Ghostmaker

Ghostmaker takes an anthology approach, weaving together individual stories of the Tanith First-and-Only's soldiers while framing them around a night assault on a Chaos-held world. The structure is deliberate: Abnett uses the regiment's hours of waiting before battle to open windows into the past, showing readers who Rawne, Mkoll, Bragg, Larkin, and a dozen others were before the fires of Tanith made them ghosts.

What the format achieves is a sense of the regiment as a community rather than a backdrop. By the time the assault begins, the reader cares about individuals who had barely registered in the first book. The Chaos forces here serve as atmospheric antagonists; the real subject of each tale is the Imperial Guard soldier carrying it.

Abnett's prose in the shorter stories is tighter and more economical than in First and Only, and several of the vignettes rank among the strongest writing in the entire series. The framing narrative — the assault itself — is also a complete and satisfying military action.

Ghostmaker works best read directly after First and Only, when the characters it illuminates are already familiar faces. It does not function as a starting point for the series, but for readers already invested in the regiment, it delivers exactly what the format promises: the people behind the legend.