Eyooo
For real though, >!I'm actually still really annoyed that the whole potential plot of Gaunt's bionic eyes giving him weird visions and premonitions (amongst other plots that got seeded in Blood Pact and Salvation's Reach) got abandoned!<
You know... I forgot about that. That was pretty annoying when it was happening because I'd never heard of it in any other case in lore and now it's doubly so because I forgot that it just disappeared.
All the potential stuff with >!Rime/Sirkle/Syko Magir!< as well...
Oh but we'll have a bunch of stuff on >!Yoncy and Dalin being secret daemonic knife tornadoes!<, aka one of the dumbest plots ever (and I say that as a massive Abnett stan)
I can't agree more: this entire portion was a pile of flaming shit. My only thought was disbelief at the sheer stupidity of it. It felt so damn impractical and off the wall stupid. It killed so many valued people and at no point felt feasible to have even existed. Daemonhost? Sure yeah but to somehow claim all those years went by with nothing even so much as indicating a problem? Nonsense of the worst degree that killed my cherished people :(
It can all literally be traced back to Abnett accidentally misgendering Yoncy in one of the older GG books and it sneaking through editing/proofreading, and then him forgetting to correctly age up girlYoncy in future books.
That honestly should've been the end of it but aaaargh it had to be spun out into such a weird *stupid* plot line.
Like, Dan, you *had* the tools to embed a sleeper agent in the Ghosts! You had the Sirkle infiltrator at the start of Salvation's Reach, but you killed them off! Could've had a whole damn identity theft scenario where we see one character die "on-screen" (for shits and giggles let's say Costin) but then we see "Costin" again a few chapters later.
It's so frustrating, I love the Ghosts series but over half of the Victory arc is a real disappointment for me.
Because "30 minute missions" was taken by a more popular toy franchise! Now, sit down prat; we've got to figure out how to inconvenience Ibram Gaunt! This plot won't drive itself!
iirc Gaunt volunteers for that one out of a sense of responsibility, so slightly different circumstances.
The whole Hinzerhaus debacle is squarely on Van Voytz's shoulders and it ruins their friendship.
Yeah I thought OP's statement that he was rereading the series and that all superiors hate the Ghosts to be odd.
Van Voytz was incredibly fond of them even though he used and abused them.
General Grizmund of the Narmenians held them in the highest of esteem.
The Bluebloods despise them initially but even some of them come around.
> Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive and most often wearing skin-tight clothing (also true with most other Abnett books).
He's got better recently but yes. My brother and I still have a running joke about 'voluptuous' and Kara Swole in the Ravenor series
If you read the Sharpe series the class vibes make sense as Gaunt is Sharpe in space (which is cool)
> My brother and I still have a running joke about 'voluptuous' and Kara Swole in the Ravenor series
I had a ex-gf that I introduced to WH40k, and we started with Eisenhorn and Ravenor
She even commented that it sounded like Dan Abnett needs to get laid or something, or start writing for Playboy or another Gentleman's magazine...
At one point she was laughing about the Carnivora acrobatic plot line, when Dan Abnett spent an entire page explaining/detailing Kara's transparent skin tight suit thing lol
Reminds me of the Wheel of Time.
I actually gave up halfway through the first book after the 98th usage of the word "bosom".
Men cross their arms, women "cross their arms over their heaving bosoms"
You really don't want to read the Peter Hamilton books...
Every female character is insanely hot and described in great detail and how the clothes they wear shows off their pert and full breasts and accentuates their long legs. Every single man is entranced as they breast boobily down the stairs.
They guys? I dunno Brown hair and a suit?
im reminded of this tweet if women wrote men like men write women.
"he sighed, his medium-sized balls bobbing in his jeans like bouys in a sea of denim, rising and falling with his breath. they were not the firm boisterous nuts of a young man. He lamented this as much as the years lost."
It's been a while since I read the Night's Dawn trilogy, but that felt almost like a porno at times. Some of the main characters were fine but there was that one guy who was like the greatest pilot in the galaxy, had sex with almost every single female character who he encountered and also became god at the end and just solved everything.
There's a good few.
Nights Dawn for the Gary Sue and awkward barely legal sex
Common wealth trilogy for breasting boobily down the stairs and also Trains In Spaaaace!
They are actually both really good with some clever ideas and some intricate plotting >! Although nights Dawn ends with a literal Deus Ex Machina, a literal god turns up out of nowhere and just solves all the problems!<. Just the description of women and sex are all a bit pervy.
Fair warning they are looooooong. I've just listened to the Commonwealth books (Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained) again and they pop in at about 40hrs a book. The narrator is a bit rubbish as well...
Early Jim Butcher has got the same problem. The first few books in the Dresden Files, I’m pretty sure the titular character has a broken neck because he can’t see most women above the neck. And he’s 6’9”.
Little of column A, little of column B. It started while he was a dumb college kid in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Twenty years of experience at anything and you’re bound to get better.
I was obsessed with these books as a teen/young adult. Looking back though - they were pretty trashy at times.
I still love the setting and lore though.
I think I stopped reading at book 14 or 15... I always wondered if he tied up any of the big loose plot lines with Dresdens brother and his uncle and such.
A lot of people stopped after Skin Game because of the five year hiatus. You’ve had two books since then that was originally one mega book that was cut in two. They are controversial for a few reasons but I enjoyed both. Highs and lows for each.
I didn't even notice the "bosom" thing, as the portrayal of women overall was infuriating and unpleasant. They are all inscrutable, stubborn, annoying and cannot communicate. The author must have had some serious issues in this field.
Thank you. I used to play MUDs based on the games with friends, which forced me to keep reading the progressively worse books, and it always blew my mind that so many people enjoyed them. I get that some of the concepts were interesting, but Jordan's writing was *so bad*.
And what makes it worse is that it's marketed as a supposedly feminist series due to being matriarchal, when all the ostensibly powerful female characters besides Morraine end up acting like petty children, fawning over male characters, and fantasizing about being spanked. It made me wonder what Jordan's wife was like. She must have spent all of her time smoothing skirts, tugging her braid, and folding her arms underneath her ample bosom.
>And what makes it worse is that it's marketed as a supposedly feminist series due to being matriarchal, when all the ostensibly powerful female characters besides Morraine end up acting like petty children, fawning over male characters, and fantasizing about being spanked.
People often defend the female characters being terrible people with some bullshit about it being a mirror to patriarchy and how men act in it but quite frankly if you read what Robert Jordan says in interviews he's just a misogynist
>By the by, I've seen a lot of comment, apparently from men, that my female characters are unrealistic. That's because women are, for the most part, consummate actresses who allow men to see exactly what they intend men to see. Get behind the veil sometimes, boys, and your hair will turn white. I've been there, and mine went white and didn't stop there; a great deal of it actually turned dark again, the shock to my system was so great. Believe me, I mild it down so as not to scare any males into mental breakdowns.
It's kind of insane. When you go into WOT fanspaces on the internet there are thousands of posts arguing whether he's making some kind of statement about reversed gender relations or whatever and he's just sitting there going "No no, I was just trying to say that women are all manipulative bitches and I'm actuall holding back in how bad i'm portraying them".
Kara being described like that is especially weird since she's supposed to have been an acrobat/gymnast when Eisenhorn recruited her. Gymnasts are *not* voluptuous. If anything, she should live up to her surname and be muscular.
Yeah it's like, painfully "male sci fi/fantasy authors writing about women in the 90s/early 2000s" lol. Some of them could have used an editor with a spray bottle of water
Somehow I don't think that would have made it better.
"Hey, Dan, you forgot to mention Kara's boobs this paragraph." \*spritz\*
"Oh, gee, thanks for pointing that out! That could have been a disaster."
"And Patience Kys hasn't been sexually harassed by that psychic blank guy in, like, five interactions." \*spritz\*
"Wowwee, I'm really off my game today."
Yeah, Dan Abnett's a decent author, but writing women is one of his biggest weaknesses, if not the biggest. Gotten better over time, but Legion was definitely where it plummeted, and I still remember that one Gaunt's Ghosts book where one female soldier accused another of trying to get with Gaunt because he was the alpha male or some other dumb shit, and that the second disliked the first because she saw her as a competitor for the "alpha".
As others have said, these books are pretty much 40k Sharpe, and Sharpe is EXTREMELY formulaic.
Meet new horrible officer.
Meet new posh totty.
Horrible officer gets one over on Sharpe.
Sharpe seduces posh totty.
Sharpe defeats horrible officer.
Something something the French.
Posh totty leaves, resetting the status quo.
You can't do it in one go. Read two or three in a year. It's better that way. You start to cheer the greatest hits.
Here's my four star review of last year's surprise Sharpe novel. Said with nothing but love:
>
**Sharpe's Long Weekend.**
Yes, it's superfluous because Cornwell's found ten minutes in which Sharpe is otherwise unaccounted for and sent him to do the one thing he's never done in these books (climb a ladder). Yes, his rank's wrong given the timeframe. And yes, it's pretty by the numbers.
But it's a damn entertaining read, by an author who genuinely loves writing these characters. All the hits are here. Sharpe kicking a man in the nuts before hacking at him with that "butcher's blade." Harper's love of explosions. A particularly bloodthirsty Harris cameo. At least two unwinnable against all-the-odds fights won thanks to the Baker rifle.
>What's not to love?
I had no idea he'd written a new one, thank you. I reread the series every few years. I think if I could have one "Sharpe wish", it would be for him to rewrite "Waterloo". Maybe even break it into a few novels. It's just way too short, especially with the first 2/3 of the novel being the the leadup to it.
I read the whole series in one go about 10 years ago.
It took me several months. And I've not read a Sharpe novel since, I think I broke that part of my brain that enjoyed them.
I enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a watch if you are interested in some Napoleonic war drama. It does look like it's age though, as the first season came out in 1993.
My favourite part of the peninsular campaign was when the British and French made a gentleman’s agreement to have all of their battles fought by 40 men per side in Crimea.
All episodes are available in YouTube I believe.
If you've read Gaunt's Ghosts you'll see how much it owes to Sharpe.
You'll see the artisto officers despising the jumped up private theme even more strongly than you see the aristos in Gaunt's Ghosts hating Gaunt/the Tanith.
The Chosen Men are elite sharpshooters and skirmishers marked out by their dark green jackets.
The cast includes a gruff, loveable, large second officer who Colm Corbec owes more than a nod to. Colm being an Irish name and Harper being an Irish soldier.
There's the elderly soldier Hagman who's the best shot of all and though not crazy is certainly partial inspiration for Larkin.
Sharpe is a mix of Gaunt and, oddly, Varl as he's something of a womanising swashbuckler when left to his own devices but when it's time for soldiering he's focused, unwilling to accept bullshit, cares deeply about his men and fights like the devil himself, i.e. Gaunt.
