the 40K universe these days. Part of this might be due to authors coming up with better ideas for stories than sadomasochistic Space Marines presenting their leather-tough buttocks to their sergeant. But the consensus is that there are other factors at work, and one of those factors is Dan Abnett.

Dan Abnett appears to be a serial writer of tie-in fiction, working in settings ranging from Torchwood to 2000 AD to the Mr Men. And it has to be said, he's pretty good at it, as evidenced by the excellent Eisenhorn. The trick that Abnett pulled off in Eisenhorn, and which Ian Watson didn't quite succeed at in Space Marine, was coming up with a sympathetic protagonist in a setting where there are no good guys. The Imperium of Mankind is a horrendous dictatorship which at best is at the beck and call of a man-monster kept alive by daily human sacrifices of thousands of psychics, and at worst worships an impotent corpse-puppet in an elaborate psychic-eating life support system. Pretty much every other power in the galaxy is a million times worse than this, with the exception of the Eldar, who are dying out, and maybe the Tau, who are a bit trigger-happy with the re-education camps and whose sphere of influence is too miniscule to make much of a difference in the long run. The trick to coming up with a sympathetic protagonist in such a setting is to ensure that the individual in question spends his or her time fighting one of the various fates worse than death that threatens humanity on a regular basis, and is not called upon (and is not inclined to order) the sort of horrific atrocity which the Imperium perpetuates on a distressingly frequent basis. Eisenhorn, for example, despite being a member of the Imperial Inquisition, doesn't waste his time harassing people who wear the wrong coloured socks when saying their prayers to the Emperor, but chases down psychic, alien, and demonic threats to mankind as a whole, and he never actually orders the destruction of entire planets in the course of his work, and therefore manages to just about avoid resembling a gestapo officer in space.

Before Gregor Eisenhorn, however, Abnett cooked up Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, and the boys from the Tanith First-and-Only division of the Imperial Guard - known informally as Gaunt's Ghosts. In the introduction to The Founding, the first omnibus collection of the Gaunt's Ghost series, Abnett explains that he wanted to write about the Imperial Guard, the normal, human troops who make up the vast bulk of the Imperium's military forces, because he found it easier to relate to them and understand them as characters than the Space Marines, who are superhuman, genetically modified warrior-monks. This is a smart decision, especially since it allows him to draw on the rich tradition of military-themed SF that ranges from Heinlein's Starship Troopers to Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries series to David Drake's Hammer's Slammers. (The alliterative name of Gaunt's Ghosts might, in fact, be a reference to the latter). It also helps that the Imperial Guard are meant to be incredibly diverse, which gives Abnett a lot of leeway in his portrayal of them - Gaunt, his Ghosts, and their allies get to be the "good" Guardsmen, and rival units get to be the "bad" Guardsmen. Gaunt himself is a rare beast - a regimental commissar who also holds a command rank - and thus he is simultaneously responsible for deploying his regiment effectively and achieving the missions handed down from his commanders, whilst at the same time maintaining discipline and morale. Whilst the imagery associated with Imperial Guard commissars is intentionally designed to make people think of World War II-era Red Army officers ruthlessly enforcing Stalin's edicts and shooting fleeing men in the back, and whilst there are certainly many Imperial Guard officers in the series who treat their men as cannon fodder, Gaunt is different: he's about as nice to his men as a military officer can reasonably expected to be without seriously impacting the efficiency of his command, and every single death in his regiment is a blow to him. (There's a nice bit where it's mentioned that Gaunt tries his best to memorise every name and face in the regiment, because he knows that if he ever hears that one of his men has been killed and he can't remember the guy's face he'll have failed to meet the standards he sets for himself.)

