Cadian Honour

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The characters are too inept to engage interest and the only sympathetic character is an artist's apprentice who will do anything to survive, including becoming a murderer and crazed cultist. Yet among the few survivors of Cadia was a handful of Imperial heroes who had successfully escaped the destruction of the Fortress World with the aid of the newborn Aeldari faction known as the Ynnari. The combined forces fled through a Webway gate found on the ice moon of Klaisus in the Cadian System. Despite millennia of study, the Adeptus Mechanicus failed to discover the purpose of the pylons. Servitors sent within invariably ceased to function or suffered circuit overload; all attempts to breach the structures' gleaming surfaces met with failure. Any recovered data was fragmentary at best, and contradictory at worst. Even the identity of the pylons' creators was shrouded in mystery. Nous nous retrouvons donc au début du roman sur l'orbite au-dessus de Cadia et plusieurs régiments descendent sur la planète ; des millions de soldats cadiens reviennent sur leur planète. Il est dit qu'un soldat cadien ne revoit jamais sa planète natale après être parti pour la guerre, rares sont ceux et celles qui y sont retournés. On retrouvons quelques personnages que nous suivrons tout au long de l'histoire dont le seigneur castellant Ursarkar E. Creed ainsi que le général Grüber et le major Bendikt. Also hitting shelves this weekend is a Minka Lesk: The Last Whiteshield , a massive omnibus collecting all five of the previous Minka Lesk stories in one place, the perfect introduction to this character and her exploits.

Your warriors would never flag in the line of duty, but if they did… well, it would be the Commissar’s duty to remind them of their loyalties. This stern (and more than a little intimidating) miniature can swap their chainsword for a power sword if the threat of combat warrants it. Attilan Rough RidersThe first BL fiction released to explore the events of the Fall of Cadia, this begins just before the events of The Battle of Tyrok Fields but mostly covers the main thrust of Abaddon’s invasion, shown from a variety of Cadian perspectives. Interestingly, while Ursarkar E. Creed does briefly appear, this is definitely not his story – instead it introduces Major Isaia Bendikt and a certain Whiteshield named Minka Lesk (as well as carrying over a few characters from Hill’s Creed stories), and offers a sort of ‘grunts-eye’, boots-on-the-ground view of the planet’s final hours. It’s really good, just don’t expect the full big picture – that’s not quite what this is. If you’re a fan of Inquisitor Greyfax, this four-part audio drama is the next step in her story after Eye of Night. It also heavily features Saint Celestine, and has brilliant performances from Katherine Tate (Greyfax) and Emma Gregory (Celestine). I wouldn’t say it was essential to the ongoing story, but it provides a good look at the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition post-Great Rift.

Note: The Cadian Gate was guarded by the Astartes Praeses but also by elements of 21 other Chapters deployed across the Cadian Sector. JH: Minka Lesk is the Cadian who starts Cadia Stands (‘She is four. It is time to learn….’) now grown up, and still reeling from the fall of the Cadian Gate. She’s the pivotal character, and the face of the book – one of the best BL covers I’ve seen – which is awesome!Anyway, that's just my opinion and there are some scenes that work in it. If you feel like it could be an enjoyable read for you, feel free to try it! Some 40 standard years before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, Cadia was a world inhabited by a primitive race of violet-eyed humans who worshipped the four Chaos Gods, probably a remnant of Mankind that had turned to the Ruinous Powers during the hardships of the Age of Strife. Prompted by the so-called Pilgrimage of the Primarch Lorgar of the Word Bearers Legion to discover whether or not the Gods once worshipped by adherents of the Old Faith of the Word Bearers' homeworld of Colchis actually existed, Lorgar journeyed with his Word Bearers Legion's Chapter of the Serrated Sun to what was then the fringes of known Imperial space as part of the 1301st Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade. ToW: Are you planning more Cadian/Minka stories after this, or is this the last we’ll see of them from you?

JH: With any Imperial Guard novels you’re starting in Dan Abnett’s shadow. And Dan is one of the toughest acts to follow. But away from 40K, I wanted to play with a George RR Martin way of telling the story. He has a large cast of disparate characters who allow him to show all the facets of a story. It’s an interesting style to read and write as you are really immersed into the present moment and challenges of each viewpoint character, but it also allows you to keep the pace of the novel sprinting along… The storm raged for solar minutes that seemed eternities, and then fell away into hurricane winds. They blew over a world forever altered. The continent of Cadia Tertius was gone, obliterated by fire and drowned beneath howling seas. The Krian Fault, bane of the continent of Cadia Tertius since the Age of Strife, had ruptured one last, fateful time, and the planetary crust split apart. From the air, Kasr Derth looked like an intricate angular puzzle. Given the Cadians' mettle and their skills at urban warfare, a kasr could be held street by street, metre by metre, for solar months if not standard years.The point at which the old ‘5 minutes to midnight’ 40k setting started to change was when Games Workshop started building up to the Great Rift, the huge Warp storm which has split the galaxy in two. Big events included the fall of Cadia, the troubled birth of Ynnead (the aeldari god of the dead), and the miraculous resurrection of Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines. For the sake of ease I’ve referred to this whole era as the Gathering Storm. The Emperor forced the entire Legion to kneel against their will through the use of his psychic might and then explained that they were the only Astartes Legion to have failed his purpose on the Great Crusade. After this humiliation Lorgar, on the advice of his First Captain Kor Phaeron and the Word Bearers First Chaplain Erebus, decided to undertake a Pilgrimage to discover if the Gods worshipped by the ancient Old Faith of Colchis were real and worthy of the Word Bearers' faith and allegiance. Had Cadia not been famous for holding so long against the odds, it is likely the other planets in the system would have capitulated or given up almost immediately. No normal world could stand in the face of the horrendous, sanity-devouring armies that descended upon the Cadian Gate in such terrifying measure. However, the wider systems of Cadia, Belis Corona, and Agripinaa stood fast.

One of the major marketing ploys for this book is to frame it around Minka Lesk. Minka is a survivor of Cadia and played a part in Cadia Stands. While I don’t think her parts of Stands were particularly stand out, we get to spend a lot more time with her here and delve deep into her character. However, while this is meant to be her book she doesn’t play a particularly important role in the overall narrative. This is especially true for the latter third of the story. This makes the initial set up for her story arc a bit confusing and means we don’t get a satisfying payoff. For me, this seems like subtitling this as a Minka Lesk story was a marketing decision rather than one made by the author, Justin D. Hill. So temper your expectations on that account. Shadowsword continues the story of the Baneblade crew as they join a Shadowsword super-heavy artillery company as close support. With the fate of three star systems in the balance, the tank’s commander faces harsh truths about the nature of the Imperium and his place in it, giving you a different perspective on the duty and honour of the Astra Militarum. Now the Guardsmen and women of Cadia find themselves without a world to call their own. With no home, no way to re-populate their regiment when they inevitably take losses, they are, quite literally, the last of a dying breed.I haven’t read this, the third book in the Dawn of Fire series, so I can’t say too much about it. From what I understand though, it changes the focus of the series away from Imperial forces battling Chaos and onto the Space Wolves facing off against the greenskin menace led by the legendary ork warlord Ghazgkhull Thraka. The whole premise of Cadia’s fall seemed horribly beautiful and appealing to me as a fan of Warhammer 40,000. Unfortunately, I can’t say that my interest was in any way sated after reading Cadian Honour. The book starts relatively well, but then it settles into what I can only describe as mind-numbing tedium for the first 65% or so. That’s not to say that there isn’t some good old-fashioned grim-style violence, but it just felt like it all was more ‘for the sake of putting it in’ rather than for furthering the story.