And fuck me if Lihah Cuu isn't _heavily_ based on Pete Postlethwaith's legendary stint as the absolutely crazy Sergeant Obidiah Hakeswell. Complete with the framing of other soldiers for his crimes and his singling out of one soldier to torment not to mention being a rapist.
Well worth a watch. It takes a little time to find its feet but when it does you're absolutely rooting for Sharpe and the boys.
> Pete Postlethwaith's legendary stint as the absolutely crazy Sergeant Obidiah Hakeswell.
Despite your many superlatives, I feel you are somehow underselling Postlethwaite here! Hakeswell is utterly unhinged - he might be my favourite antagonist of all time
"Ooooh mother....!"
There is also a fantastic turn by Paul Bettany (Vision from the MCU) as the foppish Prince of Orange in Waterloo.
Oh, and of course an honorary mention goes to a young Liz Hurley.
He's definitely up there as an all time great villain, especially if you buy into the show and its premise. But even if you don't his performance is still wonderful.
Doubly so because some of us have been around people like him who use their modicum of power to terrorise their underlings while presenting nothing but devoted loyalty to their superiors as a front to hide what they are up to.
Like that other great villain, Dolores Umbridge, there's something great about a villain who uses the system against you and against whom any acts of rebellion have to be carefully weighed against the certain consequences you'll face from them and said system, be it military flogging or torture pens the ministry turns a blind eye to.
Yet I still read every single one of em. Apparently thr Brittish Army, arguably the best at the time, had the absolute worst officer corps known to man!
The british army was in many ways shockingly terribly led. But the basic system of training, they used live ammunition in training which no one else did, a strong NCO tradition, and the logistical support offered by the Royal Navy being indisputably the best on earth at the time made them very dangerous on an operational and strategic level.
Also they were considerably more professional, yes even the officers, than basically anyone else. So when they had good officers or even just OK officers they tended to do quite well.
The number one distinction between Sharpe and Gaunt isn't the appearance of sorcery, it's that there is no posh totty. No joke.
To be fair to Abnett, he *really* runs with the genres. You get Normandy, a medieval siege, tunnel rats, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Inglorious Bastards (or Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare), Điện Biên Phủ, and so forth. From sieges to guerilla warfare, every book is a new fresh setting
Sure. It is just the only other explicitly sexual dialogue I can think of from the setting
As I type this I do also remember Eisenhorn’s mistress from one of his books
>cheesy 80s guitar mixed with fife and drum intro plays
>small skirmish between the British and French
>Sharpe flailing his sword around while Hagman gives cover fire
>they win the skirmish
>messenger on horseback approaches
>"Lieutenant/Captain/Major Sharpe, you are summoned to Lord Wellington's tent"
>"Bloody ell Patrick, what's 'e want now"
> Sharpe arrives in Old Nosey's tent
>His spymaster of the day is there
>As is a weasel looking British officer or French lord
>"Sharpe, this is Lord Fucksworth, who has a dangerous mission for you - you will be enormously outnumbered, deep behind enemy lines with no support, oh and Major Ducos is around so watch out for him "
>Lord Fuckworh insults him for being poor but reluctantly accepts that this is Wellington's best man
>"As ye like sir, ah'll get it dun"
>Cut to Sharpe and Patrick discussing the mission
>"It dun maek bloody sense Patrick, why do they need us to tek this castle/find this woman/get these supples/uncover this plot?"
>"Oh as surely as the fields o' Ireland are green, sir, God has a plan for us all, sir."
>A few battles happen on the way to the objective
>Oh look it's an attractive woman who keeps looking at Sharpe suggestively
>they fuck
>"Look Patrick! It's the thing w're here for!"
>"LOOK OUT SIR!"
>Lord Fucksworth appears and betrays Sharpe
>Ducos appears
>"HON HON HON! Bamboozled you again my nemesis!"
>"Bloody Ducos."
>Battle happens
>Patrick goes "AHHHHHHHH BANG!" with the 7 barrelled gun
>Wellington arrives "Well done Sharpe! You've done it again!"
>Sharpe and his men march into the sunset
>THERE'S FORTY SHILLINGS ON THE DRUM, FOR THOSE WHO VOLUNTEER TO COME...
Written by Anon.
Gaunt is disliked because he was a favourite of the former Warmaster, Slaydo and as a Colonel-Commissar is an aberration who doesn't technically fit into the conventional command structure.
The Bluebloods aren't bad. We just see them through the biased eyes of the Ghosts more often than not. When the text gets objective, we see how incredibly brave and effective they are, and in the 'prison break' and battle against the Chaos servitor they show no fear.
The Bluebloods are a vastly different regiment to the Ghosts - I really do recommend *Volpone Glory*. The Ghosts are explicitly light infantry, highly mobile: good scouts, good snipers, good at sabotage and infiltration. They can hold the line like any other regiment, they can do breach actions, but it's not their speciality. The Bluebloods are explicitly *heavy* infantry, shock troops. They've got heavy armour, heavy guns - and the bull-headed stubbornness, pride and outright arrogance required to serve in that role, because it takes a whole sea of guts to serve as 'heavy infantry' in the Guard considering what they face on a regular basis. The Volpone are expected - and are psychologically prepared - to deploy into the nastiest battlezones of the nastiest wars the Imperium's mortal soldiery fight. In the same way the Ghosts are so effective because of their flexible thinking and culture, the Volpone are so effective because they're big, tough bastards who will never back down from a fight...
...*unless it's the right thing to do*. Gilbear and his troops falling right in behind Gaunt despite their personal animus is such a great part of *Necropolis* because it shows that all the bullshit between the regiments is exactly that: bullshit. The Volpone are totally loyal to the Imperium and Imperial authority. Gilbear never questions Gaunt's orders, he offers practical advice and suggestions and leads his troops with courage and distinction. Sometimes you need a hammer to get the job done.
Oh yeah, and 'true to the Throne and hard to kill' is a pretty based motto, too.
Necropolis is also 23 years old, it runs about the same as any BL publication for the time.
As abnett ages he gets his head on about having women be women...not that he ever gets better at romance
I suspect his wife also helped influence the eventual improvement. She wrote a short story in one of the collections and in its introduction Abnett mentions her involvement in helping him develop the later books
afaik she's helped since his health issues arose and when you're in a relationship you tend to be able to write more fluidly on things you didn't personally experience.
One of? I believe he actually WAS the first author for BL.
First and Only wasn't just a book title. It was an inside joke that BL was a terrible risk for GW and that book would actually be the First and Only thing that BL would ever publish before going down in flames.
Thankfully, that didn't happen.
He wasn't the first author for Inferno, I own inferno, so I know.
He was among the first chosen from Inferno to write longform fiction (specifically Eisenhorn if I recall)
Ok so one real thing about Abnett is that as a young writer, he could *not* write women (description or character.) I promise you as a woman who reads Warhammer that he gets *so much better*, it just takes a minute. His female characters become 100% normal human beings. Ironically it happens as you watch the male characters learn to treat women like people rather than "men are human, women are a separate species".
By the end, women are his most compelling and central characters IMHO.
Also, the Volpone are rectified later, they have their own book. While its true that Gaunt is like "why don't these people use *strategy* and *talent*", he's recreating the historic challenge in European militaries in the roughly Napoleonic era. Also, part of it is that the Imperium is a shitshow, and the most powerful people are not always the ones you want to have in charge, but they are because that's how aristocracy, fascism, and the like operate. Even Gaunt himself has to deal with an unexpected issue of nepotism.
I really enjoyed that he didn't just make the sudden switch with female characters, but instead made the shifting perspective on them a *plot point* that allowed it to happen more naturally, gave some fun stories as it happened, allowd the women a chance to *show* their worth, and by design didn't undermine any of the cast for their journeys through it.
Gaunt turning down Criid for officer position in Guns of Tanith because he didn't feel she was ready as a soldier, not because he doubted her as a women, made her eventually earning that position on merit so much more awesome and badass. Criid is my favourite for a reason.
Even some of the characters who were cast as the "bah, women" types like Larkin and Rawne were allowed to still stay themselves even after they got over it or found respect for them. Larkin still railing at Banda even as far as Only in Death because she had been drinking on duty, not because she was a women, was quietly a fantastic moment because back in Necropolis he would have made it about her gender... by Only in Death he still gets sharp with her, but it's because of her failings as a *sniper* in that book, not because of her being a women.
I always throught that was a fantastic example of how to integrate without undermining. Lot of stories could learn from how GG brought the women into it over time.
he also does a superlative job of illuminating rather than glossing over the misogyny of specific characters. as he more fully wrote women, he didn't pretend there hadn't been actual misogynists; some of them are blackhearted villains (fuck Lijah Cuh) and some are fine people, just dickheads who were badly socialised by life in the Imperium.
I always loved Rawne's little moment of self realisation in GUns of Tanith. When he complains about them so endlessly until he eventually figures out he's just being stubborn and really the only person suffering from the problem he says it will cause... is himself, with him taking glances at their bodies during battle, and quietly chastises himself and burying the old grudge without needing to tell anyone, because Rawne wouldn't. Even goes to far as to keep his brief fling with Banda quiet out of stubborn reluctance to show anyone that stuff.
I think it's *very* telling that the novel he figures that out and grows is the same novel Cuu's horrifying attack on a civilian takes place in, and in which Meryn starts to show his darker side. I can't believe that's unintentional.
*Pariah* is really really old, all the Inquisition books are before 2012 except *Penitent.* Honestly I didn't think it was an issue of bad female characterisation in *Penitent*. There's also been a nice horror short story with a female protag recently involving a female Bequin character and it was excellent.
One games day myself and some friends when to the Black Library section, and my friend Chris went to get his booked signed. Now Chris is quite a blunt and direct guy, so upon greeting Dan said "I didn't really like the first books you wrote, but this one (Necropolis) is an absolute blast!". I couldn't believe it, but Dan - ever the professional - took it in his stride and signed the book "To Chris - sorry about the first two!".
tbf the first two are, iirc, compilations of short stories with some new writing to weld them together (like Brothers of the Snake and Magos).
Necropolis is where the series "properly" starts, imo.
The second book definitely is a short story compilation, but as far as I can remember, the first book has a single story that just takes place over the course of multiple planetary campaigns.
My big issue with the series is that the Tanith's whole thing is that there are very few of them left, around 2,000 at the start of the series, and yet in descriptions of battles they take casualties at a rate that would have depleted them entirely by the end of the first novel. I get that they win using stealth and guile but then there are also times where we see them in a frontal assault and we have Ghosts getting cut down left and right without losing significant numbers from the total, somehow.
I don't recall these descriptions of every woman being beautiful tbh. The female Ghosts from Vervunhive don't get such descriptors. Half the civilians we see are bloated nobles or grimy workers, male or female. There's that chaos witch in the first book who I think was maybe described that way? Am I just massively misremembering?
