# Purge me of this Heresy brothers......



## CJ95 (Oct 8, 2014)

So after reading and enjoying several imperial guard novels...(gunheads, deathworld, rebel winter, etc etc) I. Eagerly decided to dive into what everyone seems to be saying is the crown jewel of IG stories....the Gaunts Ghosts series.

Three fourths of the way through the first book I am hating it.

I find myself really despising Gaunt as a Mary Sue, and not really caring about his secret mission to recover the ...yawn...I don't even care what it was.....

Most of all I'm hating the stupid ass rivalry with the Jantine Patricians who are nothing more than 2 dimensional evil cutout evil-doers. Why are they feuding? It seems only because Gaunt is the good guy and therefore they hate him.

Oh and apparently IG regiments shooting each other is ok with high command. Yawn. No wonder we're losing this galaxy.


I really want to like this series....especially since I already bought the next three novels...but so far I'm not feeling it brothers. I find myself wanting to re read Rebel Winter and caring about the Vostroyan firstborn more than the boys from Tanith.


What do you say? Exterminatus?


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## neferhet (Oct 24, 2012)

CJ95 said:


> everyone seems to be saying is the crown jewel of IG stories....the Gaunts Ghosts series


this everyone is a delusional everyone :grin: 
The general level of GW stories is meh.
Gaunt Ghost is good. And that should give you an hint! I think however that the storyes are better in my memory than on the actual pages, i fear...


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## LazyG (Sep 15, 2008)

The first two are the weakest, especially the first one. Number two is a composite fo short stories which are ok but not jaw dropping.It gets really good in Necropolis. Builds an epic scope, new characters that make things more colourful and the darkness settles in better.


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## Doom wolf (Oct 10, 2014)

neferhet said:


> The general level of GW stories is meh.


WHAT ? :angry:

HERESY !! BURN BURN BURN !!!:threaten:

Just kidding... :laugh:

Dan Abnett is one of the best, but that doesn't make it _that_ good on all his novel. I suspect he accepted to work for GW mainly for the cashflow more than for the love of the hobby or the fluff.

He can be clumsy, tough beyond that, his writing quality his quite good. (He's a professional writer, after all.) but sometimes, he's strangely ripping off other's people work.


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## neferhet (Oct 24, 2012)

:laugh:

yes, i like dan abnett in comparison to others writers. Fact is, i struggled to end his novels and i normally leave unfinished all the others BL books. They just can't...it's a good read, when you are 15 or so. But after then, you just enjoy some sparse moment of good writing and the setting, most of all.


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## Tawa (Jan 10, 2010)

First & Only isn't all that bad.

Ghostmaker is all the original short stories bound together as "memories" to fill out what is a relatively short main story.


Now, Necropolis is where the fun begins! A full on Hive-War? Yes please! :good:


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## Doom wolf (Oct 10, 2014)

neferhet said:


> :laugh:
> 
> yes, i like dan abnett in comparison to others writers. Fact is, i struggled to end his novels and i normally leave unfinished all the others BL books. They just can't...it's a good read, when you are 15 or so. But after then, you just enjoy some sparse moment of good writing and the setting, most of all.


Hey ! You want really bad novels ? Just try any random BL books, preferably by Swallows, or maybe Annandale or French on one of his bad days, then _translate_ it, in _french_, by someone who doesn't talk french as his native language in the first place... :crazy:

After that, you will believe there's chaos gods out there ! :russianroulette:

That's THE reason why I started reading Horus Heresy in english... :grin:


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## neferhet (Oct 24, 2012)

Doom wolf said:


> Hey ! You want really bad novels ? Just try any random BL books, preferably by Swallows, or maybe Annandale or French on one of his bad days, then translate it, in french, by someone who doesn't talk french as his native language in the first place...


i guess it will be only half as painful as reading A SOng of FIre and Ice in italian... :biggrin:


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Yeah, the first two books are a bit meh in my opinion - the real gold is The Saint story arc (books 4-8, I think), personally, although a couple of the later ones are equally as good (Traitor General and Only In Death are both very solid - very seldom I shed a tear over a book but the ending of Only in Death? Fuuuuuuck). If you think Gaunt's a Mary Sue in the first few, you'll probably like the later books more, especially Armour of Contempt (which has a bitching trial scene in it when Gaunt's put on trial for chaos corruption). Hell, he has some pretty major flaws in Honour Guard.

I still think Ciaphas Cain is the best IG series though.


