Cadian Honour

[Roomsky]

Picked up the paperback this week and I'm about a hundred pages in so far. I'm already really impressed with it, probably more so than I was with Stands. The cast is really believable to far, and I love what Hill is doing with the Imperium's reaction to Cadian troops. BL pulls through again with turning 8th ed. 40k from a publicity stunt into a really organic facet of the setting.

[Gederas]

Incidental detail. Well, really, it was a possible story thread, that I decided I didn't need and left in as false lead to keep the reader guessing. 

 

 

Edit: though maybe it will be the start of a new thread... 

What is it with Commisars and recaff/tea? We have this one who's suspicious of too-good recaff, Cain with his fascination with Tanna tea.... And iirc, doesn't Gaunt also have a thing for one of those?

 

Seriously, is there a thing with BL writers that "Commissars must have drink choices involved" or something?

 

Also: You tease

[DukeLeto69]

Aaaarrrgghhh so many good BL books to read. Need to finish Rites of Passage, Terminal Overkill and Honourbound before I can start this (1st world problems)

[Roomsky]

Cadian Honour - Justin D. Hill

 

This was a great Guard book. Most impressively, it's a great guard book whether or not you've read Cadia Stands, which in retrospect seems more a prequel than a first installment. Lesk and Bendikt are both given excellent introductions here, and if I'd never read Stands I wouldn't have batted an eye and assumed this was the first involving these characters. Even better, it still rewards those who have read Stands with a bunch of fun callbacks, and their arcs are continued, despite being at a good introductory spot as well.

 

Hill's writing is terse, and it lends a great energy to the book. The combat is varied, if maybe a bit drawn out in the action preceding the finale, and the cast is very human. I love seeing what the Cadians have to deal with in the wake of the 13th Black Crusade, and I love seeing Lesk struggle with a sudden and perhaps unwarranted promotion. I also have a personal bias for the ecclesiarchy, they're my favourite faction and I'll always praise a book that gives them more time in the sun.

 

The books issues aren't necessarily minor, so much as they don't detract much from what makes the book worth reading. The Brotherhood are great antagonists until they aren't; I'm sure an effort was made to make Drakul-Zar cast a menacing shadow over the plot but it doesn't really work. He just doesn't have the presence he needs to make the climax as meaningful as it could be, and Carkal and Pitt barely get satisfying comeuppance for all the atrocities they committed throughout. The wide cast seems a staple of these books, and while I think it works for the most part, around the 2/3rds mark there were a few times I was asking myself "who are you and why am I reading about you instead of Lesk, Carkal, Bendikt, or the Chief Enforcer?" The slightest of reigning in next time would go a long way, I think.

 

Despite the issues, this is a great read. I'd recommend it to any guard fans, or anyone wanting more texture added to the 8th ed. world.

 

ANR: 8/10

[Knockagh]

Just finished this and Roomsky has pretty much said it all. Great guard fiction from Justin once again. All the right ingredients.

I certainly would have liked to have seen Carkal and Pitt (particularly Carkal) get a bit more of a kicking. What an odious self righteous snake Carkal is. Proper scumbag.

I felt the parallel stories of the chief of police, the brotherhood characters, the richstars and the ecclesiastical community all helped the story and didn’t hinder Lesks tale.

The Cadian series has done the best job of showing the human turmoil of the imperium in the period just after the great rift. The tragedy of the often forgotten but inevitable clouds of refugees chasing sanctity in the face of a marauding horde is covered well. Along with the difficulties dealing with this crisis causes.

I really hope Justin is already writing the next instalment. The two books so far have, by a long stretch, been the best guard fiction since the early Ghosts books.

[Matcap86]

Just finished it and can only echo the opinions above. This book and Cadia Stands have been among the most enjoyable BL books I've read lately. Highly recommended.

[Redrandy93]

based on what I have read here I have to order both books.   VBG

[JustinDHill]

I really hope Justin is already writing the next instalment. The two books so far have, by a long stretch, been the best guard fiction since the early Ghosts books.

 

 

Knockagh: That's awesome! Humbling, in fact because that is just what I'd want as a reader response. In terms of next installment. Yup. It's a word file at the moment. And I'm learning with each book, so hopefully this will be another step up in terms of quality. 

[ruralguardhipcat]

Another installment in the works? Fantastic news! Looking forward to it already.

[grailkeeper]

Just finished Cadia stands and wasnt exactly blown away. Is Honour much better?

 

Edit. Just saw the author is in this thread. Dont want to be a troll. It wasnt terrible.

[aa.logan]

Just finished Cadia stands and wasnt exactly blown away. Is Honour much better?

Edit. Just saw the author is in this thread. Dont want to be a troll. It wasnt terrible.

