# The Ciaphas Cain Books by Sandy Mitchell



## Werthead (Dec 2, 2010)

*Ciaphas  Cain 1: For the Emperor*



> Commissar Ciaphas Cain has a formidable reputation: an outstanding  soldier, an inspiring officer and a terror to the enemies of the  God-Emperor of Mankind. However, it is completely unearned. Cain  actually spends his missions desperately trying to stay out of trouble  and trying to find the best place to hunker down and ride out any  conflict. Instead, he finds that events conspire to place him on the  front lines and in the most dangerous hotspots.
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> This  time, Cain has been assigned to a regiment of Valhallan troopers which  has been cobbled together out of two former single-sex units. With the  soldiers of the formation mistrustful and resentful of one another, Cain  must find a way of integrating the two sides before their new mission  can even get underway. Their new assignment is Gravalax, a world on the  border of the Tau Empire. Highly unusually for the Imperium, which  prefers war and genocide over diplomacy and negotiation, Gravalax's  exposed position on a salient into Tau territory means that it relies on  the goodwill of its Tau neighbours to survive. When the Tau Ambassador  is assassinated and war threatens to erupt, it falls to Cain, an  Imperial Inquisitor and a penal detachment of condemned murderers to  save the day.
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## Rodders (Dec 3, 2010)

I really enjoyed this omnibus. The next one's due out soon i believe.


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## Clansman (Dec 3, 2010)

I like the "cross between Baldrick and Gregor Clegane" comment.  Priceless!


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## Werthead (Dec 7, 2010)

*Ciaphas  Cain 2: Caves of Ice*



> Commissar Ciaphas Cain continues to relate his honest, self-deprecating  memoirs to an appreciative audience (albeit only of a few high-ranking  Inquisitors who have the necessary security clearance to read it). In  this episode, he relates the deployment of the Valhallan 597th to the  frigid (and nonsensically-named) iceworld of Simia Orichalcae, which is  an important source of promethium to the Imperium. An ork raiding force  has arrived on the planet and the Imperial Guard must mount a defence of  the primary mining installation. But, in the caves underneath the  complex, another threat is stirring...
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> _Caves of Ice_ is the second *Ciaphas Cain* novel (of seven so far published) and is, once again, a comedic book in the vein of George MacDonald Fraser's *Flashman* novels (with an added pinch of *Blackadder*),  though Mitchell adds enough flourishes to avoid being derivative. In  this book Cain's troops must defend a vital installation from enemy  attack. Trying to find somewhere safe to ride out the battle, Cain  volunteers to accompany a scouting party into the caves under the  installation to ensure there isn't a way behind their lines, only to  encounter some pretty horrific events and end up, once again, in the  thick of the action.
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## Werthead (Dec 11, 2010)

*Ciaphas  Cain 3: The Traitor's Hand*



> When a Chaos fleet breaks through Imperial lines and heads for Adumbria,  the Valhallan 597th (and its increasingly famous commissar, Ciaphas  Cain) and several other regiments are rapidly mobilised to intercept  them. On Adumbria - a world tidally locked to its star and characterised  by burning deserts and freezing icy conditions - Cain and his troops  are spread thin, so they must bolster the morale of the native Planetary  Defence Force. Cain, as usual, decides to find a nice rear-echelon  position where he can avoid most of the combat. Also as usual, his luck  doesn't quite work out as he finds himself battling Chaos Marines,  unearthing secretive cults and pitting his wits against a rival  commissar out to ruin him.
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> This third *Ciaphas Cain*  novel sees the titular semi-hero once again thrust unwillingly into  danger and adventure, and his every attempt to avoid it goes hideously  wrong, once again leaving him festooned with medals and plaudits  (despite the number of times that it his extremely smelly aide, Jurgen,  who actually saves the day). _The Traitor's Hand_ is a step-up from the claustrophobic, repetitive _Caves of Ice_  by having Cain play a larger role in the defence of an entire planet  from a Chaos army, with him moving from defending the capital to  consulting the army's commanding officers to fighting in the field with  his troops to storming enemy bases. It is with this book that the *Flashman*-in-space  label starts to look even less appropriate, with Cain's reluctance to  rush into the most dangerous places becoming less convincing (the  occasional footnote interjection by Inquisitor Veil seems to agree with  this) given the number of extremely hazardous scrapes he gets into here.
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## Rodders (Dec 27, 2010)

I picked up the second omnibus today. Ciaphas Cain: Defender of teh Imperium.


