CIAPHAS CAIN: FOR THE EMPEROR by Sandy Mitchell | 40k Book Club with Mira 

I love the fact that Cain calls the XV8 battlesuits "Tau Dreadnoughts" because back in the days of Rogue Trader, "dreadnought" was a generic mecha walker denomination, so you could have eldar or ork dreadnoughts.

I think one of the reasons these book reviews work so well is the dynamic between Ian & Mira and how both sides of the "40k nutters going on about it to their friends" meme can identify with them. Mira is the outsider who non-40k watchers can identify with and get excited as she learns more about the universe and begins to make connections alongside them, and the old hand 40k nutters identify with Ian as the 40k player and get to vicariously enjoy guiding a friend through the frankly ludicrous amount of depth and complexity the setting has to offer (which I'm sure a lot of 40k players crave because not everyone has such an interested/invested friend like Mira to whom they can really gush about how cool the setting is). The X factor that makes these videos so engaging is that Ian knows a lot about the lore *and* the tabletop, so someone like me who has played the game for 25 years but can count the number of BL books they've read on one hand gets to have the same introduction to a new side of the hobby as Mira is getting. That and Ian just being an affable and funny guy to watch in general so you know his personality isn't just a clever RU-vidr act with strategic editing/script-writing. Brilliant all-round!

Seeing Ian talk to others is great. He's a really good conversationalist and helps to guide us through.

What I love about the Zyvan Cain relationship is that Cain thinks he is the smartest man in the room but Zyvan as the series goes on reveals he really is smarter than Cain and more likely than not values Cain for his "people skills" and ability to accurately and honestly asses the situation because he isnt bound by the usual dogmas.

The audiobooks for this series are top tier. Each of the 'writers', whether it's Cain, or Amberley or an additional imperial source has a distinct voice actor which really helps sell the premise. I did find the main joke of Cain being secretly cowardly starting to wear a bit thin after a few books but they're still well written and romp along amiably enough. Another comedic 40k book to look at would be Kal Jerico: Sinners Bounty.

I quite enjoy Ciaphas Cain books, especially if you just read one or two. Some stuff I like: - Comedy! 40K is a satirical setting and I like that these books know that and wink at it regularly. - Portrayal of Xenos factions! Most Black Library output is focused on Imperials vs. Chaos. That's fine, but it can get a bit tedious after a while. The Cain books tend to showcase some Xenos and treat them fairly well I feel, giving you a feel for what they are like and why they would be scary opponents. - Human protagonists! Imperial Guard make better protagonists for a 40K story than Space Marines for sure. The downside of the series is just that some of the prose and jokes become a bit repetitive after a while. If you're willing to gloss over those bits though I'd say this is the most under rated Black Library series.

Great analysis and banter by you both. MORE Mira please!

54 minutes is a perfect length for a book review, and it was clear that both of you had a blast reading it. Looking forward to the next one, and seeing more of Mira on the channel!

For a tau book i really recommend the short story ‘broken sword’ by guy haley. Tells the story of a human, his life within the tau empire and his friendship with a member of the water caste. As a tau fan, it’s definitely my favorite and I feel like you guys would really enjoy it !

Jurgen is also Corporal Nobbs from discworld

Cain is probably my faved character in 40K and his "thing" with Inquisitor Veil makes it even more delightful :D

Brilliant review and I will buy this book now! Thank you both!

Definitely my favourite YT channel. You actually made me look for the audiobooks!

When it comes to Tau books I personally would recomend short stories like broken sword (from the Damocles anthology) , Voice of Experience and Aun'Shi. As for major novels there is Fire Warrior, the farsight novels and the greater good (another Cain novel).

The one literary device I think Sandy Mitchell overuses a bit in the books is the whole foreshadowing "if I'd known what I was letting myself in for, I'd have run in the opposite direction" thing. Like four or five times a book.

As someone who doesn't play 40K and just reads the lore and novels, I really enjoy these videos. Glad to see you're still doing these, it feels like forever since the two of you have done one of these videos. Thanks!