Gaunt's regiment, meanwhile, the Tanith First-and-Only, is interesting in its own right; the regiment's homeworld of Tanith was subject to a surprise attack by the forces of Chaos whilst it was in the middle of establishing and handing over its very first Imperial Guard divisions, and under Gaunt's orders the Guard troop ships fled the planet with as many soldiers as could get onboard in time so that they could be some use to the Imperium, rather than dying uselessly in a futile defence of their homeworld. This takes place in the wider context of the ongoing Sabbat Worlds Crusade, a sector-wide effort to oust the forces of Chaos from the local region, and Gaunt has received promises from the Crusade's leaders that the Ghosts will get settlement rights to the first world that he and his men liberate single-handedly - although that would seem difficult considering that there's only two thousand of them. So, the Ghosts are men whose pasts and home have been annihilated, and are fighting to establish a new home for themselves, whilst Gaunt himself keeps second-guessing his decision not to defend Tanith and seems to wonder whether he actually has the right to ask more of the men of Tanith than what they have already given. This situation allows for somewhat more nuanced characterisation than you would expect from the Imperial Guard, who in some respects are one of the more bland Warhammer 40,000 armies you can collect - most of them look like regular human beings, carrying conventional weapons, after all.

Of course, making the Imperial Guard look cool and interesting serves the secondary purpose of the series, which is to convince the reader that collecting an Imperial Guard army is an awesome idea, but it also helps the primary purpose of the series, which is to tell awesome adventure stories about cool dudes in space. In fact, with this formula Abnett appears to have found a way to tell energetic, fun stories about war of the sort which used to be told in Commando Comics and the like and which have gone out of fashion now, at least partly because reading about people from real nations killing each other in real wars that actually happened in living memory can actually be slightly disturbing. By exploiting the diverse nature of the Imperial Guard Abnett can put every single human culture you could think of (and a bunch of fictional ones) on the same side, and have them fighting the abstract forces of Chaos who, if they can be related to anything at all in the real world, represent mankind's baser and unworthy instincts, the rampaging animal forces of anarchy which threaten to tear us apart; meanwhile, the Imperial Guard represent human societies and civilisations, with all of the good and bad which comes with that - some regiments end up being rivals to the Ghosts, sometimes to the point of being deadly enemies, and these regiments tend to represent flawed elements in social hierarchies and systems, such as corruption and bigotry and aristocratic elitism, and in the end these rivalries must be either put aside or ruthlessly resolved one way or the other if society is going to stand against the bestial anarchy that comes in the wake of social collapse.

...

Okay, I can't actually type that bit with a straight face, although there are parts of the series where it almost seems as if that's the sort of point Abnett is reaching towards. The bottom line is that the forces of Chaos represent horrors from beyond space and time who want to destroy everything, and therefore don't really resemble any particular real-world society at all, so you don't have to feel bad when they get blown up. The Ghosts and the regiments friendly to them seem to either be parallels to real-world cultures or interesting examples of invented cultures, and either way you feel sad when they get killed. Those regiments who are outright hostile to the Ghosts tend to be petty aristocratic bastards who end up costing serious numbers of human lives in their pursuit of their own selfish agendas; they frequently get destroyed by their own hubris, or in desperate situations are put down by the Ghosts and their allies so that the bad regiments don't end up getting everyone killed. And there's at least one regiment which at first seems hostile to the Ghosts, but ends up forging a working relationship with them through fighting alongside them, so things aren't necessarily neat and predictable. The point is that Abnett has contrived a situation where he gets to write about war and guns and explosions whilst at the same time highlighting how stupid and wasteful it is for human beings to bicker and squabble amongst one another when the universe is hostile enough to life without us making things more difficult for ourselves. And that means I can enjoy a good old-fashioned war story without wondering whether the author is actually advocating, say, rounding up leftists in football stadiums and shooting them all in a Pinochet-like move. (That's not a random example, there's a Jerry Pournelle short story where I ended up wondering whether he was actually writing in support of death squad tactics in developing countries.)

That said, you can take a promising premise with scope for interesting intra- and inter-regimental character interactions and a certain amount of meaningful character development which still allows for kick-ass adventure stories on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium and still fuck it up. But I'm pleased to say that, at least with the first three books, Abnett delivers.