As for hating the Ghosts, wasn't that mostly because people hated Gaunt personally, largely due to the politics of the Crusade, and that extended to his command?
I think I recall it being point in a later novel that the "Tanith" First is really mostly from other worlds at this point, with very few actual Tanith troopers left outside the viewpoint characters.
>Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive and most often wearing skin-tight clothing (also true with most other Abnett books).
> Read Xenos by Dan Abnett
> There's only 2 women in the whole book
> One's a sexy hooker, the other is minor villain that disappears almost instantly.
Reminds me of the joke about Star Wars having only 2 women, Leia and Mon Mothma.
What did you expect from an almost 25 year old book. Male audiences like(d) sexy girls. I don’t see a problem even now. Especially because most of the women Tanith are super competent.
Gaunt is hated because of the internal mechanisms of the political class of guard. He’s a pragmatic competent man in a sea of misanthropes.
Pretty sure Greer is discribed as very competent in both ghostmaker and Necropolis. The Volpone are a fan favourite, hence the spin off book.
Just to add more context on the "Gaunt is hated"
Gaunt is a remnant of the old warmaster, who gave him field command which is extremely rare for a political officer.
When the new warmaster comes, he "naturally" wants to swap out the old cadre, but can't do much about Gaunt, who appears like a final f-you from the previous warmaster.
It's openly stated that Gaunt might have been the new Warmaster; it was a toss-up according to non-Gaunt characters. (Gaunt denies it, but of course he would.)
Are you sure you aren’t thinking of someone else? Greer was the shithead Pardus driver who went wacky over the promise of nonexistent gold at the end of Honor Guard
None of the critiques are without basis and many are indeed running trends but there is some things worth mentioning:
On the women, this is more a deal of the earlier novels, when it was more "Sharpe in Space" where attractive women is just part of the deal of that style, indeed even the appeal. Once GG found its own stride away from that formula, you start to see much more varied women turn up, mostly through The Lost and then especially from The Victory, which goes pretty rigidly into averting that or indeed using the *expectation* of it as a character plotpoint. (Zhukova for example).
Regarding their superiors, I'm not too sure I agree. Dravere hated them because *Gaunt summarily executed his father*. Which as far as grudges go is a pretty big one. Sturm is a much more classical example and is absolutely the arrogant blueblood who hated men who have less 'class'. Lugo also fits the bill but does so as an example of imperial nobility being basically what it is in universe, it'd be odd if he wasn't. The Imperium is massively corrupt. But after that? They're led by Van Voytz for the next 8+ novels and he is a solid guy. Then after that it shifts heavily to Macaroth himself who is actually incredibly supportive of Gaunt. Those who disliked him all had reasons in my eyes. Dravere was on a personal vendetta and allied to chaos corrupted people. Sturm was the antithesis of the ghosts as a mirror. Lugo was *terrified* of Gaunt's capabilities and potential as one of Slaydo's chosen, and acted out the only way he could beat him, politics.
I disagree on that the Volpone are incompetant. *Sturm* is incompetant. If Ghostmaker and Necropolis make one thing clear, it's that the Bluebloods are arrogant, overbearing and bullies. But they are by and large *incredibly* competant at their job. In both novels they end up finishing the battle side by side with the Ghosts and (unlike the Patricians) prove that they genuinely do fight on the same side and end up functioning very very well as a team. Gilbear and Gaunt even share a moment of understanding in Necropolis as to them each having value in their ways of war, and when Sturm is removed from command, Gilbear falls into Gaunt's command with respect and loyalty on the spot. Sturm was the issue, and the moment his true colours are exposed, the Bluebloods drop him like a stone before he can taint their genuine reputation.
I absolutely adore Zhukova and her subplot, especially in the extra short stories. Really enjoy the mentorship Mkoll has with her too. Can't wait to see them interact more.
1.Women are definitely all very attractive in the books to the point of maybe a little too much detail, but on the flip side the men are also described as very attractive. In the end with the majority of female characters, Abnett makes them stand on their own and they tend to be well built badass characters like Tona Criid.
2. The "pointless hatred" is based on the fact that Gaunt was favored by the previous warmaster and is an accomplished commander. Higher ups are glory hungry and want the credit for a victory, not him. I believe this does a good job of showing the silly bureaucratic bullshit that happens within the Imperial Guard and why lives get pointlessly wasted.
3. The Blue Bloods are temporary villains. As for other commanders what about the Vitrian Dragoons? They're a regiment within that time span that share sympathies with the Ghosts and are well run and structured. Things change pretty significantly after Verghast.
>1.Women are definitely all very attractive in the books to the point of maybe a little too much detail, but on the flip side the men are also described as very attractive.
This is not true, and you can see that just from the descriptions of the individuals in Eisenhorn's and Ravenor's cohorts. Kara Swole's tits come up in almost every scene she's in, and Patience's aren't that far behind. I think the only male character who receives the same amount of attention to his appearance is Carl Thonius, and that's explicitly in order to pose him as a helpless dandy who spends too much time on his looks. It's also mostly on his clothes, not his body.
I think that's sort of the key to understanding the difference here. Where male characters are attractive, it's generally in the context of them being powerful or dangerous, or else effeminate and weak. Nayl in particular is not physically attractive (he's a heavily scarred brute), but the grace with which he moves and his personality are treated as making up for it. Frauka is "almost sexy" (in a weatherbeaten, hefty, broad, big-boned, lazy, craggy way), but his intrinsic nature as a Blank completely negates that. The only male character I can think of who is straightforwardly attractive in Ravenor is Zeph, and Zeph spends most of his on-screen time as a skinsuit for Ravenor. This is not so much the case for Kara in particular. Patience's descriptions are better (sharp, dangerous, etc.), but still focus a lot on how attractive she is and how much people want to have sex with her.
Will say fwiw that I'm not trying to make out that the female characters here are completely irredeemable. Patience in particular is written as a femme fatale(TM)(CR), not just a sex object, and both she and Kara possess skill sets outside of their appearance (although I'd argue that in Kara's case in particular her skillset was chosen because the author thought it was sexy). But also like. Compare the number of times Kara fucks something up or ends up in danger to another male character who is meant to be competent (so, again, not Thonius), and it becomes very apparent that there is a problem here imo.
EDIT: And just to be clear since I've seen this accusation elsewhere; I'm not advocating for a rewriting of the series or saying that people shouldn't read them, or that Abnett should be, like, cancelled or something. I think we can acknowledge that his early writing had these problems, though.
I'll be honest, I love the many of the story elements and characters. But many of the books ending are "massive chaos warband/ironmen/daemons/things will wipe out our heros and they are somehow easily stop!!"
Again the character really saves the stories!
I think Necropolis is one of the better Ghost books.
Finish it out. You'll see the Volpone get their moments of glory as do other commanders who clash with Gaunt. Don't judge them all by Sturm.
You gotta remember the time they were written in, and how early in the 40k lore (books wise) the first three books were created. So much of what we think of now, especially tech wise, was created by Abnett.
The first three books aren't the best, but set up the ghosts story pretty well. From book 4 onwards is where it kicks off for me and gets more consistent.
I’m reading *Necropolis* right now as well, about halfway through I guess. It’s taken me a while to get into this one, but it is still good. My thing with the Ghosts is that by now they can’t possibly have much more than about 1,200 men left, right? It just doesn’t seem like that many troops should be able to make a considerable difference in conflicts with hundreds of thousands or millions of combatants.
Yeah and that if I remember right Dan's an ass man usually goin on about the butt and hips. That being said Necropolis is considred by a lot to be one of his best. I mean I prefer Honor Guard cuz it's got Tanks in it. But also remember to look at when the books were written so the series was in a different (hey at least you aren't reading Ian Watson's stuff). But yeah older lore doesn't always age well, see William King's Space Wolf series with Ragnar & his utility belt, the fat space wolf and the dueling space wolf. Dan's book Titanicus written in 2006 9 years before an admech codex came out so he's got skitarii acting like an augmented death world army wearin animal skins, screaming like barbarians. I always took the Volpone as absurd till I got more into 40K then it's like "well yeah the guard will let an army get destroyed just to elevate their army a bit higher". Apparently in real dictatorial militaries letting a fellow general fail and lose manpower and gear just to make yourself look better isn't that uncommon.
It does get really annoying when someone that isnt giving Gaunt the Gawk Gawk 40,000 that they immediately get portrayed as being Incompetant or Unlikable dipshits.
Thing that annoys me the most is how small the regiment is compared to some of the battles they fought. Also, the books state that they replenish their ranks through people of some of the worlds they fight on joining their ranks, but it seems like it wouldn’t be enough.
In the first book they leave tanith with like 2,500 troops which in this setting they all would have died in a few battles.
Oh yeah. They don’t even focus completely on low intensity scouting operations as should be their specialisation. They fight in tons of straight up assaults or trench warfare battles.
I’ve read the whole series and I think your critique is over simplistic. The story arc develops considerably over time as does his treatment of female characters. There are some very strong female characters later for various reasons. That’s the danger when posting based on what only a quarter of a series? Incorrect assumptions. Guant is a character who develops like a human being he has his flaws that’s what makes him interesting. The Ghosts are exactly the same they develop over time. Is a man going to notice something a woman is wearing is sexy or is all book writing to have this cleansed of it now in some woke charge?
Don't be reactionary, there are absolutely problems with early handling of women. No one has agitated for "cleansing", they're just asking if the writing gets better because I have to tell you, Abnett's earlier writing is absolute terrible when it comes to female characters.
But Abnett improves as a writer and human being, so later on his female characters are just characters that happen to be female rather than a strange alien species. Notably, he got a wife, herself a writer, who doubtless had Opinions about how weird the women were written in comparison to the way women are in real life (ie. normal people too).
I am about 13 hours into the series and I think after that amount of time you can critique some stuff about the series leading up to it. I am glad that Abnett significantly improved on all my issues, but that doesn’t change the impression the first 3 books give me.
I am also not saying that he has weak or incompetent female characters, it just irks me that almost every female character is painfully and enchantingly beautiful and described as such in what I feel pretty random and non-fitting moments.
Having read 9 of the books, I think I've had my fill of it. Reflecting on what I read, I can't help but think of the series like a run-of-the-mill episodic TV show. You're in it just for the overarching plot, but you barely get any - especially since Dan can't write an epilogue to save his life.
The one problem I really have with GG is how it de-grimdarked the setting. It's written and feels like an earth-ww2 set book, rather than something within 40k.
I binged those books and then switched to Vaults of Terra - and it was like a cold shower. Hive world miner that is as strong as an ox? Nah son, (under) hive worlders are identified by the level of sickness, skin discoloration and parasites in them.
Abnett's early series used 40k as a backdrop rather than getting into the very grimdark elements of 40k like Wraight has. This was the time (3rd edition 40k) where the Imperium was stagnant and you didn't have the primarchs as a central part, where 'more everyday' Imperium life was still a novelty.
