Commissar Ciaphas Cain is a legend. His bravery is unmatched among The Emperor's servants. His sense of fairness and compassion are without equal in the history of the Officio Prefectus commissariat. His ability to slay The Emperor's enemies is exceeded only by his capability to inspire the men and women under his command. He is THE HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!
He is also a selfish and cowardly man who sincerely believes that his reputation is both nonsense and totally undeserved. He is just trying to survive in a job he never wanted.
This book is a lot of fun to read.
The key thing that makes this work, in my opinion, is the format of the narration. It is a first-person narrative, but it is more than that. It is the autobiography of Ciaphas Cain, which helps with certain problems of the first person narration format. This is not Cain writing down events shortly after they happen, but much later when he is much older. So the events depicted have this reflective air to them. There is no attempt at maintaining suspense, at least with regards to Cain's mortality. Cain regularly references events that occur after what he is currently narrating, so the reader doesn't have to struggle with suspending disbelief regarding whatever danger he finds himself in.
The autobiography is not self-conscious or awkward because the reader is reading a document that exists in-universe. So, yes, Cain is talking to you, Unknown Reader. He is telling you his story in his own cowardly and self-interested words. He is able to do novel-style things like foreshadowing because it is couched in the reflective air of someone reminiscing about things that happened long ago. A phrase similar to "If I had known what danger I was going into, I wouldn't have gone there" serves as foreshadowing, or some joke that makes sense on its own at the time but gains additional meaning later.
What's more, there is an additional step to the frame narrative, and that is what really pulls everything together. You see, "autobiography of Ciaphas Cain" is only one part of it. The other part is that Inquisitor Amberly Vail is the editor of the "Cain Archive", as she calls it. She pulled together Cain's autobiography from small and disorganized pieces that Cain wrote prior to his eventual death. She is the one responsible for making this in-universe autobiography coherent. This then provides a justification for the other limitations in a first person narration.
Amberly adds notes to flesh out some of the things that Cain says. She intersects the autobiographical parts with information from other sources that provide context to the situation, and explain events that are relevant to Cain's adventure that he did not take part in, and thus knew nothing about. So Cain can write his self-focused narrative about how he is a selfish coward who doesn't care about anything but surviving, and it can stay that way. The real life author, Sandy Mitchell, doesn't have to compromise the authenticity of the narrative voice by wedging in necessary information.
In other words, the reader is given the experience of finding the "Cain Archive", written by Ciaphas Cain and edited by Amberly Vail, and then reading it within the Warhammer 40K universe.
It is a fun experience. The jokes that Cain makes, mostly at his own expense, are a good source of comedy, and there is plenty of black comedy as well. Cain derives a certain pleasure from Jurgen's use of a melta during the final mission of "For the Emperor".
The stories themselves are good too. It is not just the narrative framework that makes them fun. The short story at the start of this collection, for instance, makes great use of the narrative framework. One can read Cain's account of his first mission and understand how he sees his actions as utterly self-serving, and then consider the events themselves from an external perspective and understand how so many people started thinking of him as this brave and brilliant hero.
If I had to make one complaint, it would be that the climax for the story "For the Emperor" feels weak. I had the feeling of soggy bread as I read it. The reasoning "the inquisitor had cool tech that I didn't know about" feels like an asspull. However, it is totally appropriate, and would fit in-universe. In fact, I imagine someone who is more familiar with the gear that Inquisitors' have access to from playing a Warhammer 40K game would pick up on the foreshadowing. To me, it felt like an asspull rather than a Chekhov's Gun. As much as I dislike that, I don't feel justified in lowering the grade as a result, given the rest of the book as a whole.
Trickster Eric Novels gives "Ciaphas Cain - HERO OF THE IMPERIUM" an A+
Click here for my previous book review: Bofuri: I don't want to get hurt so I'll max out my defense
Click here for my previous book review: So I'm a Spider, So What? (light novel 3)
Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).
His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.
