Would have been 4 stars but the last 10 pages were so rushed, and contained so many important things, including major character deaths, that it all felt... over before it had begun.

By the 5th book in the series, it is pretty clear what you get from a Gaunt's Ghosts book. Dan Abnett writes a intense, and action packed story, that does an amazing job a weaving larger conflicts, but primarily through zoomed in, squad to squad action, which makes the fights feel cramped where every casualty counts.

The real strength of the series flows from the variety and spirit Abnett manages to give to individual Ghosts, this makes them more then just numbers, and each death hits hard.

In The Guns of Tanith we get some excellent exploration of the ways the Verghasts and Tanith are joining (or not joining) together. And characters create some tension and problems for Gaunt, beyond just the problems of combat.

A great read as always for Gaunt's Ghosts.

Gaunt book five.

Guns of the Tanith covers an air strike by the Ghosts against a Chaos occupied city. Actually, two. The first is just to sort of establish the situation and the second serves as an assassination mission by a few smaller teams. Between the two strikes there is sort of a Law and Order style crime drama that happens as well. The pacing of this book is sort of strange, but works ok for the content of the story. Book five is about on par with book four: not quite as good as the first trilogy.

This is also the first book where one of the main characters actually dies, which is interesting. Hopefully this sense of mortality continues through the series.

This is my first review for Goodreads. I’ll edit it later. — Later: This was (obviously) my fifth foray into the Sabbat Worlds and Gaunt’s Ghosts. As usual, these are fun, action-packed escapes from reality. However, I find myself enjoying the character moments and the downtime scenes more as the series progresses. There’s some legitimately fun and interesting character work in these stories. It’s been a joy to read them alongside the Sharpe series (I’ve read two of those last year), as there are definite parallels even though they are vastly different takes on war fiction.

This book continues to keep the Tanith First action fresh by adding new elements - atmosphere combat / aerial troop drops in this one - while also doing some interesting character growth.

The surprising death “big deal” scene (if you’ve read it you know what I’m talking about) feels earned if a bit sudden. The series as a whole has a deus ex-y component to some of the endings of the books so far, but that’s an ok topping on your grimdark popcorn. Solid 4 stars.

Best Gaunts ghosts novel so far