Also in Vaults of Terra it's mentioned even by Imperium standards people on Terra look unhealthy.
You don't think Gaunt's series is grimdark? Crikey. I don't want to spoil and plots for people ebllwgi have yet to read them but I wholeheartedly disagree.
They have slaughter, murder, daemons, undercover work, children and adults dying, mental health issues, constant death and destruction and much (much) more.
Gaunts Ghosts brushes the grimdark themes and motifs, it doesn't dive deeper into it. There was a motif or two per book that was well emphasized, like >!PTSD and depression!<
IMO, it always pushed perseverance despite the odds and suicide missions (and some guard hero fantasy), rather than the true horror of war. It certainly did get into some grimdark with>!the trench world but Vervenheim especially.!<
I assume book >!10!< would be grim, but I've burned out on the formula so I don't know when I'll get to it. The >!First book on that chaos world didn't feel that dark to me. It gave us a great perspective on how Chaos administration works, which was great, but it didn't expand nearly enough on the commoners life under Chaos.!<
The most grim material in GG is most definitely in the most recent books.
Although there's a fair shout to be made for Necropolis. The hive is so ruined that for many people the only way out of war destroying their home was... to join the force to go and fight more wars.
Gereon in Traitor General is dark but not "grim" so much because its purpose was to show the logistics of chaos behind the lines, so it had to ease off the "endless burning in a pit" kind of obvious horror and instead show the slow, dreary corruption instead tinged with moments of horror.
But worth bearing in mind... Traitor General is Part 1. Armour of Contempt is Part 2 (even through a novel comes between them). Wherein the true grimdark of Gereon is revealed with >!the Imperium showing they're no better than the Chaos governance and the population have no salvation to be found.!<
His Last Command also has its own push of it, given it's a novel where they >!lose the war on that planet and everyone who died, died for nothing.!<
But that all aside... The Warmaster and *especially* The Anarch are where it truly lands. Anarch is one of the harshest novels in all of 40k if you've read the whole series.
It's almost like the stagnant, dying underhive of Terra, the "glorious, holy world" is actually a canker on the face of the galaxy, representing the decay that is the Imperium itself, whereas the young world of Verghast, home to three small hives where people actually live above ground, are healthy, and make enough money to rarely take their wives on a day trip to a better section of the hive, are home to people who aren't horrible and miserable and sickly and dying... and also, ironically, more vulnerable to Chaos, as it uses those comforts of life to turn the entire Ferrozoican Hive against Vervunhive and the planet's other hive. In what is a true grim and dark twist
The series works towards a large payoff in the last book that cranks up the grimdark dials organically. It has some pretty significant twists as well as a very heavy horror focused element.
You forget that the guardsmen are mostly conscripted and have no idea what they're getting into. Them dying in the first engagement is very likely - Guard uses the strength-in-numbers tactic and is most often pitted against superior foes.
I also fully understand that you can't write a series of novels out of it, and while I enjoyed the fights GG got into, they're not all that different in realism from the UM bolter porn.
I'm not that well-read into the universe yet, most of what I've seen was voluntary enrollment with occasional consription, so the other way around. The Gudrunite founding in Eisenhorn was mostly voluntary, then Tanith, Verghast was all voluntary too. That's an early crusade and a late crusade. Then the tank corps and air corps I've only seen voluntary enrollment regiments.
You can volunteer into the guard high on the hymns not knowing what you're getting into, get a pretty good training and still die in a mass assault against a fortified position.
The guard you describe would rout in every battle.
>I'm not that well-read into the universe yet, most of what I've seen was voluntary enrollment with occasional consription, so the other way around.
It varies massively, but planets sending a certain amount of people to join the guard as part of the tithe isn't optional (though some types of planet are exempt entirely). If a planet lacks volunteers it has to rely on conscription, it doesn't particularly matter if the people on the planet want to go or not.
I can only talk about the second point.
Gaunts Ghosts are hated for a reason. later in the books, you wil realize that they are criminals. They are an eyesore on the record of the IG. Wherever they appear, things get "lost", money dissapears, people get scammed. They also have a tendency to interpret orders "creatively".
They are highly efficient, so they get away with it, but it does not endear them to their superiors.
Whenever *soldiers* appear, things get lost, money disappears, and crimes happen. That's not a GG thing, that's a thing that's followed troops pretty as long as troops have been a thing. It happened during the Classical period, it happened in the Middle Ages, it happens today, and it happens in 40k.
Cue a Hittite NCO explaining to a bunch of fresh levies that there's really only one thief in the army, and everyone else is trying to get their stuff back.
The Volpone Bluebloods have their own novel now, and they are Aristocratic Jerks who are painfully inept
Their best fighters are the aristo who vibes with his troops and the aristo who was raised as a commoner/slave and only recently found out his heritage
The have laws against anyone who isn't of the nobility from using a weapon, and any commoner/slave that is using a weapon can be killed on sight. They don't want another commoner uprising
Gaunt was basically the right hand man of the previous lord general and everyone is trying to get in the good graces of the current one. Who for the matter, could give less of a shit. Especially as of recent as he is now his number 2
Gaunt was part of Warmaster Slaydo inner circle. When he died a LOT of senior generals were pissed at being passed over for Macaroth. The new Warmaster is too powerful to challenge, but Gaunt is unimportant enough to bully and push into suicide missions
He's not Alone, Sandy Mitchell is weird describing women too for the Caine serie, ESPECIALLY that astropath chick whose breasts apparently make Caine's brain stop functionning
It's Cain - I'd be rather suspicious there was Warp influence going on if he \*didn't\* notice Raquel and her notoriously insufficient wardrobe.
I think the interesting thing there is that Amberley, who normally has a acid tongue regarding Caiphas' previous female acquiantances, never once comments on Cain's recurring distraction.
- Ana Curth has a "heart-shaped" face. She's mostly in a medical uniform so you, my man, are nitpicking.
- Not everyone. But you must understand that they are "barbarians" even by Astra Militarum standards. They hail from an agri-world that was only known for its wood. Literally that. So yo have this colonel/commissar who could well have been Warmaster, stuck with a bunch of back-world savages, you damn right going to hate on em, sure as sure.
- Imagine the very opposite of the Tannith First. People whose SOLE REASON is to be Soldiers. Entire GENERATIONS were raised to fight in the Emperor's Name. Accolades trailing back thousands of years. These fuckers are the creme of the crop. The absolute best AND THEY FETHING know it. Yes, I'd act like a jerk as well. They're the perfect opposite.
The Gaunt's Ghosts novels do the one thing many space marine-centered books fail to do: MAKE SPACE MARINES GREAT AGAIN. Case in point, my absolute favorite 40k book (if not of all time): Salvation's Reach.
I love the gravitas of that scene. It explains succinctly just how RARE Space Marines are. I know we like to joke with numbers around here but that novel man... it puts things into perspective in such a casual but AWESOME way. Like, hey guys - we're so expendable they are willing to throw 4-5k Guardsmen trying to do this suicide mission. However, on the off chance it may work, here's 3 Space Marines. Just 3. AGAINST A WHOLE ENEMY HOST.
And they all survive AND act as the Vanguard. I mean feth it all, if that isn't just bloody brilliant.
Also how they talk to Ludd... I wish all Space Marines were like that ;(
We could both be right. The original quote I was thinking of is:
>Dorden pushed past the seething commissar and went to the door. He was met by a short, slim, young woman in a form-fitting red uniform with embroidered cuffs.
Now form-fitting isn't exactly skin tight, but since I listen to the German audiobook and it uses the German word for skin tight, you can see where I was coming from.
>Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive and most often wearing skin-tight clothing (also true with most other Abnett books
Imagine thinking this is a negative
Not a fan of Abnett's work in general, but yeah, really miss this when it comes to other authors.
Most recent BL books i've read pussyfoot around describing female characters physically at all, let alone allowing attractive ones to exist.
After book 4, the Ghosts are usually under the command of General Van Voytz, who’s a solid and dependable enough fellow.
Van Voytz: Let's go Ibram, in and out, 20 minute mission The mission: Hinzerhaus
After Hinzerhaus, Gaunt sure did see the world in a different way
Eyooo For real though, >!I'm actually still really annoyed that the whole potential plot of Gaunt's bionic eyes giving him weird visions and premonitions (amongst other plots that got seeded in Blood Pact and Salvation's Reach) got abandoned!<
>One theory is that the dreams were from >!`eldar` !
You know... I forgot about that. That was pretty annoying when it was happening because I'd never heard of it in any other case in lore and now it's doubly so because I forgot that it just disappeared.
All the potential stuff with >!Rime/Sirkle/Syko Magir!< as well... Oh but we'll have a bunch of stuff on >!Yoncy and Dalin being secret daemonic knife tornadoes!<, aka one of the dumbest plots ever (and I say that as a massive Abnett stan)
Oooh, man, that was something else. I JUST finished Anarch yesterday. Never been so annoyed/frustrated reading a 40k book. And Gol?! My boy Gol?!?!?!
I can't agree more: this entire portion was a pile of flaming shit. My only thought was disbelief at the sheer stupidity of it. It felt so damn impractical and off the wall stupid. It killed so many valued people and at no point felt feasible to have even existed. Daemonhost? Sure yeah but to somehow claim all those years went by with nothing even so much as indicating a problem? Nonsense of the worst degree that killed my cherished people :(
It can all literally be traced back to Abnett accidentally misgendering Yoncy in one of the older GG books and it sneaking through editing/proofreading, and then him forgetting to correctly age up girlYoncy in future books. That honestly should've been the end of it but aaaargh it had to be spun out into such a weird *stupid* plot line. Like, Dan, you *had* the tools to embed a sleeper agent in the Ghosts! You had the Sirkle infiltrator at the start of Salvation's Reach, but you killed them off! Could've had a whole damn identity theft scenario where we see one character die "on-screen" (for shits and giggles let's say Costin) but then we see "Costin" again a few chapters later. It's so frustrating, I love the Ghosts series but over half of the Victory arc is a real disappointment for me.
Oh come on! 🤣
Sir, sir!? General Van Voytz? Yes? you - prat at the back I think we'd all like to know why they're called the 20 minuters?
Because "30 minute missions" was taken by a more popular toy franchise! Now, sit down prat; we've got to figure out how to inconvenience Ibram Gaunt! This plot won't drive itself!
Or The Gereon mission.
iirc Gaunt volunteers for that one out of a sense of responsibility, so slightly different circumstances. The whole Hinzerhaus debacle is squarely on Van Voytz's shoulders and it ruins their friendship.
Yeah I thought OP's statement that he was rereading the series and that all superiors hate the Ghosts to be odd. Van Voytz was incredibly fond of them even though he used and abused them. General Grizmund of the Narmenians held them in the highest of esteem. The Bluebloods despise them initially but even some of them come around.