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## Angel of Blood (Aug 18, 2010)

Yeah it definitely takes a significant increase in quality from Necropolis onwards. The Saint arc as other have said is probably the best, but the ones that come after are still very good.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

It hasn't aged well. The Gaunts Ghost books are fantastic for when you're getting used to series, but Abnett's writing improved slowly. He learns from his mistakes, and the characters improve.

Admittedly, when THE death occurs (you can see it a mile off), you unfortunately see through it as simply being an author flexing their muscles to show that their characters can die.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Vaz said:


> It hasn't aged well. The Gaunts Ghost books are fantastic for when you're getting used to series, but Abnett's writing improved slowly. He learns from his mistakes, and the characters improve.
> 
> Admittedly, when THE death occurs (you can see it a mile off), you unfortunately see through it as simply being an author flexing their muscles to show that their characters can die.




Oh, I'm not sure - Soric's death was the most feels I've had from a BL book without a doubt, and is up there on my all-time list.


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## CJ95 (Oct 8, 2014)

Well I understand tha most BL stuff is supposed to be on the lite side.

I'm not expecting War and Peace here, but I do like my antagonists a little more developed and not quite so single minded.

Finally finished first book and....meh. A little reference to Dune thrown in at the end did little to help it.


Sitting here looking at a choice between Ghostmaker and Cadian Blood for my next bit of fluff.

Decisions decisions....


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

Cadian Blood is pretty meh-tastic. Like, pretty much generic Guard junk.

If you're really hurting, you can jump to Necropolis. That's actually where I started. It's pretty good. There's a few references to Ghostmaker, but nothing dealbreaking. You can read Necropolis.


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## CJ95 (Oct 8, 2014)

SPOILERS




Okay....against my better judgement i started into Ghostmaker. For a while all is good, I am enjoying the flashback vignettes and the assault on the waterworks on Voltemand.

And then it happens......again.......big rich snooty Regiment orders their artillery to bombard the position of Gaunts Ghosts because...

Because...?


Because hell if I know why. No reason is ever given why.

Two books in a row have rich snooty IG regiments attempt to kill their own allies for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that they are rich and snooty and therefore evil.

Tell me now brothers....in the rest of the Gaunt series does it always come down to the IG attacking itself, because if so Ill stop reading right now.


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## doofyoofy (Mar 8, 2011)

Ill cast my vote for enjoying The first Gaunts Ghosts novel. I never saw Gaunt as a Mary Sue in that book. 

He doesn't really do anything super fantastic that is not supposed to be done by great Commissars. 

Also the Jantine Patricians are arrogant @$$holes which is why they dont get along with Gaunt. This goes right into Dravare, who is both arrogant and ambitious and so doesn't care about his troops as long as he wins in the end.

Dravare is no different from one of the "Friendly Generals" in Rebel Winter who has the spider legs and is amibtious and doesnt care about his troops, though not to the extant that Dravare does.

Also Dravare is noted to be both pompous and highly influential due to family connections IRRC.


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## ckcrawford (Feb 4, 2009)

Not a huge fan, but in my opinion there's so much that can be done by trying to make regular beings extraordinary. It's really hard for me to read some of this type of stuff and not roll my eyes. But it is what it is, and you should kind of expect it when you picked it up. I guess there's just so much you can take. I can accept some words of what he tries to do when he moved some concepts to heresy novels. Otherwise I couldn't finish the series even though many of my friends really liked it. I actually feel ashamed because it's not like me to just give up on something I read even if I despise it. 

I figure it's a matter of taste because everytime I discuss BL novels with my friends, that series always gets mentioned and I hear very positive things about it.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

CJ95 said:


> And then it happens......again.......big rich snooty Regiment orders their artillery to bombard the position of Gaunts Ghosts because...


I thought it was stated pretty clearly? Gaunt's long known emphasis for valuing the lives of his men (note, that the Patricians consider them savages not worth saving) is grating. It's like someone urging you to save your feces for a compost heap...over and over and over again.

Then of course these same piles of shit do something your own vaunted Patricians can't do. That hurts your pride.

Are these commanders upstanding individuals? Hell no. Is it reasonable for a universe to have such men? I think so.

We might look down on these men as unreasonable, but even a few centuries (for some of us, even less!) we were buying and selling people in our own countries and sometimes literally working them to death.

It's about perspective, I suppose.


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## Scrad (Apr 4, 2014)

CJ95 said:


> Most of all I'm hating the stupid ass rivalry with the Jantine Patricians who are nothing more than 2 dimensional evil cutout evil-doers. Why are they feuding? It seems only because Gaunt is the good guy and therefore they hate him.


