Published just two years after the start of the series, Dan Abnett’s Honour Guard is the fourth Gaunt’s Ghosts book, and kicks off the second arc within the series – The Saint. Set on the shrineworld Hagia, birthplace of Saint Sabbat, it sees Gaunt tasked with leading the Imperial liberation efforts, which soon go horribly wrong. With his career in tatters and Chaos reinforcements inbound, he’s sent on a desperate mission to save the most important of the world’s holy relics – the body of the Saint herself – and reclaim some small measure of personal glory.
Well structured and tightly plotted, this is your classic Quest story, predominantly focused on Gaunt leading the bulk of the Tanith on the main mission, but with an interesting subplot revolving around some fan-favourite characters and a few new faces. For the first time it shows Gaunt really on the back foot, lacking his usual confidence and self-belief, which humanises him beyond the standard Imperial Hero stylings (which aren’t bad in any way…but he definitely needed some additional depth). Out of the first four books, this is Gaunt at his most flawed and human, and arguably the most sympathetic we’ve seen him. It’s also interesting to see Abnett playing more with the idea of Gaunt’s two roles clashing, and the implications of that for Gaunt and the Ghosts.
Thematically it carries on the series’ depiction of the Tanith as a regiment looked down upon and mistreated by their superiors, but with an influx of new (or newer) characters who help keep it feeling fresh and interesting. It’s great to see some of the Verghastites bedding in and getting page time, although for longstanding fans of the series it does mean that we also get our first glimpses of the menace-to-be of Lijah Cuu. For a character who apparently wasn’t in the original draft of Honour Guard, only to sneak onto the pages during a hasty rewrite after Abnett lost the original files, he comes freighted with menace right from the get-go. The flip side of Cuu is Kolea, whose tragic arc really begins to come into focus partway through this book.
Quest stories can sometimes drag as characters plod along on their journey, but Abnett keeps the pace up and provides plenty of variety throughout to minimise that drag, even if the ending when it arrives is perhaps a little sudden. The main arc features a fairly rapid succession of set pieces, including a fantastically visceral tank battle, while Gaunt’s character development is supplemented by some great moments among the motley crew of characters within the aforementioned subplot (no spoilers), who get less of the action but more of the interesting dialogue. Overall it’s not quite the gut-punch of Necropolis, but it’s still a powerful story with wide-reaching implications in the series overall, that sets things up nicely for the rest of this arc.