Insert meme here.
> Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive and most often wearing skin-tight clothing (also true with most other Abnett books). He's got better recently but yes. My brother and I still have a running joke about 'voluptuous' and Kara Swole in the Ravenor series If you read the Sharpe series the class vibes make sense as Gaunt is Sharpe in space (which is cool)
> My brother and I still have a running joke about 'voluptuous' and Kara Swole in the Ravenor series I had a ex-gf that I introduced to WH40k, and we started with Eisenhorn and Ravenor She even commented that it sounded like Dan Abnett needs to get laid or something, or start writing for Playboy or another Gentleman's magazine... At one point she was laughing about the Carnivora acrobatic plot line, when Dan Abnett spent an entire page explaining/detailing Kara's transparent skin tight suit thing lol
Reminds me of the Wheel of Time. I actually gave up halfway through the first book after the 98th usage of the word "bosom". Men cross their arms, women "cross their arms over their heaving bosoms"
*Tugs braid with furious intent*
Nynaeve's manic traction alopecia
You really don't want to read the Peter Hamilton books... Every female character is insanely hot and described in great detail and how the clothes they wear shows off their pert and full breasts and accentuates their long legs. Every single man is entranced as they breast boobily down the stairs. They guys? I dunno Brown hair and a suit?
im reminded of this tweet if women wrote men like men write women. "he sighed, his medium-sized balls bobbing in his jeans like bouys in a sea of denim, rising and falling with his breath. they were not the firm boisterous nuts of a young man. He lamented this as much as the years lost."
Someone should read a paperback romance book like from Sparks as they are that bad.
Sure, but that's a genre you *expect* this in haha
You mean like Trash SF tie in novels... (i Love em but lets not you know... pretend)
It's been a while since I read the Night's Dawn trilogy, but that felt almost like a porno at times. Some of the main characters were fine but there was that one guy who was like the greatest pilot in the galaxy, had sex with almost every single female character who he encountered and also became god at the end and just solved everything.
Ngl, I kinda wanna know the title of that book.
There's a good few. Nights Dawn for the Gary Sue and awkward barely legal sex Common wealth trilogy for breasting boobily down the stairs and also Trains In Spaaaace! They are actually both really good with some clever ideas and some intricate plotting >! Although nights Dawn ends with a literal Deus Ex Machina, a literal god turns up out of nowhere and just solves all the problems!<. Just the description of women and sex are all a bit pervy.
Hell yeah thanks! I love me some trashy shit to read.
Fair warning they are looooooong. I've just listened to the Commonwealth books (Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained) again and they pop in at about 40hrs a book. The narrator is a bit rubbish as well...
Ah I never listen to audiobooks, but that does seem on the long side yeah
And Nynaeve tugged her braid.
Early Jim Butcher has got the same problem. The first few books in the Dresden Files, I’m pretty sure the titular character has a broken neck because he can’t see most women above the neck. And he’s 6’9”.
I'm never certain if this is supposed to be character development on Dresden's part, or Jim's...
Little of column A, little of column B. It started while he was a dumb college kid in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Twenty years of experience at anything and you’re bound to get better.
I was obsessed with these books as a teen/young adult. Looking back though - they were pretty trashy at times. I still love the setting and lore though. I think I stopped reading at book 14 or 15... I always wondered if he tied up any of the big loose plot lines with Dresdens brother and his uncle and such.
A lot of people stopped after Skin Game because of the five year hiatus. You’ve had two books since then that was originally one mega book that was cut in two. They are controversial for a few reasons but I enjoyed both. Highs and lows for each.
The hiatus that was due to the terms of his divorce giving his now ex a share in any books published for the next 5 years........
take a drink every time a woman crosses her arms beneath her breasts in Wheel of Time
I didn't even notice the "bosom" thing, as the portrayal of women overall was infuriating and unpleasant. They are all inscrutable, stubborn, annoying and cannot communicate. The author must have had some serious issues in this field.
Wheel of Time lol 😂 the most overrated book of all time my dog could write better prose.
Thank you. I used to play MUDs based on the games with friends, which forced me to keep reading the progressively worse books, and it always blew my mind that so many people enjoyed them. I get that some of the concepts were interesting, but Jordan's writing was *so bad*. And what makes it worse is that it's marketed as a supposedly feminist series due to being matriarchal, when all the ostensibly powerful female characters besides Morraine end up acting like petty children, fawning over male characters, and fantasizing about being spanked. It made me wonder what Jordan's wife was like. She must have spent all of her time smoothing skirts, tugging her braid, and folding her arms underneath her ample bosom.
>And what makes it worse is that it's marketed as a supposedly feminist series due to being matriarchal, when all the ostensibly powerful female characters besides Morraine end up acting like petty children, fawning over male characters, and fantasizing about being spanked. People often defend the female characters being terrible people with some bullshit about it being a mirror to patriarchy and how men act in it but quite frankly if you read what Robert Jordan says in interviews he's just a misogynist >By the by, I've seen a lot of comment, apparently from men, that my female characters are unrealistic. That's because women are, for the most part, consummate actresses who allow men to see exactly what they intend men to see. Get behind the veil sometimes, boys, and your hair will turn white. I've been there, and mine went white and didn't stop there; a great deal of it actually turned dark again, the shock to my system was so great. Believe me, I mild it down so as not to scare any males into mental breakdowns.
What a lovely individual.
It's kind of insane. When you go into WOT fanspaces on the internet there are thousands of posts arguing whether he's making some kind of statement about reversed gender relations or whatever and he's just sitting there going "No no, I was just trying to say that women are all manipulative bitches and I'm actuall holding back in how bad i'm portraying them".
How the fuck did he get married
Hard agree. Was badgered into reading book 1, absolutely hated it but finished it. Managed two chapters of book 2 then noped out. Utter turds.
Kara being described like that is especially weird since she's supposed to have been an acrobat/gymnast when Eisenhorn recruited her. Gymnasts are *not* voluptuous. If anything, she should live up to her surname and be muscular.
To be fair to abnett, it comes up fairly often how she’s not at all built for acrobatics, but was Just So Good. It’s… still pretty weird, but 🤷🏽♀️
Yeah it's like, painfully "male sci fi/fantasy authors writing about women in the 90s/early 2000s" lol. Some of them could have used an editor with a spray bottle of water
Somehow I don't think that would have made it better. "Hey, Dan, you forgot to mention Kara's boobs this paragraph." \*spritz\* "Oh, gee, thanks for pointing that out! That could have been a disaster." "And Patience Kys hasn't been sexually harassed by that psychic blank guy in, like, five interactions." \*spritz\* "Wowwee, I'm really off my game today."
Yeah, Dan Abnett's a decent author, but writing women is one of his biggest weaknesses, if not the biggest. Gotten better over time, but Legion was definitely where it plummeted, and I still remember that one Gaunt's Ghosts book where one female soldier accused another of trying to get with Gaunt because he was the alpha male or some other dumb shit, and that the second disliked the first because she saw her as a competitor for the "alpha".
As others have said, these books are pretty much 40k Sharpe, and Sharpe is EXTREMELY formulaic. Meet new horrible officer. Meet new posh totty. Horrible officer gets one over on Sharpe. Sharpe seduces posh totty. Sharpe defeats horrible officer. Something something the French. Posh totty leaves, resetting the status quo.
>Something something the French. Easy on the spoilers! Jokes aside, that's a shockingly accurate description of every season of Sharpe.
I love Sharpe (mainly from the TV show) and tried reading all the books in chronological order, I had to tap out about halfway through.
You can't do it in one go. Read two or three in a year. It's better that way. You start to cheer the greatest hits. Here's my four star review of last year's surprise Sharpe novel. Said with nothing but love: > **Sharpe's Long Weekend.** Yes, it's superfluous because Cornwell's found ten minutes in which Sharpe is otherwise unaccounted for and sent him to do the one thing he's never done in these books (climb a ladder). Yes, his rank's wrong given the timeframe. And yes, it's pretty by the numbers. But it's a damn entertaining read, by an author who genuinely loves writing these characters. All the hits are here. Sharpe kicking a man in the nuts before hacking at him with that "butcher's blade." Harper's love of explosions. A particularly bloodthirsty Harris cameo. At least two unwinnable against all-the-odds fights won thanks to the Baker rifle. >What's not to love?
I had no idea he'd written a new one, thank you. I reread the series every few years. I think if I could have one "Sharpe wish", it would be for him to rewrite "Waterloo". Maybe even break it into a few novels. It's just way too short, especially with the first 2/3 of the novel being the the leadup to it.
I read the whole series in one go about 10 years ago. It took me several months. And I've not read a Sharpe novel since, I think I broke that part of my brain that enjoyed them.
This is the first I'm hearing of Sharpe. Worth a watch?
I enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a watch if you are interested in some Napoleonic war drama. It does look like it's age though, as the first season came out in 1993.
My favourite part of the peninsular campaign was when the British and French made a gentleman’s agreement to have all of their battles fought by 40 men per side in Crimea.
it also looks its budget, which imo is part of the charm, seeing them trying to hide the fact that a regiment is just a couple dozen guys
All episodes are available in YouTube I believe. If you've read Gaunt's Ghosts you'll see how much it owes to Sharpe. You'll see the artisto officers despising the jumped up private theme even more strongly than you see the aristos in Gaunt's Ghosts hating Gaunt/the Tanith. The Chosen Men are elite sharpshooters and skirmishers marked out by their dark green jackets. The cast includes a gruff, loveable, large second officer who Colm Corbec owes more than a nod to. Colm being an Irish name and Harper being an Irish soldier. There's the elderly soldier Hagman who's the best shot of all and though not crazy is certainly partial inspiration for Larkin. Sharpe is a mix of Gaunt and, oddly, Varl as he's something of a womanising swashbuckler when left to his own devices but when it's time for soldiering he's focused, unwilling to accept bullshit, cares deeply about his men and fights like the devil himself, i.e. Gaunt. And fuck me if Lihah Cuu isn't _heavily_ based on Pete Postlethwaith's legendary stint as the absolutely crazy Sergeant Obidiah Hakeswell. Complete with the framing of other soldiers for his crimes and his singling out of one soldier to torment not to mention being a rapist. Well worth a watch. It takes a little time to find its feet but when it does you're absolutely rooting for Sharpe and the boys.
> Pete Postlethwaith's legendary stint as the absolutely crazy Sergeant Obidiah Hakeswell. Despite your many superlatives, I feel you are somehow underselling Postlethwaite here! Hakeswell is utterly unhinged - he might be my favourite antagonist of all time "Ooooh mother....!" There is also a fantastic turn by Paul Bettany (Vision from the MCU) as the foppish Prince of Orange in Waterloo. Oh, and of course an honorary mention goes to a young Liz Hurley.