Isn't it First-and-Only that has a flashback arc spaced in-between chapters to explicitly explain this particular feud? You're missing out if you didn't finish this. Valuable backstory into Gaunt. 

Agreeing that Abnett's skills steadily improved through the GG series - though the first few novels aren't bad, they're just outclassed by later writing. Gaunt4ever


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## CJ95 (Oct 8, 2014)

doofyoofy said:


> Dravare is no different from one of the "Friendly Generals" in Rebel Winter who has the spider legs and is amibtious and doesnt care about his troops, though not to the extant that Dravare does.
> 
> Also Dravare is noted to be both pompous and highly influential due to family connections IRRC.




Im glad you brought up the Vostroyan General in Rebel Winter, because it helps me explain what Im finding so annoying.


I have no problem with rich, snooty, arrogant, pompous, or influential badguys. No problem at all. I do have a problem with baddies who undertake stupid actions that serve no purpose or are extreme overreactions to what the situation called for.

In Rebel Winter the General ordered the heroes to stay behind in an untenable position to cover the retreat of fellow guardsmen. It was a suicide mission true, but one that was called for by the situation at hand.

I accept this as a crappy thing to do, but allowable.

What he did _not do_ was, in the face of massive ork opposition, choose to ignore the true enemy and instead lead loyal Imperial Guard Regiments into an all out attack on the Vostroyan First born.

That would have been insanity.

This is the difference between that story and Gaunt (So far)

I can handle the Ghosts and Patricians having a feud, and I can handle enmity, rivalries, and a few broken bones in that feud. 


What I cannot handle is one Guard Regiment blatantly and openly attacking another on the field of battle in the midst of an ongoing planetary campaign, totally ignoring the real enemy to do so.

That's not being a badguy...that's being dumb and completely inappropriately overreacting to the situation. 


Similarly with Ghostmaker:

I can handle the rich snooty _Bluebloods_ being annoyed at the scuzzy ghosts. I can believe them being embarrassed at how they succeeded in breaching the lines.


Again, what I _cannot_ handle is them somehow making the leap from annoyance to 'lets call in an artillery strike on our own army just because they don't have good table manners.'

Im sorry, but there are a_ millions_ of freaking rag-tag units in the Imperial Guard, and if the few rich ones get their noses bent out of shape every time they get posted nearby...well that's a lot of friendly fire incidents waiting to happen.




(By the way...Jantine _PATRICIANS_.....Royal 50th _BLUE BLOODS....._even the regimental names are synonyms for rich and snooty.)


Now I admit I am just starting the series, and am not aware of things to come, but seeing the same moronic plot device back to back in the first two books just made me shake my head.


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## Reaper45 (Jun 21, 2011)

I think that's kind of the point though, there's millions of rag tag guard units who are extremely competent at their jobs. There's also millions of guard units who are made up of nobles looking only to use that uniform to increase their social standing.

Even in the face of certain annihilation people are still going to fight each other it's a crapsack world and nothing is going to change that.


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## Angel of Blood (Aug 18, 2010)

CJ95 said:


> Snip


As far as I can remember, this sort of thing doesn't happen again in any of the other novels. You may even end up liking some of the Blue Bloods, despite their overwhelming arrogance. Gilbear for instance grew on me eventually, he grew on Gaunt as well for that matter. But no, I'm thinking my way through all the novels and I can't recall any more instances of Regiments turning on each other.

Again, get through Ghostmaker and onto Necropolis, then it really starts to bring the other big Ghosts characters to bear and adds a lot to the story, the like of Varl, Criid, Bonin, Kolea, Curth etc etc. I really do think the dynamic takes a drastic shift from book three, and it's much better for it.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

MidnightSun said:


> Oh, I'm not sure - Soric's death was the most feels I've had from a BL book without a doubt, and is up there on my all-time list.




I did kind of intend Corbec here. However, Soric's was honestly surprising. I'd seen it so obvious, that I thought he would survive to turn the tables.

I guess I expected it to be too readily written, especially after Bragg; sure, Bragg was a friendly character, but he was harmless and basically was like killing a dog in a horror film, and kind of expected as the obvious "showstopper" moment. Colm later on was pretty unsurprising, as Bragg didn't really add anything other than the joker.

It is very obvious analogy, but it was akin to Sharpe losing Harper, as opposed say Harris, or Hagman (why are they all beginning with H?). Hagman or Harris might have been missed, but none of them really would have affected the story as opposed to Harper going. Hence he became too obvious a target, and if there was a target, for me, it would have been Gaunt himself to get the chop, and end the series there, with maybe an epilogue book, but that wouldn't have made the series.