I enjoyed them both, but felt that they were very different books. Cadia Stands fleshed out the broad brushstrokes of the new lore, and as you’ve read has to cover an awful lot of action and events. Cadian Honour is much more conventional and self-contained. Because it is covering a much smaller scale of events, it has a very different feel. There are some returning characters, and the Militarum are still carrying the scars both literal and metaphorical from the earlier conflict, and if you like a Guard stories, I’d say that it is still well worth reading.

[grailkeeper]

I felt it was a bit lacking in depth so it sounds like honour might be more to my taste.

[Knockagh]

I felt it was a bit lacking in depth so it sounds like honour might be more to my taste.

What do you mean by depth?

 

You need to take a look at what the story is doing. This is the story of a catastrophic and utterly overwhelming defeat and individual courage in the face of that.

I found the book told that story fantastically well. The whole of Cadian society had been built on their ability to handle any force coming from the eye. It came and they were trampled into dust. Their defences were left looking pathetic, their pride and purpose in tatters.

The book shows the panic and sense of being overwhelmed. It needs to do this and I think it does it really well.

 

The following book takes a step back. It deals with the after effects of the conflict and the struggles of the survivors emotionally. But they don’t get much rest being plunged right back into battle again. The characters develop more and it feels a lot more like guard fiction.

But the first book is absolutely necessary to give background to the series. It also fleshed out the rift story after it had been so badly handled by GW with the 3 gaming books.

[JustinDHill]

Edit. Just saw the author is in this thread. Dont want to be a troll. It wasnt terrible.

 

 

Grailkeeper: Absolutely no offence taken. Feel free to say exactly what you think. 

 

 

 

If I can learn from what readers like and dislike, then I can write better novels. It's my ambition to be a Baby ADB. ;-) 

[grailkeeper]

Thanks Justin. I dont want to attack you or hurt anyones feelings- there is way too much negativity online.

 

For me probably the biggest issue for me was that it just felt like a collection of events that happen. The characters react to events rather than influence them in any meaningful way. By and large the only difference the characters actions made was whether or not they survived and not on the bigger picture, bar maybe the generals actions post fall. This may be because of the constraints of your brief from bl. I get that you were covering a large event and most of what happened in it was predetermined.

 

I could maybe have done with seeing more about the characters lives outside of fighting. There were moments of that which were nice but a bit more might have helped. A bit more on how Cadians are not like other imperial citizens (to my mind they are a lot like Israelis in space but that is ny own headcanon) perhaps. I hear from this thread that there is more of that in honour so I will probably check it out.

 

Some of it did just seem like it happened because the story demanded it and for no other reason- the guys in the outpost in particular. That bit didnt make a lot of sense to me.

 

The guy who sold it to me did point out there were a few minor inconsistencies with the lore, so that niggled me. Nothing really worth writing home about though and if he hadnt pointed it out I might not have noticed in the first place.

 

For me the best bit was the chaos and confusion of the evacuation portion. That captured the 40k tone really well.

 

Overall it kept my attention and I finished it in quite a short space of time, but my impression was was of a collection of things that happen. I dont wanr to come across as attacking you, I have read much worse stuff in my time

[JustinDHill]

Overall it kept my attention and I finished it in quite a short space of time, but my impression was was of a collection of things that happen. I dont wanr to come across as attacking you, I have read much worse stuff in my time

 

 

It's totally cool. Honest.

 

I think books have to stand by themselves so I'm not going to argue for it or against you or anyone. It's a story and you bring your imagination to it, and if it sparks then great!

 

I appreciate your thoughts and feedback and probably agree with you on some of these things. For the record, what I'll tell you what I wanted to do - as far as i can remember now - and it's up to you, Knockagh and all the other readers to see if i got anywhere near the mark. 

 

The fall of the Cadian Gate was a HUGE event and I felt a huge responsibility being given this in only my second BL novel.

 

I had the campaign book text, which i had to follow, but I wanted to make Cadia Stands a fitting monument to the battle for the most famous IG planet. 

 

I couldn't continue with the character of Creed, for obvious reasons, which was a shame, but I wanted to break new territory for Guard fiction. I liked the idea of Cadian Whiteshields who I had worked with in my first Cadian short story, Last Step Backwards, and a young woman seemed like a refreshing new perspective on the 40K universe.  

 

I also wanted to write a Cityfight novel because city fight has always seemed very cool - lots of narrative potential with ruins, cellars and constant danger.

 

I'd played IG in the 2003 Thirteenth Black Crusade campaign and really liked that more comprehensive narrative, and felt it handled the 13th Black Crusade in a really satisfying way. So I wanted to retain some of that lore where it didn't contradict the later material, and write a novel that showed the systems-wide scale of the battle. 

 

Ultimately, I thought of Cadia Stands as a kind of Ken Burns documentary of the fall of Cadia. There's a central narrative, but around that is a mix of small moments and little observations set against huge battles and sieges.