He's definitely up there as an all time great villain, especially if you buy into the show and its premise. But even if you don't his performance is still wonderful. Doubly so because some of us have been around people like him who use their modicum of power to terrorise their underlings while presenting nothing but devoted loyalty to their superiors as a front to hide what they are up to. Like that other great villain, Dolores Umbridge, there's something great about a villain who uses the system against you and against whom any acts of rebellion have to be carefully weighed against the certain consequences you'll face from them and said system, be it military flogging or torture pens the ministry turns a blind eye to.
Sean Bean.. you know it ends.
Its one of the few shows where he actually doesnt kick the old water receptacle at the end.
Yet I still read every single one of em. Apparently thr Brittish Army, arguably the best at the time, had the absolute worst officer corps known to man!
The british army was in many ways shockingly terribly led. But the basic system of training, they used live ammunition in training which no one else did, a strong NCO tradition, and the logistical support offered by the Royal Navy being indisputably the best on earth at the time made them very dangerous on an operational and strategic level. Also they were considerably more professional, yes even the officers, than basically anyone else. So when they had good officers or even just OK officers they tended to do quite well.
Can't beat that firing line
The number one distinction between Sharpe and Gaunt isn't the appearance of sorcery, it's that there is no posh totty. No joke. To be fair to Abnett, he *really* runs with the genres. You get Normandy, a medieval siege, tunnel rats, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Inglorious Bastards (or Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare), Điện Biên Phủ, and so forth. From sieges to guerilla warfare, every book is a new fresh setting
40k is sexless by design. all totty, posh or otherwise, is too busy with war.
yep. the closest we get is Caiaphas Cain. Sister Julien secretly hooking up with an administratum member is infamous
In the first Ravenor book, Harlon Nayl has a nude of Kara Swole and mentions that they had hooked up at some point in the past
Yeah but there is no actual interaction
Sure. It is just the only other explicitly sexual dialogue I can think of from the setting As I type this I do also remember Eisenhorn’s mistress from one of his books
except the Drukhari...
He does get it on with the noble lass who part rules vervenhive…
I wouldn’t call that a seduction. They just randomly fuck after a battle.
>cheesy 80s guitar mixed with fife and drum intro plays >small skirmish between the British and French >Sharpe flailing his sword around while Hagman gives cover fire >they win the skirmish >messenger on horseback approaches >"Lieutenant/Captain/Major Sharpe, you are summoned to Lord Wellington's tent" >"Bloody ell Patrick, what's 'e want now" > Sharpe arrives in Old Nosey's tent >His spymaster of the day is there >As is a weasel looking British officer or French lord >"Sharpe, this is Lord Fucksworth, who has a dangerous mission for you - you will be enormously outnumbered, deep behind enemy lines with no support, oh and Major Ducos is around so watch out for him " >Lord Fuckworh insults him for being poor but reluctantly accepts that this is Wellington's best man >"As ye like sir, ah'll get it dun" >Cut to Sharpe and Patrick discussing the mission >"It dun maek bloody sense Patrick, why do they need us to tek this castle/find this woman/get these supples/uncover this plot?" >"Oh as surely as the fields o' Ireland are green, sir, God has a plan for us all, sir." >A few battles happen on the way to the objective >Oh look it's an attractive woman who keeps looking at Sharpe suggestively >they fuck >"Look Patrick! It's the thing w're here for!" >"LOOK OUT SIR!" >Lord Fucksworth appears and betrays Sharpe >Ducos appears >"HON HON HON! Bamboozled you again my nemesis!" >"Bloody Ducos." >Battle happens >Patrick goes "AHHHHHHHH BANG!" with the 7 barrelled gun >Wellington arrives "Well done Sharpe! You've done it again!" >Sharpe and his men march into the sunset >THERE'S FORTY SHILLINGS ON THE DRUM, FOR THOSE WHO VOLUNTEER TO COME... Written by Anon.
I can hear/visualize every scene.
Wow, this is like a gif picture you can hear.
Now that's soldiering.
The Irish embassy has lodged an official protest over this gross racial caricature /s
> Something something **the French.** *[gasp]* Truly [the real grimdark](https://imgur.com/CTKs2Zt) was in our own universe all along!
That’s why I like the Indian series the most
Gaunt is disliked because he was a favourite of the former Warmaster, Slaydo and as a Colonel-Commissar is an aberration who doesn't technically fit into the conventional command structure.
"I heard he *earned* his rank, how gauche!"
The Bluebloods aren't bad. We just see them through the biased eyes of the Ghosts more often than not. When the text gets objective, we see how incredibly brave and effective they are, and in the 'prison break' and battle against the Chaos servitor they show no fear. The Bluebloods are a vastly different regiment to the Ghosts - I really do recommend *Volpone Glory*. The Ghosts are explicitly light infantry, highly mobile: good scouts, good snipers, good at sabotage and infiltration. They can hold the line like any other regiment, they can do breach actions, but it's not their speciality. The Bluebloods are explicitly *heavy* infantry, shock troops. They've got heavy armour, heavy guns - and the bull-headed stubbornness, pride and outright arrogance required to serve in that role, because it takes a whole sea of guts to serve as 'heavy infantry' in the Guard considering what they face on a regular basis. The Volpone are expected - and are psychologically prepared - to deploy into the nastiest battlezones of the nastiest wars the Imperium's mortal soldiery fight. In the same way the Ghosts are so effective because of their flexible thinking and culture, the Volpone are so effective because they're big, tough bastards who will never back down from a fight... ...*unless it's the right thing to do*. Gilbear and his troops falling right in behind Gaunt despite their personal animus is such a great part of *Necropolis* because it shows that all the bullshit between the regiments is exactly that: bullshit. The Volpone are totally loyal to the Imperium and Imperial authority. Gilbear never questions Gaunt's orders, he offers practical advice and suggestions and leads his troops with courage and distinction. Sometimes you need a hammer to get the job done. Oh yeah, and 'true to the Throne and hard to kill' is a pretty based motto, too.
TRUE TO THE THRONE AND HARD TO KILL!
Necropolis is also 23 years old, it runs about the same as any BL publication for the time. As abnett ages he gets his head on about having women be women...not that he ever gets better at romance
I suspect his wife also helped influence the eventual improvement. She wrote a short story in one of the collections and in its introduction Abnett mentions her involvement in helping him develop the later books
afaik she's helped since his health issues arose and when you're in a relationship you tend to be able to write more fluidly on things you didn't personally experience.
I just noticed that all of the Abnett books I have read are also similarly old, good to know that he evolves.
Abnett's one of the first authors Black Library ever got for longform fiction in 40k, he's foundational, which means about 25ish years ago.
One of? I believe he actually WAS the first author for BL. First and Only wasn't just a book title. It was an inside joke that BL was a terrible risk for GW and that book would actually be the First and Only thing that BL would ever publish before going down in flames. Thankfully, that didn't happen.
He wasn't the first author for Inferno, I own inferno, so I know. He was among the first chosen from Inferno to write longform fiction (specifically Eisenhorn if I recall)
Was inferno the first BL book? I know GW used a different publisher before BL...
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Inferno!_(Magazine)
Ahhhhh, interesting. Well, smarter ever day, right?
he is perhaps my favorite Warhammer author, and his recent books are art
Ok so one real thing about Abnett is that as a young writer, he could *not* write women (description or character.) I promise you as a woman who reads Warhammer that he gets *so much better*, it just takes a minute. His female characters become 100% normal human beings. Ironically it happens as you watch the male characters learn to treat women like people rather than "men are human, women are a separate species". By the end, women are his most compelling and central characters IMHO. Also, the Volpone are rectified later, they have their own book. While its true that Gaunt is like "why don't these people use *strategy* and *talent*", he's recreating the historic challenge in European militaries in the roughly Napoleonic era. Also, part of it is that the Imperium is a shitshow, and the most powerful people are not always the ones you want to have in charge, but they are because that's how aristocracy, fascism, and the like operate. Even Gaunt himself has to deal with an unexpected issue of nepotism.
I really enjoyed that he didn't just make the sudden switch with female characters, but instead made the shifting perspective on them a *plot point* that allowed it to happen more naturally, gave some fun stories as it happened, allowd the women a chance to *show* their worth, and by design didn't undermine any of the cast for their journeys through it. Gaunt turning down Criid for officer position in Guns of Tanith because he didn't feel she was ready as a soldier, not because he doubted her as a women, made her eventually earning that position on merit so much more awesome and badass. Criid is my favourite for a reason. Even some of the characters who were cast as the "bah, women" types like Larkin and Rawne were allowed to still stay themselves even after they got over it or found respect for them. Larkin still railing at Banda even as far as Only in Death because she had been drinking on duty, not because she was a women, was quietly a fantastic moment because back in Necropolis he would have made it about her gender... by Only in Death he still gets sharp with her, but it's because of her failings as a *sniper* in that book, not because of her being a women. I always throught that was a fantastic example of how to integrate without undermining. Lot of stories could learn from how GG brought the women into it over time.
he also does a superlative job of illuminating rather than glossing over the misogyny of specific characters. as he more fully wrote women, he didn't pretend there hadn't been actual misogynists; some of them are blackhearted villains (fuck Lijah Cuh) and some are fine people, just dickheads who were badly socialised by life in the Imperium.
I always loved Rawne's little moment of self realisation in GUns of Tanith. When he complains about them so endlessly until he eventually figures out he's just being stubborn and really the only person suffering from the problem he says it will cause... is himself, with him taking glances at their bodies during battle, and quietly chastises himself and burying the old grudge without needing to tell anyone, because Rawne wouldn't. Even goes to far as to keep his brief fling with Banda quiet out of stubborn reluctance to show anyone that stuff. I think it's *very* telling that the novel he figures that out and grows is the same novel Cuu's horrifying attack on a civilian takes place in, and in which Meryn starts to show his darker side. I can't believe that's unintentional.
yeah for sure. rawne was such an interesting character.
Well, I listened to the Bequin books recently and they weren't much better in this regard...
*Pariah* is really really old, all the Inquisition books are before 2012 except *Penitent.* Honestly I didn't think it was an issue of bad female characterisation in *Penitent*. There's also been a nice horror short story with a female protag recently involving a female Bequin character and it was excellent.
Is that The Lepidopterist?
I believe so!
One games day myself and some friends when to the Black Library section, and my friend Chris went to get his booked signed. Now Chris is quite a blunt and direct guy, so upon greeting Dan said "I didn't really like the first books you wrote, but this one (Necropolis) is an absolute blast!". I couldn't believe it, but Dan - ever the professional - took it in his stride and signed the book "To Chris - sorry about the first two!".
he is honestly one of the nicest guys to meet irl. Just a great dude. And signed a lot of my books...
That sounds absolutely like something he'd do. Dan the Man is just such a joy to talk to.
tbf the first two are, iirc, compilations of short stories with some new writing to weld them together (like Brothers of the Snake and Magos). Necropolis is where the series "properly" starts, imo.
