On the shattered world of Verghast, Gaunt and his Ghosts find themselves embroiled within an ancient and deadly civil war as a mighty hive-city is besieged by an unrelenting foe.
Listen to it because: The return of a classic Gaunt's Ghosts novel! The Tanith First deploy to Verghast to help break the Chaos siege of Vervunhive. Tanks clash with daemon engines, Imperial Guardsmen make brave last stands and Colonel-Commissar Gaunt steps up and takes control of the war effort, showing for the first time the command abilities that will go on to make him a legend.
The story: On the world of Verghast, a grinding war between two hive cities - one loyal to the Imperium, the other fallen to the worship of the Dark Gods - is bolstered by the forces of the Astra Militarum, spearheaded by the Colonel-Commissar Gaunt and the Tanith First and Only. But bitter rivalries and treachery threaten to derail the defence of Vervunhive, and it falls to Gaunt to take command of the Imperial forces and forge victory from an almost certain defeat.
Much as I appreciate Abnett's world building skills, and boy does he have them in spades, I feel its a little over-the-top to have almost three hours of scene setting and character building in a ten hour audiobook. Were you paid by the word for this one Dan? It wouldn't be so bad if the characters that were being built up were members of the ongoing series, most of them are just in this one novel to be foils for Gaunt and the Ghosts to combat. That being said once the Ghosts do arrive the action is non-stop with some nice political intrigue to add that spice we all love.
All in all I enjoyed this read of Necropolis as much this time via audiobook as I did reading the original novel almost a quarter century ago. If you're interested in the lore of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and want something more than genetically engineered super-soldiers you won't go far wrong with the Gaunt's Ghosts series and this despite the prologue indulgence is pretty damn good.