I love the 3 omnibuses. Cain is such a great character and I hope for more books. Jurgen is the perfect balance to Cain's swagger. Loved the video!

It's good that you inroduced Mira to Cain AFTER stuff like Eisenhorn. I don't think Cain works without some foreknowledge of the setting. Glad to see she's enjoying them! Aww, shame Mira doesn't like the bolter porn. That's one of my favourite parts of Gaunt's Ghosts!

You mentioned the Chimera tank is the basis for all the other guard armour as a way for GWs to design less. This is true but, it is also true of real world armoured vehicles. If you want to tool up a factory to mass produce tanks you might as well make the recovery vehicles etc from the same chassis to save from having to retool and redesign everything.

These Mira vids are some of the best 40k content on the internet.

A tau book is Crisis of Faith which is about Commander Farsight. About the Space Marine perspective on the Tau railgun from the wiki, "The Railgun is roundly hated by the Adeptus Astartes Chapters that have encountered it, for not only does it kill their Battle-Brothers upon impact, but it destroys or renders inoperable the Progenoid Glands that allow their Apothecaries to create more Space Marines from the fallen. In this way, it not only kills the Adeptus Astartes of the present, but also kills the warriors of the future" .

Yay! Really glad you guys enjoyed it, can confirm the crew rapport does build up over the series with some fun additions 😊

Love the energy of this video! Being in the same room really ups the chemistry/vibe. Great content as always.

Kill Team by Gav Thorpe features the Tau heavily and explains things like how they are Vegetarians who have salty wine. It's the second Last Chancers book, which I don't rate highly as a series but this one is actually pretty good. Its basically just DC'S Suicide Squad in 40K so it's not really something you'd need to read the first to understand what's happening

can i say, this intro/outro is the most amaising thing, ive seen in long time period. Its just right! Sorry for bad english

Love this series alot. Watching a non-40ker starting to "get" the setting in all its wierdness, really warms me! It helps that Mira is just a total legend too. Keep up the good work guys, id love to see more mira content and that series of her learning to play!

1. Most of the good T'au stuff are found the the various short stories about the Damocles Gulf Crusade and/or the 3rd Sphere Expansion. The best one is a collection of short stories set in the time of the latter that was published in the Space Marine Battles series titled "Damocles". There is a pair of audio dramas ("Mont'ka" and "Kauyon"), and there are two novels and a short story about Commander Farsight. The fluff books that accompanied the 3rd Sphere Expansion special rules/campaign published towards the end of WH40k 7th edition are also very good for T'au fluff, but it might be a bit hard to find (at a reasonable price) now. 2. One of my favorite parts of "For the Emperor" is when Raquel (sp?) first encounters Jurgen and screams, "He's nothing!" before passing out. Cain's comment on that is something like, "Sure, Jurgen isn't the best example of a soldier, but to call him 'nothing' is a bit harsh." 3. Everything in the first Caiphas Cain omnibus ("Hero of the Imperium" - I think) is excellent. "Caves of Ice" introduces a soldier named Pelton (or something like that) that the regiment calls "Jinxie" because of how unlucky she is (and the others like being with her because they believe that if all the unlucky stuff will happen to her rather than her squad mates). "Caves of Ice" also includes a short comment by Amberley where she fondly reminisces about a pamphlet for children about prometheum because the mascot in the pamphlet is happily burning heretics. I also like the ongoing friends?-with-benefits relationship between Ciaphas and Amberley throughout the novels. 4. Is Ciaphas Cain really a coward who happens to improbably luck into being a hero, or is he instead really a hero that has have Imposter Syndrome? I think that he is the latter because of his actions in "Death or Glory" and "Cain's Last Stand." 5. One of the really great things about Sandy Mitchell's 40k work is that his characters aren't just their jobs. He wrote two novels that were clearly intended to be a trilogy, but never finished, as a tie in to the 54mm Inquisitor game or the Dark Heresy RPG (I cannot remember which) that are very good ("Scourge the Heretic" and "Innocence Proves Nothing"). It is more serious than the Ciaphas Cain stuff, but it includes some funny character parts such as the teenage Death Cult assassin who has a crush on her team leader of the Inquisitorial spec-ops team, but she cannot process her emotions because she grew up in crazy violent Death Cult. 6. For good lesser-known 40k stuff, I recommend the short story collection "Fear the Alien." The story "Mistress Bleda's Gift," included in the collection is the best Dark Eldar story yet written (sorry, Andy Chambers). 7. Re: female characters - if we are doing the social justice bean counting, note also that the captain of the troop transport in the beginning is a homosexual. Mitchell doesn't make a big deal about it, but one of the reasons why the captain was so set on having the cafeteria brawl defendants executed was because one of the ratings that was killed in the brawl was his lover.