First and Only

The first novel in the series is, at its heart, a character study of Gaunt himself; although many of the major supporting characters in the Ghosts are introduced, the focus is very much on Gaunt himself, his past, and his struggles. The novel consists of a series of four linked short stories, with a single plotline connecting them - the race between rival Imperial Guard regiments to secure a powerful technological artifact - interspersed with brief chapters detailing important incidents in Gaunt's life. Interestingly, the cataclysmic attack on Tanith is merely alluded to, with most of the backstory chapters dealing with earlier incidents in Gaunt's career. By the climax, just about all of the ongoing plot elements that the book focuses on - Gaunt's ongoing feud with the individuals responsible for his father's death, the Ghosts' feud with a rival regiment, the hunt for the technological thingybob and the mysterious prophecy entrusted to Gaunt by a strange psychic girl - have been entirely resolved, which makes me suspect that Abnett didn't yet know that he'd be asked to write an entire series about the Ghosts.

As a stand-alone novel, it's a lot of fun, and it also works well as an opening salvo to the series - by focusing primarily on Gaunt himself, and shoving the rest of the Ghosts into the background, Abnett allows himself the opportunity to engage in a reasonable amount of character development and action in the short space provided to him, and it also means that the character of Gaunt himself is well-established for the rest of the series. Although some of the supporting characters get a certain amount of spotlight time and development, almost all of it is in the context of their interactions with Gaunt - which makes sense, since he's very much one of the central figures in their lives. The one downside to this approach is that, because all of the major strands are concluded by the end of the book, it seems somehow disconnected from the rest of the series - you could start reading Gaunt's Ghosts with book two and not miss out on anything. You'd be silly to do so, though - although it doesn't quite achieve the depth of characterisation and theme that is present in Necropolis (of which more later), First and Only delivers a heap of exciting war adventure stories which, if you are at all interested in that sort of thing, can't help to get your blood racing. It's a bit of a sausage party - it's about a bunch of manly soldiers being men on the battlefield where they shoot at other men, so there's no female characters whatsoever - but otherwise it's a pretty fine start to the series.

Ghostmaker

The titles of the first and second book of this series should really be swapped around, because while First and Only is named after the regiment but is all about the leader, Ghostmaker takes its name from Gaunt's nickname amongst the men but is really about the regiment. More so even than First and Only, Ghostmaker is less a novel than a collection of short stories, without any overarching plotline linking them, which at times makes it feel unfocused. Interspersed with short chapters depicting Gaunt checking up on his men the day before a big battle, the bulk of the book consists of stories focusing on the various major characters of the regiment, set at various points in the regiment's history leading up to the present; the final, longer story depicts the big battle that the framing story keeps alluding to, and occasionally references bits of characterisation set up in the earlier tales. Gaunt's story is the briefest, and covers the destruction of Tanith; his presence in each story after that is highly variable - sometimes the chapter focuses on a particular character's relationship with Gaunt, sometimes he's almost entirely absent.

The personalities explored in Ghostmaker all have brief highlights in First and Only, and were interesting enough in that context, but really come into their own through their treatment in this volume. The stories are varied enough that every reader will probably have their own favourites. I particularly liked Blood Oath (in which the company medic arranges the defence of a farmhouse-turned-field hospital despite overwhelming odds, and discovers an interesting secret about the farmhouse's origins), Sound and Fury (in which the regiment's best scout encounters some interestingly alien local wildlife), The Angel of Bucephalon (in which the Ghost's best - and most mentally unstable - sniper desperately tries to remember what his current mission is before his next fit renders him incapable of performing it) and Witch Hunt (in which Gaunt's maybe-psychic adjutant gets into trouble with the Imperial Inquisition).

Speaking of the Inquisition, Ghostmaker establishes an important precedent for the series by including an important and sympathetic character who is a) not in the Imperial Guard and b) is a woman, in the form of the fabulously-named Inquisitor Lilith. Although she's partly there to be a love interest for Gaunt, she's never merely his love interest - you never quite forget that she's a dangerous agent of the secret theological police who could order the deaths of every single person she meets if she feels that that's what is needed for the good of the Imperium. She is written out of the series by the end of the climactic tale, which is a shame, but her inclusion is a sign of good things to come. Maybe I've been reading too many Ian Watson books, but it's refreshing to see a romantic subplot in a Warhammer 40,000 novel that doesn't involve Space Marines lovingly branding one another's buttocks, or hot ninja assassin chicks who can turn into replicas of genestealer warriors at will.