 

 

Having been given the task of writing this novel I went straight to the previous fluff, but strangely there was almost nothing written about Cadia. Apart from Eisenhorn, the few thousand word White Dwarf Battle of Tyrok Fields, and my own short story of the same name, there weren't any other 40K BL depictions of Cadia.

 

Lore-wise, it was pretty open. I wanted - and still do - intend to fix the fictional hole that is Cadia, so in Cadia Stands I had to establish what it was like to live on Cadia for the first time in BL fiction, and then once I'd done that I had to blow it all up.  

 

 

 

These four strands went into the novel.

 

To be honest, having written two Cadian novels now, if I went back and rewrote Cadia Stands I'd probably write a different story. Or write it entirely a different way. But there it is. Out of all my BL novels it has my favourite first line and one of my favourite scenes.

 

The subsequent Cadian novels - starting with Cadian Honour - are very different because i'm not trying to handle a campaign book, which means there's a lot more narrative freedom. And while I still want to flesh out Cadia as a planet, there's a lot of new material to examine.

 

for example: What is it like to be a Cadian after Cadia has fallen; to know that in 10,000 years, it was your generation that failed; and to chronicle the years immediately following the Cicatrix Maledictum - which mean the various human populations are characters in the novel. In this case, the human populations of the Gallows Cluster, who have their own responses to everything happening about them. Again, standing on the shoulders of the giants who've gone before and expanding the scope of 40K fiction. 

[Marshal Rohr]

 

example: What is it like to be a Cadian after Cadia has fallen; to know that in 10,000 years, it was your generation that failed; and to chronicle the years immediately following the Cicatrix Maledictum - which mean the various human populations are characters in the novel.

Damn, that’s heavy.

[grailkeeper]

Thanks. I am mid way through Cadian Honour and am enjoying it a lot more.

[JustinDHill]

Thanks. I am mid way through Cadian Honour and am enjoying it a lot more.

 

Great news!

 

#CadiaStands. 

[Lord_Caerolion]

I think I'll definitely have to pick these up. I'd previously kinda ignored the Cadians as a faction because they were portrayed so, well, generically, by GW. Want an Imperial Guard force to feature in a bit of fluff? Just have the Cadians do it. This sounds like exactly the sort of thing I wanted to be brought to the fore with them.

[JustinDHill]

Cadians as a faction because they were portrayed so, well, generically, by GW. 

 

 

That was my impression also, before I came to the subject as a writer. And of course, the Cadians should be anything but generic. They're SHOCK troopers. Even more, they're 40K SHOCK troopers - which has to be even more baddass. 

[Petitioner's City]

Having been given the task of writing this novel I went straight to the previous fluff, but strangely there was almost nothing written about Cadia. Apart from Eisenhorn, the few thousand word White Dwarf Battle of Tyrok Fields, and my own short story of the same name, there weren't any other 40K BL depictions of Cadia.

 

Lore-wise, it was pretty open. I wanted - and still do - intend to fix the fictional hole that is Cadia, so in Cadia Stands I had to establish what it was like to live on Cadia for the first time in BL fiction, and then once I'd done that I had to blow it all up.

 

 

I really loved the novel and really loved it's engagement with the old campaign and with the sense of historicity, and thank you for writing it.

 

However, you forgot to mention ADB's wonderful Ragnar novel, which also seems steeped in 3rd edition lore, and which really also depicted the hellhole of Cadia at the end. Did you read it? Very magnetic depiction of the planet and its state.

[JustinDHill]

you forgot to mention ADB's wonderful Ragnar novel, which also seems steeped in 3rd edition lore, and which really also depicted the hellhole of Cadia at the end. Did you read it? Very magnetic depiction of the planet and its state.

 

 

Oh no! I think it's the only ADB book i haven't read... and checking the dates it was out before CS. 

 

Bugger. Now I have to read it and weep. 

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

Cadians as a faction because they were portrayed so, well, generically, by GW. 

 

 

That was my impression also, before I came to the subject as a writer. And of course, the Cadians should be anything but generic. They're SHOCK troopers. Even more, they're 40K SHOCK troopers - which has to be even more baddass. 

 

 

It's not just that they're Shock Troopers (after all, Cadians have armoured regiments, siege regiments, artillery regiments, etc, so their identity as Shock Troopers isn't universal), but that they're Shock Troopers that guard the Eye of Terror. They have grown up under the gaze of the Imperiums eternal foes, literal devils of myth. They shouldn't just be "average modern-day infantry soldier but with a lasgun instead of current-era rifle". In 40k, hell literally exists, and they are its guardians. From what you've said here, and from what I've picked up in the book, the fall of Cadia affects them more than the destruction of Tanith, for example, because it's not just a homeworld, it's a holy duty.

[JustinDHill]

 

 

they're Shock Troopers that guard the Eye of Terror...it's not just a homeworld, it's a holy duty.

 

Hell yeah! With bells on. ;-)