Thanks for the review, it was quite fun and enjoyable to have both your points of view. :)

Gaunt’s Ghosts is character-driven more than anything, it’s band of brothers in 40k basically, but has some good plot hooks too :) you really get attached to the various Ghosts, but you know that they’re not safe!

Really well done, thanks for a great review Mira and Ian. I read it after watching this and really appreciate your framing of the book and characters. Keep up the great work!

I am a bit late to then party but just let me say: This is a lovely channel for Warhammer lore and I loved this book review. Please keep up the good work. 😉

Your chemistry and banter is great, really enjoying your 40k Book Club series!

Cant waite for the next one of these. I love these discussions and Mira's view on many of these things are such a breath of fresh air :)

normaly i dont comment much, but ive to say that it was really fun looking you both speaking about those book. you can really feel how you are absorbed in it!

Really enjoyed this review because the exchange between you is very natural.

Book Club is definitely my favourite series on this channel. Great content as always!

Enjoyed this one thoroughly. You two are a very enjoyable team and I'm very much looking forward to your next 40k book club exploits wherever they may lead you!

You two have ignited my desire to dive back into 40k literature! Thank you!

Love book club...always inspires me to re-read my books.

Recently read 1 to 10 in the last year. Great pallet cleanser novels and good for people new to the hobby. They do get very familiar and they keep alluding to him in the 13th crusade but will we ever get there... who knows ha. Great content again Ian.

Great review! Love seeing fresh perspectives on the 40k, and also Ian is a fully adequate guide. ;)

Just picked up Hero of the Imperium off the back of this review, sounds like good fun and I wouldn’t have looked for it otherwise!

I always interpreted Raquel as a reference to River Tam from Firefly. Her dialogue is written similarly, IMO, with the way she's always right but speaks in riddles that require interpretation to understand.

In Tau books, it's not outright stated, but any time an Ethereal shows up and speaks to a Tau, the Tau in question has feelings of religious awe, and will bow to the Ethereal's wishes even if they know better. Farsight, their best commander, was in an expedition where all the Ethereals with him died. After they did, he felt as if his mind cleared up, and funded a separatist Tau enclave. There's also a 40k book that had a vivisected Ethereal, where it was shown they had a very advanced pheromone system, and the mechanicis biologus (because we can't just write biologist apparently) theorized they controlled the Tau with pheromones.

Really enjoyed this episode of the book club, reading cain myself then hearing the discussion after made it all the better

Yay! Book club video 🥰🍻

If Mira wants to play Tau for Kill Team, there are a few options for teams one can pick from: 1) A mixture of Fire Warriors, Pathfinders, Drones, and Stealth Battlesuits 2) A more focused Pathfinder team with more customization options 3) A mix of Kroot, Kroot Hounds, and Krootox (basically a big Kroot-Gorilla) Which one Mira chooses depends on what models she prefers. And/or what kind of units she would like to include in a full 40K army, should she choose to expand into one.

Great vid, felt like I was in the room nerding out with mates

I love book club too much. Keep em coming! 🫡

Thanks for another fun and joyous review 🙂

absolutely love you two going through these books!

By far my favorite 40k series! THe most current ones are a bit more grim-dark and have an even more sarcastic writing style to me, but still have the glorious overall feel.

