First And Only

First of the books from the Gaunt’s Ghosts series by Dan Abnett.

First time I’m reading a novel focusing on the Imperial Guard, which is nice. My main take is that it illustrates the scale issues Luetin09 talks about semi-regularly.

Spoilers Ahead

Couple of things struck me here. Naturally the heroes of this series being the guardsmen, we expect them to have some plot armor. Unless you want to read a novel about a Doom slaughtermap from the imp’s perspective that’s fine. However, they are also given plot cannons.

The Ghosts encounter some Chaos Marines that they dispatch quite easily just with lasguns. If it’s also so easy for the other side, then the tens ouf thousands of Space Marines would not do squat against the billions of guardsmen.

Same, at some point they mortally wound an inquisitor. I get that this is realistic, a close encounter with the business end of a shotgun will do its job, but lore-wise this seems improbable.

My favorite part is the description of the corrupted STC.

It also puts a huge doubt on how did the humanity ever struggle to fight against the men of iron, if a small detachment of grunts can dispatch a dozen, just with lasguns.