History Literature / GauntsGhosts

** In Warmaster [[spoiler: Meryn and his flunkies hatch a half-baked scheme to extort money from Gaunt’s son, Felyx. The scheme immediately goes awry when Felyx proves to be a girl and much tougher than they thought. This leads to one of them immediately trying to kill Felyx, which fails but leads to three deaths and an equally half-baked coverup by Meryn, who keeps trying to murder his way out of the hole he’s dug for himself. Meryn is not good at organized crime, and the Galaxy is better off without him.]]

** The entirety of V Company. The Tanith are a combat formation, so it comes as a bit of a shock when they’re assigned a color-band. Nobody gives V Company any respect and they’re chronically held out of the fighting, which drives their first company commander into a brutal downward spiral. After the Liberation of Urdesh the Ghosts struggle coming up with a candidate for a new captain who won’t consider the command an insult.

* StealthInsult: ''Pheguth'' is already a grievous insult in [[BlackSpeech the Chaos language]], meaning DirtyTraitor... but try saying it out loud.
** [[spoiler:[[DontExplainTheJoke For those who don't get it,]] it comes out as "Faggot".]]

* TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: In ''In Rememberance'', Rawne tells the unconscious Gaunt that he can't die, because Rawne wants to kill him. [[spoiler: He eventually decides that this isn't the death he wants for Gaunt, although he still wants to be there to see it.]]

** ''Double Eagle'' is the Battle of Britain and the earlier Battle of France with vector-engined supersonic jet fighters.

* RecycledInSPACE: Abnett takes familiar historical battle settings and transposes them to the 40k universe. ''The Guns of Tanith'' features an Operation Market Garden-esque mass paradrop... onto a mountaintop city sticking out of poisonous clouds. ''Straight Silver'' has UsefulNotes/WorldWarI trench fighting... with lasers. ''Double Eagle'' is the Battle of Britain and the earlier Battle of France with vector-engined supersonic jet fighters. ''Necropolis'' seems to be somewhat based off of the Battle of Stalingrad itself, with the intense urban fighting that goes on. ''The Vincula Insurgency'' (Ghost Dossier 1) is a War on Terror-esque nation-building exercise on a recently conquered but only nominally pacified planet.

* ManOnFire: An inevitability whenever the Tanith flamers arrive on the field.

[[caption-width-right:263: As the Emperor protects, so must we. ]]

The books follow Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt and the Tanith First-and-Only, a single regiment within the trillions-strong [[RedshirtArmy Imperial Guard]]. Nicknamed the "Ghosts", the series focuses on the Tanith's experiences as a tiny part of a vast decades-long crusade to liberate the Sabbat Worlds from Chaos. Written in a style reminiscent of Bernard Cornwell's massively successful ''Literature/{{Sharpe}}'' series, the series has been well received, its strong points including believable battles, capturing the "feel" of the gothic far-future ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', and a realistic portrayal of the Imperial Guard as actual humans. ''Gaunt's Ghosts'' is the longest-running and the most successful book series set in the 40k universe written by a single author. (Only ''[[Literature/HorusHeresy The Horus Heresy]]'' beats it out on both number of volumes and sales, but that's a collaborative effort of many writers.)

** WordOfGod: "People seem to like them. I'll keep writing until they don't anymore or, as I've said, until I've killed everybody-whichever is soonest."

-->"So throw that shit away and start observing the chain of command, or I’ll have Leyr shoot you with his ridiculously big rifle. No, no, worse than that. I’ll have Cant mow you down with his stubber. Then there’d be shame involved."

* CitadelCity: Vervunhive, in ''Necropolis'' is a substantial example. (How effective is it? [[MeaningfulName The title means]] [[DoomedHometown "city of the dead"]].) Cities on Phantine are also easily defensible, thanks to the way they're surrounded by poisonous clouds and can only be attacked by air. The Doctrinopolis on Hagia is a more medieval-themed example.

* CommissarCap: In ''His Last Command'', when Ludd is sent to get troops to the battlefield, he loses his cap getting there — across the battlefield — and their first question for him when he said he was a commissar was to ask where his hat was. (He gets them to the battlefield anyway.)

** In the Sabbat Worlds Crusade spinoff ''Titanicus'', a member of Adeptus Mechanicus reveals a purported proof that the Omnissiah and the Emperor are not one and the same, contrary to the accepted Imperial dogma. This results in almost total rupture within the Mechanicus order and with the Imperial forces, with religious disputes quickly causing factions to fight both each other and the blasphemous machine men / uneducated fleshbags arrayed against them -- ''while'' their planet is being invaded. [[spoiler: Fortunately, Varco's HeroicSacrifice revealed more invaders, so they went to fight them instead. One conspirator, lamenting that {{Fire Forged Friends}}hip would prevent support, reveals that the evidence had been tampered with before it was distributed, as part of a power ploy. Afterward, they do [[LampshadeHanging notice]] that "this was a power ploy" [[DebateAndSwitch does not exactly exclude]] "this was true."]] They decide to [[spoiler:black it out anyway, because even if true, the ensuing schism would be fatal to both sides]].

* IfIWantedYouDead: In ''His Last Command'', when Gaunt [[HostageSituation takes Commissar Kanow hostage]], he points out that he could have killed him and didn't. ([[HangingJudge Kanow]] is unpersuadable. Gaunt has his men overpowered and gets Ludd, the junior commissar, to make the contacts he needs to prove his identity.)

-->''"I'll leave when my duty's done, sir," said Ludd. "Let's get the men out."''

** Dorden complains about his patients making light of their injuries by saying they're "[[OnlyAFleshWound just flesh wounds]]." "I've had people say that who [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail were missing a leg!"]]

* SlasherSmile: Lijah Cuu has one of these. In ''Straight Silver'', it is explicitly noted that "the most evil servants of Chaos would have killed to have a smile that lethal."

* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Sobile from ''Armour of Contempt'' is a more traditional [=Warhammer 40K=] commissar. He executes his men and uses a whip to inspire his men. Surprisingly enough, he survives. (More precisely, it's surprising ''anybody'' in that unit survived, but particularly surprising that he didn't die in suspicious circumstances.)

* VaguenessIsComing: "The Nine are coming," as [[spoiler:Soric's psychic messages]] keep on insisting.

*** Hark is a particularly interesting example. On one occasion he sees some soldiers running from combat. When he attempts to rally them, they ignore him. He lets him go, and is promptly asked why he didn't shoot them, to which he basically replies that it would be a waste of time. Instead, [[spoiler:he shoots their commanding officer, for abject failure to train and motivate his men]]. Even this was an evolution for him where he had previously threatened to shoot troopers for their entirely reasonable retreat from a traitor Baneblade.

** In the aftermath of the [[spoiler:"Yoncy"/the first woe machine's rampage in ''Anarch'', her brother Dalin reveals to Kolea what she had said to him, ''[[ManchurianAgent he's the second):]]]]''

* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Cuu]] again, in ''Sabbat Martyr.'' And about damn time too.