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Title: His Last Command
Series: WH40K: Gaunt's Ghosts #9
Author: Dan Abnett
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 361
Words: 98K

Synopsis:

Gaunt and most of his crew make it off Gereon after 16months of fighting a guerilla war. Suspected of Chaos Taint, the entire team is slated for execution without hearing one word of whether Gaunt's mission was a success or not. One lone Commissar believes Gaunt and gets him an audience the man leading his sector, the man who sent Gaunt to Gereon in the first place. Due to their actions and continued suspicion of Taint, Gaunt is stripped of his field command becomes just a Commissar again. The other Tanith's are folded back into the regiment that the rest of the Tanith have been integrated with.

The current battle is to take some sacred domes that appear to be made in the Emperor's honor from the 31st millennium. Gaunt proves that the whole setup is a Chaos trap to end the Sabbat Worlds war. A last minute evacuation allows the space forces of man to wipe the planet clean. Gaunt is proved correct and the suspicion of Chaos, by the Inquisitors anyway, is removed. Whether Gaunt is given back his Colonel'cy remains to be seen.

My Thoughts:

Well, Abnett just ignores how Gaunt and his get off Gereon. Ok, he gives it some lip service and a mention of their guerilla warfare but really, it is just glossed over like a cutscene from an old video game. I do have to admit that Gaunt came across as rather dumb in the beginning. He acts like he's never dealt with chaos taint or what things look like from an outsiders view. And honestly, given how severely the Empire deals with taint, he should just be thankful they did make it out alive.

Other than that, I had no complaints about this. The Tanith and Vergestites are folded into yet another undermanned company and make up a full company. The leader of said company is loved by all and gets killed, so you know that in another book, two at most, Gaunt is going to take over and make them all Ghosts. If the Ghosts were chocolate pudding in the first book, by this time they've had so much vanilla pudding added that they are neither chocolate or vanilla. But they aren't tapioca, so that is all that matters!

Lots of action and fighting, so absolutely no issues on that front. Thankfully, that side of these books is staying pretty consistent.

Ps, I am going to start hosting only the bigger pix on google drive. 22K covers are not going to be an issue. That way I don't have to change the way I write my reviews, which is the worst of sins in my book (hence why I am so against the block editor).

★★★☆½ ( )

In the 9th Ghaunt's Ghost novel the Comissar and his team returns from the Chaos infected world, just to find themselves in a different hell where they have to fight against not just the hordes of Chaos but the Army's ever suspecting Intelligence... ( )

Gaunt is back. In the last installment Gaunt was sent with a small contingent of commandos to a chaos held world in order to assassinate a rogue commander. He was not expected to make it back alive. At the beginning of this book Gaunt arrives in imperial space and is arrested and held for chaos taint. He and his men are reassigned to a conflict world and must prove that they are innocent. Dan Abnett creates characters and situations that are so real it is easy to loose yourself in the fiction. ( )