The Founding

Dan Abnett

2007

This is an omnibus edition of the first three Gaunt's Ghosts novels, First and Only, Ghostmaker, Necropolis and the short story In Remembrance. The three books are the first three novels in Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts sequence of books and although the book is called the founding, we don't actually get to see the founding except in flashback as the soldiers of the Tanith First-and-Only recall their dead homeworld and Commisar-Colonel Gaunt who forced them to run from their doomed world and fight the forces of Chaos that had burnt off their planet.

Mostly we get to see fighting, lots and lots of fighting. The base background is the Warhammer 40,000 universe from Games Workshop where the Terran Empire attempts to hold back the unremitting attacks from Chaos and lost amongst the innumerable soldiers fighting for the Emperor are the men from Tanith and their fellow Guardsmen.

Although the violence is unrelenting it is broken up sufficiently by bits of everyday life to nake this rather large tome survivable.

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