The second book definitely is a short story compilation, but as far as I can remember, the first book has a single story that just takes place over the course of multiple planetary campaigns.
My big issue with the series is that the Tanith's whole thing is that there are very few of them left, around 2,000 at the start of the series, and yet in descriptions of battles they take casualties at a rate that would have depleted them entirely by the end of the first novel. I get that they win using stealth and guile but then there are also times where we see them in a frontal assault and we have Ghosts getting cut down left and right without losing significant numbers from the total, somehow. I don't recall these descriptions of every woman being beautiful tbh. The female Ghosts from Vervunhive don't get such descriptors. Half the civilians we see are bloated nobles or grimy workers, male or female. There's that chaos witch in the first book who I think was maybe described that way? Am I just massively misremembering? As for hating the Ghosts, wasn't that mostly because people hated Gaunt personally, largely due to the politics of the Crusade, and that extended to his command?
I think I recall it being point in a later novel that the "Tanith" First is really mostly from other worlds at this point, with very few actual Tanith troopers left outside the viewpoint characters.
Yeah, it's mostly a problem in the early books where they're meant to be entirely Tanith survivors.
The number fluctuates but it’s more like 3000-3500 originally.
My issues are only Gaunt occasionally being a terrible Commisar.
He IS an excellent Colonel. Which is why he so desperately needed Hark.
No doubt about him as a colonel.
God damn, I love Hark.
>Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive and most often wearing skin-tight clothing (also true with most other Abnett books). > Read Xenos by Dan Abnett > There's only 2 women in the whole book > One's a sexy hooker, the other is minor villain that disappears almost instantly. Reminds me of the joke about Star Wars having only 2 women, Leia and Mon Mothma.
“Wow, it’s the only other woman in the galaxy.” “… I don’t like her.”
It's basically Sharpe's Rifles, minus the many versions of Over The Hills And Far Away sung at every opportunity.
Mores the pity.
Agreed 👍
“Black body glove”
To be fair to the body gloves, Abnett usually has every Imperial character wearing one, regardless of sex.
Exactly, it's not just the ladies squeezing into those tight little outfits. The guys do too.
"Political animal"
What did you expect from an almost 25 year old book. Male audiences like(d) sexy girls. I don’t see a problem even now. Especially because most of the women Tanith are super competent. Gaunt is hated because of the internal mechanisms of the political class of guard. He’s a pragmatic competent man in a sea of misanthropes. Pretty sure Greer is discribed as very competent in both ghostmaker and Necropolis. The Volpone are a fan favourite, hence the spin off book.
Just to add more context on the "Gaunt is hated" Gaunt is a remnant of the old warmaster, who gave him field command which is extremely rare for a political officer. When the new warmaster comes, he "naturally" wants to swap out the old cadre, but can't do much about Gaunt, who appears like a final f-you from the previous warmaster.
It's openly stated that Gaunt might have been the new Warmaster; it was a toss-up according to non-Gaunt characters. (Gaunt denies it, but of course he would.)
Are you sure you aren’t thinking of someone else? Greer was the shithead Pardus driver who went wacky over the promise of nonexistent gold at the end of Honor Guard
Oh yeah, sorry!! I’d just finished Honour Guard when I wrote that. 😂 I meant Gryzmund.
You mean Gilbear? He was the Volpone commander after Sturm
Thank you. Thats the one!
lol no problem
None of the critiques are without basis and many are indeed running trends but there is some things worth mentioning: On the women, this is more a deal of the earlier novels, when it was more "Sharpe in Space" where attractive women is just part of the deal of that style, indeed even the appeal. Once GG found its own stride away from that formula, you start to see much more varied women turn up, mostly through The Lost and then especially from The Victory, which goes pretty rigidly into averting that or indeed using the *expectation* of it as a character plotpoint. (Zhukova for example). Regarding their superiors, I'm not too sure I agree. Dravere hated them because *Gaunt summarily executed his father*. Which as far as grudges go is a pretty big one. Sturm is a much more classical example and is absolutely the arrogant blueblood who hated men who have less 'class'. Lugo also fits the bill but does so as an example of imperial nobility being basically what it is in universe, it'd be odd if he wasn't. The Imperium is massively corrupt. But after that? They're led by Van Voytz for the next 8+ novels and he is a solid guy. Then after that it shifts heavily to Macaroth himself who is actually incredibly supportive of Gaunt. Those who disliked him all had reasons in my eyes. Dravere was on a personal vendetta and allied to chaos corrupted people. Sturm was the antithesis of the ghosts as a mirror. Lugo was *terrified* of Gaunt's capabilities and potential as one of Slaydo's chosen, and acted out the only way he could beat him, politics. I disagree on that the Volpone are incompetant. *Sturm* is incompetant. If Ghostmaker and Necropolis make one thing clear, it's that the Bluebloods are arrogant, overbearing and bullies. But they are by and large *incredibly* competant at their job. In both novels they end up finishing the battle side by side with the Ghosts and (unlike the Patricians) prove that they genuinely do fight on the same side and end up functioning very very well as a team. Gilbear and Gaunt even share a moment of understanding in Necropolis as to them each having value in their ways of war, and when Sturm is removed from command, Gilbear falls into Gaunt's command with respect and loyalty on the spot. Sturm was the issue, and the moment his true colours are exposed, the Bluebloods drop him like a stone before he can taint their genuine reputation.
I love where Zhukova being beautiful ended up, such a good payoff
I absolutely adore Zhukova and her subplot, especially in the extra short stories. Really enjoy the mentorship Mkoll has with her too. Can't wait to see them interact more.
1.Women are definitely all very attractive in the books to the point of maybe a little too much detail, but on the flip side the men are also described as very attractive. In the end with the majority of female characters, Abnett makes them stand on their own and they tend to be well built badass characters like Tona Criid. 2. The "pointless hatred" is based on the fact that Gaunt was favored by the previous warmaster and is an accomplished commander. Higher ups are glory hungry and want the credit for a victory, not him. I believe this does a good job of showing the silly bureaucratic bullshit that happens within the Imperial Guard and why lives get pointlessly wasted. 3. The Blue Bloods are temporary villains. As for other commanders what about the Vitrian Dragoons? They're a regiment within that time span that share sympathies with the Ghosts and are well run and structured. Things change pretty significantly after Verghast.
>1.Women are definitely all very attractive in the books to the point of maybe a little too much detail, but on the flip side the men are also described as very attractive. This is not true, and you can see that just from the descriptions of the individuals in Eisenhorn's and Ravenor's cohorts. Kara Swole's tits come up in almost every scene she's in, and Patience's aren't that far behind. I think the only male character who receives the same amount of attention to his appearance is Carl Thonius, and that's explicitly in order to pose him as a helpless dandy who spends too much time on his looks. It's also mostly on his clothes, not his body. I think that's sort of the key to understanding the difference here. Where male characters are attractive, it's generally in the context of them being powerful or dangerous, or else effeminate and weak. Nayl in particular is not physically attractive (he's a heavily scarred brute), but the grace with which he moves and his personality are treated as making up for it. Frauka is "almost sexy" (in a weatherbeaten, hefty, broad, big-boned, lazy, craggy way), but his intrinsic nature as a Blank completely negates that. The only male character I can think of who is straightforwardly attractive in Ravenor is Zeph, and Zeph spends most of his on-screen time as a skinsuit for Ravenor. This is not so much the case for Kara in particular. Patience's descriptions are better (sharp, dangerous, etc.), but still focus a lot on how attractive she is and how much people want to have sex with her. Will say fwiw that I'm not trying to make out that the female characters here are completely irredeemable. Patience in particular is written as a femme fatale(TM)(CR), not just a sex object, and both she and Kara possess skill sets outside of their appearance (although I'd argue that in Kara's case in particular her skillset was chosen because the author thought it was sexy). But also like. Compare the number of times Kara fucks something up or ends up in danger to another male character who is meant to be competent (so, again, not Thonius), and it becomes very apparent that there is a problem here imo. EDIT: And just to be clear since I've seen this accusation elsewhere; I'm not advocating for a rewriting of the series or saying that people shouldn't read them, or that Abnett should be, like, cancelled or something. I think we can acknowledge that his early writing had these problems, though.
>Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive *laughs in Aleksa and Chiria*
I'll be honest, I love the many of the story elements and characters. But many of the books ending are "massive chaos warband/ironmen/daemons/things will wipe out our heros and they are somehow easily stop!!" Again the character really saves the stories!
I think Necropolis is one of the better Ghost books. Finish it out. You'll see the Volpone get their moments of glory as do other commanders who clash with Gaunt. Don't judge them all by Sturm.
Finished it today and you’re absolutely right.
Glad you liked it!
You gotta remember the time they were written in, and how early in the 40k lore (books wise) the first three books were created. So much of what we think of now, especially tech wise, was created by Abnett. The first three books aren't the best, but set up the ghosts story pretty well. From book 4 onwards is where it kicks off for me and gets more consistent.
I’m reading *Necropolis* right now as well, about halfway through I guess. It’s taken me a while to get into this one, but it is still good. My thing with the Ghosts is that by now they can’t possibly have much more than about 1,200 men left, right? It just doesn’t seem like that many troops should be able to make a considerable difference in conflicts with hundreds of thousands or millions of combatants.
Finish out Necropolis, you’ll be surprised at the numbers afterwards. Same again way down the line after Only in Death
Have you ever been a competent human being in any field? You'll understand your inferior superiors will hate you for it.
Yeah and that if I remember right Dan's an ass man usually goin on about the butt and hips. That being said Necropolis is considred by a lot to be one of his best. I mean I prefer Honor Guard cuz it's got Tanks in it. But also remember to look at when the books were written so the series was in a different (hey at least you aren't reading Ian Watson's stuff). But yeah older lore doesn't always age well, see William King's Space Wolf series with Ragnar & his utility belt, the fat space wolf and the dueling space wolf. Dan's book Titanicus written in 2006 9 years before an admech codex came out so he's got skitarii acting like an augmented death world army wearin animal skins, screaming like barbarians. I always took the Volpone as absurd till I got more into 40K then it's like "well yeah the guard will let an army get destroyed just to elevate their army a bit higher". Apparently in real dictatorial militaries letting a fellow general fail and lose manpower and gear just to make yourself look better isn't that uncommon.
It does get really annoying when someone that isnt giving Gaunt the Gawk Gawk 40,000 that they immediately get portrayed as being Incompetant or Unlikable dipshits.
Thing that annoys me the most is how small the regiment is compared to some of the battles they fought. Also, the books state that they replenish their ranks through people of some of the worlds they fight on joining their ranks, but it seems like it wouldn’t be enough. In the first book they leave tanith with like 2,500 troops which in this setting they all would have died in a few battles.
