March to Other Worlds Day 27 Ciaphas Cain by Sandy Mitchell

Day 27 Ciaphas Cain by Sandy Mitchell

The Ciaphas Cain series stands out in the Warhammer 40,000 collection because of its humorous tone. Based in style on George MacDonald’s Fraser’s Flashman character, Cain is an imperial commissar touted as a people’s hero, but who, according to his own memoirs was actually a self-aggrandizing coward and cad. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Cain truly doesn’t thrive on danger as his reputation suggests, but as you watch him do his job you realize he does do the right thing almost all the time—even if he would have you believe it is for all the wrong reasons. The result is a delightful, light-hearted, adventure story.

 

In the opening book of the series, For the Emperor, Cain takes on a new post and ends up in a complicated struggle between the inhabitants of a world, an alien species trying to take the planet, and the imperial guard. The aliens and the guard each have reasons for trying to keep war from breaking out, but someone on the planet seems determined to turn its cities into bloody battlefields. The action is very straightforward, but what exactly is going on is a mystery worth unravelling. A great first novel for a fun series.