Now anyone who knows me knows that I love to read. I like the odd bit of mainstream, and in recent months have been trying to branch out and try a few genres and authors I don't know, but there's one specific area of literature I keep coming back to, and that's the work from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
I don't play 40k at all any more really, but the depth and the backgroud of the 40k universe is, in my opinion, the single greatest science fiction setting in history. Forget Star Wars, Star Trek or anything like that, the 41st millennium is the richest and most intricately woven piece of work any fan could hope to enjoy.
And out of all of the 40k books out there, there are two series which I keep coming back to. One is the Horus Heresy series, which tells the story of the events of the 31st Millennium which shaped the galaxy of the 41st, and the other (and the series which got me into the Black Library's works) is Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. In fact I now consider Dan Abnett to be one of my favourite authors, and I am proud to have 25 of his novels in my collection :)
Anyways, I'm babbling, as I tend to do when I start talking about a subject I have passion for. So yes, Gaunt's Ghosts - the Tanith First and Only. I was first introduced to these books about 7 years ago by a very good friend, with the first book in the series; First and Only. This may sound an ironic title for the opening book of a long and successful series, but the novels follow the lives of one particular Imperial Guard Regiment - the Tanith First. The beautiful tradgedy of the Tanith is that they were the only regiment to be founded from their homeworld before it was destroyed by Chaos - the archenemy of mankind - and so they were given the monicker of the First and Only. A lot of Tanith fans love the series as it has a proper old military feel to it, and I've heard many people describe it as being "like Sharpe in space", which I thing is wonderfully accurate.
Having read and loved First and Only I immediately went onto the second book in the series - Ghostmaker, which took me onto Neropolis (book three), Honor Guard, Straight Silver, The Guns of Tanith, and then the seventh book, Sabbat Martyr.
And then the unthinkable happened - I had caught up to date with the adventures of Colonel Commisar Ibram Gaunt and his men. It may have been 2004 when I started to read them, but the Gaunt's Ghosts novels had been getting steadily released since 1999, so I was catching up with 5 years of work. So ever since then I have had to patiently wait, as one new novel gets released every 1-2 years. This latest one has followed a particularly long wait, and now I finally have it to crack into (once I've finished The Lies of Locke Lamora - I hate reading 2 books at once).
The previous novel in the series, Blood Pact, was quite a different animal to the usual 'Ghosts book, as the Tanith spent the entire novel rotated out of service and sitting tight on a secure Imperial world, while Gaunt was embroiled in an assasination attempt by the archenemy on a high-value prisoner. It worked brilliantly and I have to say it's one of my favourite in the series, but now the First and Only are back in the front lines where they belong, and frankly I can't wait to sink my teeth in and see how they get on.
And there is one more thing which has interested me a lot about this book, and that's the cover art. On all of the previous covers, Gaunt was always portrayed heroically, with very lean and almost perfect features. Now the boooks, as I mentioned earlier, have been going for 12 years, and usually several years pass in between each one. Granted, in the 41st Millennium they have rejuvination treatments, which keep the higher classes looking young well into their hundreds, but Gaunt is a man who's been through the meatgrinder, almost literally. He's aged and he's accumulated scars, and for the first time the front cover actually shows Gaunt for the man he is now. So I'm really quite interested to find out if we're going to start seeing him slowing down as he enters his autumn years, and how he'll cope with front line action as he moves on in life.
So yes, ridiculously long babble over, but little excites me more than a new Gaunt's Ghosts book, and now I have one :) Yey!
And out of all of the 40k books out there, there are two series which I keep coming back to. One is the Horus Heresy series, which tells the story of the events of the 31st Millennium which shaped the galaxy of the 41st, and the other (and the series which got me into the Black Library's works) is Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. In fact I now consider Dan Abnett to be one of my favourite authors, and I am proud to have 25 of his novels in my collection :)
Anyways, I'm babbling, as I tend to do when I start talking about a subject I have passion for. So yes, Gaunt's Ghosts - the Tanith First and Only. I was first introduced to these books about 7 years ago by a very good friend, with the first book in the series; First and Only. This may sound an ironic title for the opening book of a long and successful series, but the novels follow the lives of one particular Imperial Guard Regiment - the Tanith First. The beautiful tradgedy of the Tanith is that they were the only regiment to be founded from their homeworld before it was destroyed by Chaos - the archenemy of mankind - and so they were given the monicker of the First and Only. A lot of Tanith fans love the series as it has a proper old military feel to it, and I've heard many people describe it as being "like Sharpe in space", which I thing is wonderfully accurate.
Having read and loved First and Only I immediately went onto the second book in the series - Ghostmaker, which took me onto Neropolis (book three), Honor Guard, Straight Silver, The Guns of Tanith, and then the seventh book, Sabbat Martyr.
And then the unthinkable happened - I had caught up to date with the adventures of Colonel Commisar Ibram Gaunt and his men. It may have been 2004 when I started to read them, but the Gaunt's Ghosts novels had been getting steadily released since 1999, so I was catching up with 5 years of work. So ever since then I have had to patiently wait, as one new novel gets released every 1-2 years. This latest one has followed a particularly long wait, and now I finally have it to crack into (once I've finished The Lies of Locke Lamora - I hate reading 2 books at once).
The previous novel in the series, Blood Pact, was quite a different animal to the usual 'Ghosts book, as the Tanith spent the entire novel rotated out of service and sitting tight on a secure Imperial world, while Gaunt was embroiled in an assasination attempt by the archenemy on a high-value prisoner. It worked brilliantly and I have to say it's one of my favourite in the series, but now the First and Only are back in the front lines where they belong, and frankly I can't wait to sink my teeth in and see how they get on.
And there is one more thing which has interested me a lot about this book, and that's the cover art. On all of the previous covers, Gaunt was always portrayed heroically, with very lean and almost perfect features. Now the boooks, as I mentioned earlier, have been going for 12 years, and usually several years pass in between each one. Granted, in the 41st Millennium they have rejuvination treatments, which keep the higher classes looking young well into their hundreds, but Gaunt is a man who's been through the meatgrinder, almost literally. He's aged and he's accumulated scars, and for the first time the front cover actually shows Gaunt for the man he is now. So I'm really quite interested to find out if we're going to start seeing him slowing down as he enters his autumn years, and how he'll cope with front line action as he moves on in life.
So yes, ridiculously long babble over, but little excites me more than a new Gaunt's Ghosts book, and now I have one :) Yey!
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