Great review! You two have very fun chemistry! For Tau, I recommend the short story called 'A Sanctuary of Wyrms'. It will follow nicely after Caiphus Cain as it has Inquisitors, Tau, and a desperate mission. Wyrms is also part of the anthology called 'The Tau Empire' if you want more than just a short story. For other Tau books; The audiobook version of 'Farsight' was just released. It's about the most famous Tau commander (Farsight) and is a set up for the most current Tau story lines. However, Farsight has some advanced 40k concepts that will require some background for Mira so you might want to ease into it. 'Blades of Damocles' is probably the most important book for Tau vs Imperium context, but it is very battle-heavy. Same with the 'Damocles' anthology. Both are great for context before reading Farsight, but they are mostly about the wars. I have a Tau army, in case you haven't guessed.

watched the first 3 minutes and it sounds good, actually had to stop watching the video as don't want it spoiled for when I listen to it!

i adore the Cain Audio books they are done amazing

Thanks for this blast to the past! Loved this book and with it the whole series. Such great books!

A log of Mira building and painting her own Tau Kill Team would be cool!

This might be a bit out there from some of the other books this series has covered so far, but the "Forges of Mars" trilogy (which comes printed as one book now) is really good. It has the Imperial Guard, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Eldar, Space Marines, Rogue Traders, and even Imperial Citizens all in one place playing off eachother, and it's got a great mix of all my favorite parts of the Warhammer books. There are battle sequences, but also lot of scenes just exploring the interactions of all these different groups, along with the Warhammer universe itself (including a little bit of lovecraftian horror). Fair warning, however: it is very long. It's just under 1000 pages of small text, including an additional short tie-in story, because it was originally three separate books in a trilogy. For something a little shorter, the story "Adeptus Mechanicus" (which is actually a printing of a duology into one book) is really good, although the entire book is basically one long battle sequence, with occasional lulls were they're still talking about the battle. I've heard this is because it was pretty much an advertisement of the admech model line as they were in 7th edition 40k, which does mean basically everything in the battle sequences is playable on the tabletop.

Been waiting on this. Great to have another Ian & Mira book club. You guys rock

I’m about a third of the way through Mark of Faith. Very good! I think Mira would really like it.

Loved these books! Nice review well done!

Love to see the Night Lord trilogy get consideration. Always good to read a book where you shouldnt be happy with the protagonists

Great video, love the channel and I'm not even into 40k! Definitely like the variety and be great to see you have a crack at playing.

My favorite part from this book which is a fantastic example of who Ciaphas Cain is, is when he invites a wounded soldier to sit and rest beside him in the vehicle to project to his soldiers that he cares but internally only wants a human meat shield between him and the bullets.

Late to the party, but I would love to see you tackle some of the non-imperial perspective books. Something like The Infinite and the Divine, or the Night Lords Trilogy (Soul Hunter is the first). Both have great comedy mixed in as well. As a relatively newer 40k fan, I always love the perspective I get from your videos!

Thanks guys. I am going to read it again.

I just finished listening to the first two Cain books...and after the second one I was thinking that I get the joke already and am kind of done with them....but Mira's enthusiasm make we want to continue with them...at some point in the future.

Please keep your content up and running, you are doing amazing job!

Do Necromunda :-) as a skirmish intro to fun 40k!

That was fun! Just ordered the book after watching.

as a suggestion, the second book of the last chancers series focusses on the tau. its called Kill team and written by Gav thorpe.

If you feel like leaving fun and laughs behind, the Tau have quite a prominent role in Peter Fehervari's 40k books

Oohh you guys should totally try out the Farsight stories, if you're thinking about following up on T'au. I'm finishing "Empire of Lies" right now and there's plenty of political intrigue and inquisitorial subterfuge, in addition to the flashy, mecha, robots-do-flips stuff. While lots of us agree that the T'au are probably the closest things to actual good guys in 40k, Farsight himself is probably the closest thing to an actual singular good guy too.

Great video on one of my favourite parts of the lore. Would love to see some Kill Team content!

It would be really cool for Ian and Mira to review the old, 2003 work, Xenology. I know there are some strange things in that book that are no-longer consistent with the current 40k lore but I think it might just satisfy some of Mira's curiosity about the non-human species that inhabit the 40k universe. It would also be really interesting to see how Ian and Mira would cover a Black Library publication with a slightly different format to their standard novels.

