Cadian Honour

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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. Plot: The plot is literally the doomed, grimdark resistance and ultimate fall of Cadia as seen through a handful of hardly-developed characters. None of which is told in a particularly memorable manner. I mean, take the pylons. They are introduced as important to the standing of the Cadian Gate, but the plot opts for a diabolus ex machina destruction instead of properly integrating the pylons more directly into the fall of the planet. As it is they are completely left by the wayside. Really, I feel like the whole plot is an excuse to write numerous vaguely interconnected after-reports set on the Warhammer 40k universe. 2/5 In the grim dark future, there is only war, but you can't just make it about war, you need interesting characters you get to know and love (or love to hate) to experience the setting.

The worst part is that Cadian Honour has many interesting ideas that are woefully undeveloped. The struggle on Potence explores an esoteric bit of historical lore. Lesk is new to squad command and needs to find her place amongst fellow sergeants and the commissariat. Bendikt needs to inspire people who have lost their world. But it’s all reduced to a lengthy, mind-numbing set of uninspired fights where unnamed enemies magically appear wherever they’re needed. It’s entertaining enough, but there’s a hint of greatness that suggests the author’s best is still to come.Cadia guarded the only known navigable route to and from the massive Warp rift known as the Eye of Terror, a passage called the Cadian Gate. The world's dangerous proximity to the Eye of Terror made it necessary for the people of Cadia to heavily fortify the planet. It was the fourth world of the Cadian System, and its surface contained a wide variety of terrain types and ecosystems, including frozen tundras, temperate plains, wind-swept moors and the great native axel-tree forests.

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. The monstrous kinetic strike wiped out most of Cadia's remaining defenders, destroyed the network of Cadian Pylons and tectonically destabilised the world. As the Warp and its foul denizens claimed the remains of the Fortress World, Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed arranged an evacuation of the planet that saved 3 million of its citizens before the planet finally ripped itself apart -- though not before Creed himself mysteriously disappeared. Some amongst the Cult Mechanicus believed the spires to be the work of the Necrons, or their mortal antecedents the Necrontyr, but then there were those on Mars equally convinced that the pylons were constructed by the Old Ones for the sole purpose of destroying the Necrons and their former C'tan overlords.Summary: I will be frank, this book was a severe disappointment to me. Maybe I just came to it with the wrong expectations, maybe I am not really the target for this kind of book. Anyway, the fact remains that there is very little I find memorable in this book. There are no great descriptions, no great characters, no great dialogue, no great prose. The author just throws names and explosions and disjointed scenes with recurring characters that are minimally developed and calls the job done. It tries to paint the very grim picture of Cadia's fall, but somehow it manages to paint all the epic fighting and doomed resistance in an amazingly boring light. Settled before the onset of the Age of Strife by a branch of Humanity that eventually fell to the worship of the Chaos Gods and played a major role in the ultimate corruption of the Space Marine Legions, Cadia was re-settled sometime in the early 32nd Millennium by Loyalist Humans of the Imperium. The Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, another recent arrival to the Fortress World, had been led to Cadia by the Harlequin Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker, and believed that he could decipher the true function of the pylons. Last seen in Cadian Honour , Lesk and her fellow soldiers find themselves embroiled in a bloody stalemate when traitor forces on the planet Malouri retreat to a nigh-impregnable island fortress.

The new 40k era has some great opportunities for storytelling. Nihilus and it’s darkness as ADB has started with the spears and Gav with his Eldar brilliance. The surviving Cadians are a great story in the new mess. The first two novels were originally set at the tail end of the Indomitus Crusade, but no longer! The long-awaited book 3 – Godblight– has now been released, alongside update editions of the first two books which have been adjusted so that they now take place during the crusade, rather than at its conclusion. I haven’t personally read Godblight or the new editions of books 1 and 2, but it doesn’t sound like the tweaks are massive beyond that adjustment in the timeline. The Chaos Space Marines regrouped and nurtured their hatred of the Imperium, planning for the day when they would wreak a terrible vengeance on those who had defied them and their foul masters. Within the Eye time flows differently than in realspace.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. 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!