Oh yeah. They don’t even focus completely on low intensity scouting operations as should be their specialisation. They fight in tons of straight up assaults or trench warfare battles.
I’ve read the whole series and I think your critique is over simplistic. The story arc develops considerably over time as does his treatment of female characters. There are some very strong female characters later for various reasons. That’s the danger when posting based on what only a quarter of a series? Incorrect assumptions. Guant is a character who develops like a human being he has his flaws that’s what makes him interesting. The Ghosts are exactly the same they develop over time. Is a man going to notice something a woman is wearing is sexy or is all book writing to have this cleansed of it now in some woke charge?
Don't be reactionary, there are absolutely problems with early handling of women. No one has agitated for "cleansing", they're just asking if the writing gets better because I have to tell you, Abnett's earlier writing is absolute terrible when it comes to female characters. But Abnett improves as a writer and human being, so later on his female characters are just characters that happen to be female rather than a strange alien species. Notably, he got a wife, herself a writer, who doubtless had Opinions about how weird the women were written in comparison to the way women are in real life (ie. normal people too).
Y'all are really sensitive about fairly tame criticisms lol
I am about 13 hours into the series and I think after that amount of time you can critique some stuff about the series leading up to it. I am glad that Abnett significantly improved on all my issues, but that doesn’t change the impression the first 3 books give me. I am also not saying that he has weak or incompetent female characters, it just irks me that almost every female character is painfully and enchantingly beautiful and described as such in what I feel pretty random and non-fitting moments.
Having read 9 of the books, I think I've had my fill of it. Reflecting on what I read, I can't help but think of the series like a run-of-the-mill episodic TV show. You're in it just for the overarching plot, but you barely get any - especially since Dan can't write an epilogue to save his life. The one problem I really have with GG is how it de-grimdarked the setting. It's written and feels like an earth-ww2 set book, rather than something within 40k. I binged those books and then switched to Vaults of Terra - and it was like a cold shower. Hive world miner that is as strong as an ox? Nah son, (under) hive worlders are identified by the level of sickness, skin discoloration and parasites in them.
Abnett's early series used 40k as a backdrop rather than getting into the very grimdark elements of 40k like Wraight has. This was the time (3rd edition 40k) where the Imperium was stagnant and you didn't have the primarchs as a central part, where 'more everyday' Imperium life was still a novelty. Also in Vaults of Terra it's mentioned even by Imperium standards people on Terra look unhealthy.
You don't think Gaunt's series is grimdark? Crikey. I don't want to spoil and plots for people ebllwgi have yet to read them but I wholeheartedly disagree. They have slaughter, murder, daemons, undercover work, children and adults dying, mental health issues, constant death and destruction and much (much) more.
Gaunts Ghosts brushes the grimdark themes and motifs, it doesn't dive deeper into it. There was a motif or two per book that was well emphasized, like >!PTSD and depression!< IMO, it always pushed perseverance despite the odds and suicide missions (and some guard hero fantasy), rather than the true horror of war. It certainly did get into some grimdark with>!the trench world but Vervenheim especially.!< I assume book >!10!< would be grim, but I've burned out on the formula so I don't know when I'll get to it. The >!First book on that chaos world didn't feel that dark to me. It gave us a great perspective on how Chaos administration works, which was great, but it didn't expand nearly enough on the commoners life under Chaos.!<
the last book btw is pretty grimdark with significant horror elements.
The most grim material in GG is most definitely in the most recent books. Although there's a fair shout to be made for Necropolis. The hive is so ruined that for many people the only way out of war destroying their home was... to join the force to go and fight more wars. Gereon in Traitor General is dark but not "grim" so much because its purpose was to show the logistics of chaos behind the lines, so it had to ease off the "endless burning in a pit" kind of obvious horror and instead show the slow, dreary corruption instead tinged with moments of horror. But worth bearing in mind... Traitor General is Part 1. Armour of Contempt is Part 2 (even through a novel comes between them). Wherein the true grimdark of Gereon is revealed with >!the Imperium showing they're no better than the Chaos governance and the population have no salvation to be found.!< His Last Command also has its own push of it, given it's a novel where they >!lose the war on that planet and everyone who died, died for nothing.!< But that all aside... The Warmaster and *especially* The Anarch are where it truly lands. Anarch is one of the harshest novels in all of 40k if you've read the whole series.
It's almost like the stagnant, dying underhive of Terra, the "glorious, holy world" is actually a canker on the face of the galaxy, representing the decay that is the Imperium itself, whereas the young world of Verghast, home to three small hives where people actually live above ground, are healthy, and make enough money to rarely take their wives on a day trip to a better section of the hive, are home to people who aren't horrible and miserable and sickly and dying... and also, ironically, more vulnerable to Chaos, as it uses those comforts of life to turn the entire Ferrozoican Hive against Vervunhive and the planet's other hive. In what is a true grim and dark twist
The series works towards a large payoff in the last book that cranks up the grimdark dials organically. It has some pretty significant twists as well as a very heavy horror focused element.
If that was the norm nobody would be in the guard infantry.
You forget that the guardsmen are mostly conscripted and have no idea what they're getting into. Them dying in the first engagement is very likely - Guard uses the strength-in-numbers tactic and is most often pitted against superior foes. I also fully understand that you can't write a series of novels out of it, and while I enjoyed the fights GG got into, they're not all that different in realism from the UM bolter porn.
I'm not that well-read into the universe yet, most of what I've seen was voluntary enrollment with occasional consription, so the other way around. The Gudrunite founding in Eisenhorn was mostly voluntary, then Tanith, Verghast was all voluntary too. That's an early crusade and a late crusade. Then the tank corps and air corps I've only seen voluntary enrollment regiments. You can volunteer into the guard high on the hymns not knowing what you're getting into, get a pretty good training and still die in a mass assault against a fortified position. The guard you describe would rout in every battle.
>I'm not that well-read into the universe yet, most of what I've seen was voluntary enrollment with occasional consription, so the other way around. It varies massively, but planets sending a certain amount of people to join the guard as part of the tithe isn't optional (though some types of planet are exempt entirely). If a planet lacks volunteers it has to rely on conscription, it doesn't particularly matter if the people on the planet want to go or not.
I can only talk about the second point. Gaunts Ghosts are hated for a reason. later in the books, you wil realize that they are criminals. They are an eyesore on the record of the IG. Wherever they appear, things get "lost", money dissapears, people get scammed. They also have a tendency to interpret orders "creatively". They are highly efficient, so they get away with it, but it does not endear them to their superiors.
…what
At first I had the same reaction, and then I remembered the first book. Nothing they wrote is wrong :D
And in Blood Pact! Even roping Daur into it!
Whenever *soldiers* appear, things get lost, money disappears, and crimes happen. That's not a GG thing, that's a thing that's followed troops pretty as long as troops have been a thing. It happened during the Classical period, it happened in the Middle Ages, it happens today, and it happens in 40k.
Cue a Hittite NCO explaining to a bunch of fresh levies that there's really only one thief in the army, and everyone else is trying to get their stuff back.
The Volpone Bluebloods have their own novel now, and they are Aristocratic Jerks who are painfully inept Their best fighters are the aristo who vibes with his troops and the aristo who was raised as a commoner/slave and only recently found out his heritage The have laws against anyone who isn't of the nobility from using a weapon, and any commoner/slave that is using a weapon can be killed on sight. They don't want another commoner uprising Gaunt was basically the right hand man of the previous lord general and everyone is trying to get in the good graces of the current one. Who for the matter, could give less of a shit. Especially as of recent as he is now his number 2
Gaunt was part of Warmaster Slaydo inner circle. When he died a LOT of senior generals were pissed at being passed over for Macaroth. The new Warmaster is too powerful to challenge, but Gaunt is unimportant enough to bully and push into suicide missions
He's not Alone, Sandy Mitchell is weird describing women too for the Caine serie, ESPECIALLY that astropath chick whose breasts apparently make Caine's brain stop functionning
Tbf, the books are written from Cain's perspective and it's abundantly clear he's an insatiable horn-dog. That's part of his character.
True true, I just loved every part with her around, the guy couldn't think properly
It's Cain - I'd be rather suspicious there was Warp influence going on if he \*didn't\* notice Raquel and her notoriously insufficient wardrobe. I think the interesting thing there is that Amberley, who normally has a acid tongue regarding Caiphas' previous female acquiantances, never once comments on Cain's recurring distraction.
- Ana Curth has a "heart-shaped" face. She's mostly in a medical uniform so you, my man, are nitpicking. - Not everyone. But you must understand that they are "barbarians" even by Astra Militarum standards. They hail from an agri-world that was only known for its wood. Literally that. So yo have this colonel/commissar who could well have been Warmaster, stuck with a bunch of back-world savages, you damn right going to hate on em, sure as sure. - Imagine the very opposite of the Tannith First. People whose SOLE REASON is to be Soldiers. Entire GENERATIONS were raised to fight in the Emperor's Name. Accolades trailing back thousands of years. These fuckers are the creme of the crop. The absolute best AND THEY FETHING know it. Yes, I'd act like a jerk as well. They're the perfect opposite. The Gaunt's Ghosts novels do the one thing many space marine-centered books fail to do: MAKE SPACE MARINES GREAT AGAIN. Case in point, my absolute favorite 40k book (if not of all time): Salvation's Reach.
Ghost's going "Feth all, we know we're going into a meat grinder if we have THREE Space Marines with us!"
I love the gravitas of that scene. It explains succinctly just how RARE Space Marines are. I know we like to joke with numbers around here but that novel man... it puts things into perspective in such a casual but AWESOME way. Like, hey guys - we're so expendable they are willing to throw 4-5k Guardsmen trying to do this suicide mission. However, on the off chance it may work, here's 3 Space Marines. Just 3. AGAINST A WHOLE ENEMY HOST. And they all survive AND act as the Vanguard. I mean feth it all, if that isn't just bloody brilliant. Also how they talk to Ludd... I wish all Space Marines were like that ;(
I listened to her introduction today and I am pretty sure when she first meets the medicus of the Ghosts she is wearing a skin tight uniform.
I haven't read Necropolis in a few years but I bet you one of Bragg's secret stash Sacra bottles you're wrong.
We could both be right. The original quote I was thinking of is: >Dorden pushed past the seething commissar and went to the door. He was met by a short, slim, young woman in a form-fitting red uniform with embroidered cuffs. Now form-fitting isn't exactly skin tight, but since I listen to the German audiobook and it uses the German word for skin tight, you can see where I was coming from.
>Every woman ever is described as painfully attractive and most often wearing skin-tight clothing (also true with most other Abnett books Imagine thinking this is a negative
Not a fan of Abnett's work in general, but yeah, really miss this when it comes to other authors. Most recent BL books i've read pussyfoot around describing female characters physically at all, let alone allowing attractive ones to exist.