Great review! As far as I tell you haven't read any Tau books yet. As a late recommendation I would say either "The Tau Empire" (collection of shorter stories in the "Legends of the Dark Millenium" series) or "Damocles" (in the "Space Marine Battles" series)

For some different looks at the way the Imperium operates, I recommend the Shira Calpurnia Enforcer trilogy. The main character's an Adeptus Arbites who starts out solving crimes on an Imperial world, has to tussle with Rogue Trader politics in the second book, and gets sent to Adeptus Astra Telepathica stronghold in the third.

Mira hasn't got coloured hair!?! Great video guys, good to see you both on the same camera. I'm definitely going to read that when I've finished Brothers of the Snake. look forward to the next book club.

When it comes to novels that introduce the Tau there is really only one that I would recommend and that is *Blades of Damocles* by Phil Kelly It’s a novel that takes place during the first conflict between Tau and The Imperium- primarily the Ultramarines (who are essentially the face of 40k). Now the wonderful about this novel is not only how we get the POV’s of both sides during this battle but because this is the first time these factions have truly faced each other they’re both kind of clueless about the other which is extremely entertaining Highly recommend and is the novel I used to introduce a friend to Tau……he now has several armies one of which are Tau

The Cain series were, now that I think about it, my entry into the 40k universe. I had actually bought the second omnibus. What I like about this series is that even though the immediate story between each of the books, the wider plot - as Amberley notes - carries through at least three novels. Loved this review.

Ian, Great video, I love the way you introduce new people to the world of 40k. Excellent job! Do you think Mira might be interested in some of the early Horus Heresy books. Or an Aaron Dembski-Bowden one?

One suggestion for possible games to play (assuming you have access to a copy) would be Space Crusade. Not as complex as 40K proper, but still more flexible in terms of choices than most board games, and it was the gateway to this world for a lot of people back in the 90's (myself included) so it might be fun to try and relive that experience, somewhat.

You guys should try Watchers of Throne series, currently 2 books. 3 POV per novel.

The Kroot are shown to be acting freely in the Blackstone fortress books. War of Secrets has some interesting parts between Tau and Dark Angels. It gets done great but I thought it was interesting.

Glad you enjoyed the book, all the Cain books are a fun time! Spears of the Emperor is a solid pick, if probably go with that for Astartes focused books 👍 As far as Tau are concerned the farsight trilogy is the main ones, which aren't high art, but are definitely peak 'anime' 😆

Like Eisenhorn and Comissar Caine I really like these stories where its not just war and bolterporn. Social situations, murder mysteries etc. I really like the fan story All Guardsman party ❤

As far as future ones to read/listen to, to hit that Sisters itch as well as getting some Inquisitorial joy there's Our Martyred Lady. More audio drama than audio book, but a fun one regardless.

I would consider checking out the Farsight series for Tau books, or The Infinite and the Divine for Necrons (widely considered to be one of the best 40k novels in recent years).

The Imperium actually have rail guns they're just only mounted on ships

Just started reading this one. First three chapters are awesome, thoroughly enjoying it thanks for the review and recommendation 👍

Inquisitors posing as Rogue Traders goes back to the very first 40k novel some 30 years ago. BTW, definitely picking a copy of this up and only 1/3 of the way into your video.

I do get a definite echo of Blackadder from Commissar Cain :D

For the Emperor was my first 40K novel. It sold me on the lighter side of 40K.

This was delightful

If you're looking for a funny book, I recommend The Infinite and Divine. It's genuinely hilarious and very fun

Weirdly i always saw Raquel as Janice too :D

Brutal Kunnin' is a fantastic read. It has some great comedy, expands the Mechanicus in really interesting ways, and everyone loves Orks!

I love the theme music

Mark of Faith is one of the newer ones, it was released alongside the limited edition launch box for Sororitas. The main character is very whiney and the pacing is weird, but it had one of my favourite warp travel scenes in a 40k book.

Faith and Fire by James Swallow is a great Sororities book