Cosplay progress?

A few days ago I posted about my dream cosplay - Colonel Commissar Ibram Gaunt, from Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels.  Since then I've been on the hunt for that perfect Napoleonic war-style officer's tunic to get the constume started.  It hasn't been going too bad - fortunately The Black Parade made that kind of style very popular in goth/alternative clothing circles, so there are things like that out there, even if you have to wade through mountains of chaff to find something worthwhile.

However I was talking about it at work with my sister yesterday, and one of our clients overheard our conversation and told us that his brother's friend owns a shop in Wednesbury which sells replica old-style military uniforms for historical recreations and the like.  They're probably going to cost an arm and a leg, but for Ibram Gaunt I'm willing to spend the money and assemble the costume slowly over time :)
With regards to my more immediate cosplay plan - Ford Prefect - the search continues to go well.  Although I still haven't found the perfect Argyle sweater/boating jacket combo I've come incredibly close, and that's only after one week of searching.  So with that in mind I have every confidence that this costume is going to come together nicely for Spring Memorabilia :)

In the grim darkness of the far distant future, there is only... cosplay?

On stage at Memorabilia this weekend I was asked what my dream cosplay would be, and I have to admit my mind went completely blank.  In spite of the fact that I was expecting that question, I just suddenly couldn't think of a single thing I'd like to do.  But if my brain had been in gear and I'd been thinking straight there would have been one dream cosplay, and one alone, which would have come to mind...

From The Black Library, and the pen of Dan Abnett, Colonel Commissar Ibram Gaunt.  The commanding office of the Tanith First and Only from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  I've always loved the commissars in 40k, and their uniforms are just fantastic, and Ibram Gaunt has that edge over the rest of them with the iconic Tanith camo cape and the sword of Heironymo Sondar.

So there it is, my dream costume.  And ye gods I promise to myself that one day I'm going to do this, and grace the stage at Memorabilia as one of the greatest military commanders the Imperium of Man has ever seen!

For Tanith.  For the Emperor.

Salvation reached...

I've just finished reading Salvation's Reach by Dan Abnett, and after a slow start I have to admit it was pretty damn good.  Not one of the greatest in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, but probably up with the likes of Honour Guard.  The story was good, and a few characters said their farewells who will be sadly missed.  But I didn't really like any of the new characters, and was frankly a bit disappointed that they all made it through the book in one piece.

This has been the first time in a few months that I've got through a new book in the course of just a few days, and it felt good to be immersing myself with characters I love for a few hours a day :)  Now I'm up to date with the Tanith, the next thing to read is the latest in the Horus Heresy series; The Outcast Dead.  Once that's finished I have the sixth book in the Ciaphas Cain series, Cain's Last Stand, and by then I should have received my first ever Sisters of Battle novel, which has been preordered since the start of the year.  I've never read any of the novels about the Adeptus Sororitas before, but James Swallow is a good, solid author, and I have a feeling it's going to open up a whole new branch of the 40k universe which I previously knew very little about.

And THEN, once I'm all up to date with my favourite Black Library series, I can finally get back to A Song of Ice and Fire :)  I stopped part way through Steel and Snow, so it'll be good to get back to the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

Muchos reading still to do :)

Salvation's Reach, opening verdict...

Currently am about one-third of the way through Salvation's Reach - the 13th book in the Gaunt's Ghosts series.  Have to be honest, I'm not loving it so far.  It may improve, but at the moment this seems to be falling into the same kind of area as The Armour of Contempt.  Blood Pact and Traitor General are my two most recent favourite, but the series needs another big, rip-roaring novel like the glory days of Necropolis and Sabbat Martyr in my opinion.

Salvation's Reach

No, this isn't some kind of pretencious title for a blog entry, it is the title of the latest Gaunt's Ghosts novel from the wonderful Dn Abnett, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday morning.

 

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!