The series does miss a good baddie since Lijah Cuu popped it. Pseudoevil Patricians and Psykers don't really cut it, and I was a bit miffed when Abnett's answer "a wizard did it" came out.


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## Garrak (Jun 18, 2012)

The artilerry is the last time we see something like that, I think. You might dislike a certain bit with the PDF Commissars in Necropolis but I wasn't bothered by it - idiots fighting to sit in the big chair while the house is burning around them are easy to find (sadly). There are still plenty of bits were Gaunt and the Tanith are looked down upon but that's as far as it goes. 

It's really with Necropolis that the cast get's bigger and more interesting things happen. The battles they face are also more diverse:

(no real spoilers, just what each book focuses on battle wise)





-Necropolis: well defended Hive city under siege, several regiments defending it
- Honor Guard: some city fighting but mostly a moving tank and infantry battle though the bocage 
-Guns of Tanith: operation Market Garden, IG style on a toxic planet, the cities are enclosed domes on top of mountains 
- Straight Silver: WWI ..... mostly with Gaunt and the others horrified to see a PDF army fight in that style with modern weapons but having to play along due to politics.
-Sabbat Martyr: utterly non defensible city under siege, there's some political crap but nothing too horrible.
-Traitor General: commando mission on Chaos held world + french resistance 
-His Last Command: battles in odd constructs, Gaunt under suspicion of heresy
-Armor of Contempt: full scale planetary assault. Heavy city fighting with some commando work
-Only in Death: siege of a fortress
-Blood Pact: commando mission again but it's a reverse, this time it's Chaos commandos
-Salvation's Reach: space station assault

There is also Double Eagle (battle of Brittain in 40k) and Titanicus (Titan fights) that are also set in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade.


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## CJ95 (Oct 8, 2014)

I appreciate the replies....even the ones I disagree with.

Again, Its not the rivalries that bother me but the blatant acts of friendly fire which to my mind would be a heinous act swiftly punished by comisars for wasting the emperors resources on personal pettiness.


That said, I will return to Guant eventually but in the meantime I have skipped over to Cadian Blood and am enjoying it immensly thus far.

Thank you for your opinions.


Ave imperator.


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## revan4559 (Aug 9, 2010)

CJ95, I would suggest reading the Caiphas Cain series.


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## darkreever (Apr 3, 2008)

CJ95 said:


> Again, Its not the rivalries that bother me but the blatant acts of friendly fire which to my mind would be a heinous act swiftly punished by comisars for wasting the emperors resources on personal pettiness.


Unless I am mistaken, its been a while since I read Ghostmaker, wasn't the knowledge that the Ghosts were in that location known to only a small number of Volpone? If thats the fase, then Sturmm attempting to eliminate a potential rival (because thats what Gaunts reputation allows him to be) without fear of recrimination. After all, the characters in the story don't know everything you the reader does so its not like Gaunt could prove that the bombardment was intentional.

Also, didn't Heldaine give the Patricians permission to go after the Ghosts?


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## Phoebus (Apr 17, 2010)

I really don't see why the intra-Crusade rivalries are such a deal-breaker. "Allies" have been betraying and fighting each other for millennia now. Peucestas sold out Eumenes by holding his cavalry back at the battle of Gabiene. Julius Caesar fought his erstwhile ally, Pompey, and then Octavian and Mark Anthony played a game of alliance-and-betrayal. Countless soldiers died as a result of such rivalries and duplicities, often without ever knowing the reason why.

This wasn't simply a case of the Jantine Patricians being jerks to the blue-collar Tanith. Hechtor Dravere, their patron for some time, wanted to become Warmaster and take over the Sabbat Crusade. Drake Flense wanted to avenge his father. Ibram Gaunt was their mutual enemy, and the Tanith First-and-Only were in their way.

The bit with the Volpone "Bluebloods" is, admittedly, more awkward. General Notches Sturm never really gives a better reason for wanting to wipe out the Ghosts other than they are an embarrassment to the current Warmaster, Macaroth... but we later find out that the Volpone can be a somewhat imbalanced lot (see the Sabbat Crusade anthology)... so who knows what was going on behind the scenes.


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## CJay (Aug 25, 2010)

I'd throw a full can of Bud Light into the back of your head for this post.


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## Brother Emund (Apr 17, 2009)

CJay said:


> I'd through a full can of Bud Light into the back of your head for this post.


*THROW!* :laugh:


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## CJay (Aug 25, 2010)

Brother Emund said:


> *THROW!* :laugh:


I was so mad at this post, I forgot how to English for a second hahaha.


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