Despite not holding together quite as well as a novel as First and Only, if you approach it as a short story collection Ghostmaker is pretty entertaining. It's not quite as good as First and Only, but it's pretty fun, entertaining reading. Which is good - with the next book, the series would take a much more sombre tone.

Necropolis

Okay, remember how I tried to read a deep and meaningful interpretation into the Gaunt's Ghosts series in the introduction and couldn't keep a straight face? Well, this is the novel where you can just about make that argument seriously. Although there is plenty of fast-paced action and excitement to be had in Necropolis, the main point of the novel is the chronicling of how a society is torn to piece both by aggression from the forces of Chaos without (with, remember, can be taken as representing the general hostility of the universe towards life) and bickering, infighting and incredibly short-sighted leadership from within. It is the first book in the Gaunt's Ghosts series where the action all unfolds on one planet, and in fact one city, the massive metropolis of Vervunhive on the planet of Verghast. The Ghosts and several other Imperial Guard forces are called in to aid Vervunhive when it is attacked by the Zoicans, residents of a rival hive, and it transpires that the Zoicans have been corrupted by a powerful Chaos warlord. The problem is that the leaders of Vervunhive are all either insane, corrupt, dedicated solely to advancing their own career, or simply don't have a clue how to prosecute a war efficiently, and their interference with the Guard's operations soon put the lives of everyone at risk.

A major departure from the previous books in the series is the inclusion of extensive sections written from the point of view of people who aren't in the Imperial Guard at all - various folk from all levels of Vervunhive society, in fact. In fact, aside from a few continuing plots from the previous book, such as the tension between the Ghosts and the rival Blueblood regiment, this novel is more about Vervunhive than it is about Gaunt's Ghosts. It commences with the first warning sirens sounding in the city, and it ends with the Imperial Guard leaving the ruins and lamenting both their losses and Verghast's. Many of the Vervunhive residents turn out to be just as interesting as the Ghosts themselves - I particularly like Surgeon Curth, a local medic that befriends the Ghost's own surgeon (they have their own romance subplot, as well as a small murder mystery to solve, over the course of the book - and Abnett manages to slip in dozens of these tiny little microplots which develop in the background over the course of the story, and it's a joy to watch him do it), and Kolea, an ex-miner who finds himself in charge of a rag-tag bunch of survivors who end up fighting a guerilla war against the Chaos forces that have overrun their part of the city.

It seems that Abnett liked many of the new Vervunhive characters too, because he comes up with a clever way of allowing many them to enlist with the Ghosts at the end. As well as being a turning-point in the regiment's story - after all, with new recruits they can replace their lost numbers, and have a better chance of winning themselves a world of their own, but at the same time bringing non-Tanithers (and women) into the regiment can't help but change the company's character - it's also a neat way of underlining that a particular phase of the series has concluded.

The Canary Says

The best way to read the Gaunt's Ghosts series is to buy the compilations. According to Abnett he didn't originally plan to have the series unfold in 3- or 4-book mini-plot arcs, but it just happened to pan out that way, but I have to say that the bringing together of these three novels (and the short story In Remembrance) in the compilation volume The Founding makes a lot of sense - I can see how the incorporation of ex-Vervunhive characters into the Ghosts could change the character of the books. In terms of guessing where the series is going to go next, it's difficult to say; I hope that we'll see a slight return of the sort of gung-ho adventure featured in the first two books, because as excellent as Necropolis is, an entire series in the same vein would be far too depressing.

That said, I am hoping that Abnett will get around to killing one of the major Ghosts at some point. So far he has entirely failed to do so; the only Ghosts who die in these three books are minor characters, frequently slain in the same chapter in which they are introduced. This can't go on for much longer, otherwise all tension will be sucked out of the series - and it'll be overrun by an ever-expanding cast (because I'm pretty sure a bunch of the Vervunhive characters are going to become major players). It is past time for a cull.

That's in the later books, though: for now, I'll say that The Founding is a damn good compilation, and if the series ended there I'd be entirely satisfied with it; it's certainly one of the few Warhammer 40,000 books I'd actually recommend to people who didn't have a prior interest in the franchise (the other one would of course be Eisenhorn.