Gaunt’s
Ghosts is one of the flagship series of the Warhammer
40,000 novel-verse. There’s fifteen or so of them now, chronicling the
adventures of the titular Ghosts, a regiment of guardsmen, regular humans,
trying to make their way in a universe filled with demons, super-human cyborg
warriors, psychotic orcs, condescending, murderous space-elves and all sorts of
other creatures with attitudes that range from grudging tolerance to
apocalyptic hostility. Into this mix step a gang of soldiers with very little
in the way of armour, armaments, or chances for survival. They’re the Imperial
Guard, humanity’s first line of defence against all the horrors of a hostile
galaxy - and they tend to be led by people who see guardsmen as fungible
assets, to be thrown at the enemy until they overwhelm by sheer force of
numbers, stepping over piles of their comrades on the way.
Not so the commander of the Ghosts. Gaunt is a
blend of political and military, a colonel of a regiment, but also a Commisar,
a political officer whose job is to ensure loyalty to the undying God-Emperor
who sits at the centre of humanity’s empire in this grim-dark future.
Stereotypically, Commissar's do this by shooting a few of their more
recalcitrant men in the head, but Gaunt, at least, seems unwilling to waste
lives, and seems reluctant to kill his own men. This omnibus edition of the
first three books in the series shows us Gaunt at various points: in childhood,
in training as a Commissar, as part of another regiment, whilst raising the
Ghosts as a regiment, and in the aftermath, as they and he work together to, if
not save the universe at ;east try to prevent it getting any worse. And from
this we see Gaunt grow. He’s clever, and focused, and driven, and has a
surprisingly dense core of morality at his heart. This is a man who appreciates
loyalty, and truth, and has a genuine conviction in the divinity of his
Emperor, and in the necessity of the Guard to help keep humanity safe. But
Gaunt is also ruthless, when he needs to be, willing to make sacrifices in order
to achieve his goals (though unwilling to make the same sacrifices if they’re
meaningless). There’s a growing hard-edge to Gaunt, a willingness to do what he
feels needs to be done over the years, as tragedy takes friends and colleagues.
But at the same time, there’s a heart, a willingness to stand by his men, to
take risks with them, to do his best to keep them alive, even as they all walk
into the cannon-fire together. The blend of compassion, ruthlessness, personal
courage, tactical acumen, loyalty and a razor-sharp intelligence help embody
Gaunt, and the complexity of his character is at the heart of what makes these
stories so readable.
It’s not all about Gaunt, of course. This
omnibus includes a variety of short stories from Ghost engagements on multiple
worlds, and uses that as a framing device, showing us the perspective of
different key personnel in the Ghosts. From the gentle Trooper Bragg, whose
inability to hit anything with a weapon gave him both the sobriquet “Try Again”
and a penchant for carrying around massively heavy weapons, to the slitheringly
lethal Major Rawn, willing to stab you in the back and the front simultaneously
ands powered by an engine of internal fury, to Colonel Corbec, hearty, bluff
and well aware of his role as Gaunt;s counterpart, the Ghosts all have their
own personalities; they aren’t all just faceless numbers, but given to us as
individuals with their own backstories, needs and desires. That helps us care
about them and the stakes they’re working for on the page, and we can feel more as they live and die around
us, on battlefields filled with horrors and heroism in equal measure. My only
complaint would be the lack of women in the Ghosts, though this looks like it
could be resolved in later volumes.
The stories themselves? Well, this is
Warhammer 40,000. The baddies tend to be, really, pretty bad. Here we see
ravening cultists, corrupt aristocracies, warped creatures that used to be men,
daemonic machinery, and all sorts of other nastiness. There’s less grey here
than you might expect, at least initially; though Gaunt and his Ghosts aren’t
always the best of people (and the Ghosts are driven by the tragedy of being
the last survivors of their world), they are pretty much always better than the
enemies they face in this volume. For example, Rawne’s scheming and black
marketeering seem pedestrian in the face of literal teleporting demons that can
rip you limb from limb, or quiet, whispering horrors that slowly turn men mad.
And it’s all wonderfully described, in prose that carries the screams of battle
and the punch of laser fire in its wake, telling us tales without a wasted
word, whilst also managing to describe this horror of a gothic nightmare future
with every necessary detail to make it feel intensely alive, a lived-in space
that is real, from the gothic-cathedral ships plying the space lanes, to the
charnel-house of a billions strong hive-city under siege. The universe is real
here; you can step through the page, and follow the crump of artillery shells
and the sound of crisp-commands soaked in blood, to stand beside Gaunt and his
Ghosts at the edge of the world, saving a humanity which will never know or
care about the sacrifices that they’ve made.
Overall, I’d say this is a very well done
piece of military science-fiction, which benefits from being wrapped into the
dense lore of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It avoids glorifying the conflicts
the Guard take part in, and lets us see them as humanity doing its best to
survive, to do the right thing, and to make things better. In a world populated
by larger-than life aliens, and super-human Space Marines, the genuine humanity
of Gaunt and the Ghosts is refreshing, and their trials and tribulations are
the more compelling because of it. I was gripped from the first page, and if
you’re looking for some good military sci-fi, an entry point into the 40k
world, or both, I’d say this would be a great place to start.
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