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## Werthead (Mar 10, 2011)

*Ciaphas Cain 4: Death or Glory*



> Commissar Ciaphas Cain's adventures continue! This time we return to the beginning of his career, when he is still assigned to the 12th Valhallan Field Artillery. With the last few cushy years of the assignment on Keffia coming to an end, Cain and his unit are reassigned to Perlia, a world which has been deadlocked between the Imperium and a huge Ork invasion force for some months. Cain and his forces are part of a reinforcing army, but the Orks, aware that they are on their way, have laid a trap in the Warp. With Cain's ship heavily damaged, he and his constant companion Jurgen bail out in an escape pod and crash-land thousands of miles behind enemy lines, with hundreds of thousands of Orks lying between them and salvation. Cain, reluctantly, has to find his way through the Ork lines back to safety, only to find himself saddled with a band of gung-ho rebels and a train of civilian refugees...
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> Death or Glory is the fourth Ciaphas Cain novel and author Sandy Mitchell decides to shake things up a little by rewinding to his early days when he wasn't as well-known with such a formidable reputation. On the one hand it's sad not to see the familiar faces of the Valhallan 597th knocking around, but on the other Mitchell's decision to shake things up pays off handsomely, as Death or Glory is the best book in the sequence to date.
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## Werthead (Mar 20, 2011)

*Ciaphas Cain #5: Duty Calls*



> A planet-wide insurrection has broken out on Periremunda, necessitating  the deployment of the Imperial Guard to the planet to help crush it. The  Valhallan 597th is part of the deployment, along with its increasingly  legendary commissar, Ciaphas Cain, hero of the Imperium. As usual, Cain  hopes for a quiet, simple assignment where he can sit out the trouble,  and also as usual he finds himself instead at the cutting edge of  danger. This time, a simple rebellion is revealed to mask a whole number  of other threats which Cain and his ever-faithful aide Jurgen have to  deal with. In this case, operations are complicated by Periremunda's  unique geography, a world of burning, uninhabitable deserts with settled  plateaus rising above them.
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> _Duty Calls_ is the fifth *Ciaphas Cain* novel and, disappointingly, is a little bit of a let-down after the terrific _Death or Glory_.  The good news is that we are reunited with the Valhallans 597th and  also with Inquisitor Amberley Veil and her retinue of demented allies.  The bad news is that Mitchell has seriously dialled down the humour and  amusing references in this book. There are a few (mostly restricted to  the footnotes and the extracts from General Sulla's ludicrously  bombastic memoirs that provide a commentary on events where Cain is not  present), but this is a more serious novel than its predecessors.
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## Werthead (Apr 5, 2011)

*Ciaphas  Cain #6: Cain's Last Stand*



> After eighty years on the front lines, Commissar Ciaphas Cain is  enjoying a relatively quiet semi-retirement tutoring students on Perlia,  the site of one of his greatest victories. The period of peace is  rudely interrupted when the hordes of Chaos, led by Abaddon the  Despoiler, launch a vast invasion of the Imperium through the Eye of  Terror. Fortunately, Perlia is on the other side of the galaxy to the  main battlefront. Unfortunately, a major Chaos battle fleet is on its  way to invade the planet and seize an ancient relic that Cain has dealt  with before...
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> _Cain's Last Stand_ is the sixth (of seven so far) books in the *Ciaphas Cain*  series and sees author Sandy Mitchell fast-forwarding to near the end  of his protagonist's career, right up almost to the 'present day' of the  *Warhammer 40,000* setting.  Thanks to the SF setting, Cain and his constant companion Jurgen are  still hale and going strong, though they're a bit more seasoned and  experienced than earlier books focusing on their earlier days. Cain is  somewhat less cowardly and more commanding here and has evolved into a  fine tutor of commissariat students, trying to imbue them with a degree  of common sense and intelligence in their dealings with demoralised  troops. With Perlia in danger of attack and the planet's defenders  mostly being inexperienced soldiers, it falls to Cain and his students  to keep morale high in the face of overwhelming enemy numbers.
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