Gaunt's Ghosts
After the restart of my Inquisitor! game I have been really excited about the campaign in general, and wanted to do some reading about the Warhammer 40K universe in order to get more of the "feel" of the setting. I had previously read the "Eisenhorn" series by Dan Abnett, which I thought was good, if not great literature, and was looking for more. My initial thought was the "Ravenor" series, which also deals with the Inquisition, but the local Borders was out of stock. I was on the verge of ordering online when I stumbled across the first two "Gaunt's Ghosts" omnibuses (omnibusi?) at a used book store in Eureka for $6.00 apiece. Seven books for $12.00 looked like a pretty good deal to me, so I picked them up and settled in for some heavy immersion into the 40k setting.
I won't bore you all with a long, detailed description of the books themselves - that's what wikipedia is for after all. It's good, crunchy, military science fiction, clearly influenced by authors such as David Drake, and drawing a lot of its inspiration from military actions of the 20th century. There's lots of shooting, lots of explosions, lots of blasting of heretical chaos scum, and from that perspective it's a fun read if you are into that sort of thing.
More important for me, there are lots of good descriptions of various exotic locales within the Imperium that I can use - from the shrine world of Sabbat (where worship of the Emperor and Saint Sabbat have a decidedly Tibetan flavor), to firefights in the heavily industrialized Vervanhive during a chaos insurrection, to airborne assaults on the vapor mills of Phantine there are a wide variety of locations that give a feel for the diversity of the worlds of the Imperium.
Most of the actual fighting is beyond the scope of an Inquisitor! game - PCs should not be bogged down in wars of attrition or spend their time sniping at nameless chaos mooks - but the books certainly give a feel for what life in the Guard is like (though one gets the impression that Gaunt is one of those "kinder, gentler" type Commissars who would never stoop to shooting one of his troopers in the back for cowardice). There are also a wide variety of characters that can be stolen as NPCs, and though most of them are, as one might exect, Guardsmen, there are also some Inquisitors, Clerics, nobles, and even some Scum that are sufficiently developed for use as NPCs.
Of course I can't read the series without thinking of my old Rogue Trader era Imperial Guard army, back in the days when "Imperial Guard" meant "Cannon Fodder, and lots of it!", when tanks were things that your flamer operator wore on his back, and if you could put together a scratch force of squad strength at the end of the game to keep your company banner flying you had probably managed to win some sort of pyrric victory. Those great old days of Imperial Guard Beastman platoons, when the Guard actually had medics, and your officers flew around on jetbikes before tumbling out of the sky in a horrible fireball.
Memories....
Aside from their utility as a mine for RPG material, I don't think I could recommend the books unreservedly. If you liked the "Hammer's Slammers" series, you will like these books. If you are looking for something with a bit more depth, try the Eisenhorn series instead.
The Emperor protects!
