Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Manchu wrote:@Kanluwen: Your raging man-crush on Aaron D-B is plain for all to see. Tell him I would like to read more 40k books by him but that he needs to learn a bit about battle scenes from Dan the Man. Do NOT, I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT let him imitate Abnett in any other way, however.

I don't think we have to worry about that too much.

And yes, Aaron rocks. Cadian Blood got me motivated enough to work on my Guard again.

Having finally finished the book, I have a couple more comments.

One: Those Cadians are unbelievably hard, with the emphasis on unbelievably.

Two: Some of the scenes involving Commissar Tionenji (you'll know which ones if you've read the book) came off as... I don't know, I suppose they combined with some of the battle scenes to make this book like it was simply meant to showcase how hard the Cadian Shock is. Not that I needed to be browbeaten by that, I already had that conception of them. This just took it a bit far.

Three: On a related note, I have a hard time buying that Thade is dense enough not to pick up on what's going on.

I agree wholeheartedly with you, Shane, especially point three.

Having read Manchu's post, and reread mine, I think I know what my objection to the book is (aside from its treatment of Tionenji).

I went in with the conception that the Cadian Shock was the elite of the elite, the Imperium's crack troops. The book took that image and ran with it (Exaggerating it a bit? Perhaps forgivably so) the entire way through. And that was all it did, it didn't build anything up or add any depth. The 88th was a stock regiment, the characters were stock characters, and the plot was pretty linear. It just wasn't a dynamic story.

Again, I'll agree that it wasn't too dynamic of a story. Thade begins as a capable and humble officer and ends as a capable and humble officer. The kind of dynamism that you seem to have hoped for, Shane, is often derided in 40k books. For example, "Call of the Lion" by Gav Thorpe in Tales of Heresy shows us some very subtle but meaningful character development. And it is almost always panned by BL readers. In any case, the strength of Cadian Blood does not lie in its character development but rather its fluency in the feeling or tone of the Grimdark. Personally, I did not think that the Thade's men were portrayed as a regiment of Mary Sues--they seemed to be pretty standard Imperial Guard veterans, I'd say--but rather they were portrayed as having a somewhat inflated sense of their abilities (only swollen further by compliments from the Raven Guard) . . . right up until the treatment of Tionenji. D-B gets a little carried away there, I'd say. I sure the Schola Progenium teaches Commissars how to deal with that type of situation and Tionenji was never written as a dolt. I don't care how hard any regiment is, no one gets away with a crime of that magnitude. Then again, it was an effective plot device to get me so riled up. I could see it happening. It's just hard to believe Tionenji wouldn't have been able to deal with it.

The Catachans get away with it all the time

But, as a rule, the Cadians seem to have far less Commissars, period, than most regiments. And I can't really see something as much of an insult as attaching an off-world Commissar to a pure Cadian unit going unpunished either way. Especially not when that Commissar then threatens a highly decorated hero like Thade.

I mean, I may be reading too much into some of the Eye of Terror background and some of the brief snippets we've seen of Cadian life. But it's always seemed to me that they're the exception to the rule of the normal Schola Progenium situation.

Stormtroopers? Don't need 'em, we've got Kasrkin.
Commissars? Again, don't need 'em. The "Iron Discipline" rule was put into last edition's IG codex and heck, the Cadian Shock Troops list in the Eye of Terror book had it too. It was supposed to represent the fact that Cadian officers undergo the same generalized training, but don't seem to favor the "executions to improve morale" idea that the Commissariat at large favors, instead seeming to favor the Gaunt methodology of "it's not ALWAYS a bad idea to withdraw, and field executions are wasteful".

But I have an undying love for the Cadians either way, so I might be biased

Didn't the Kasrkin get called Storm Troopers throughout Cadian Blood? Also, assigning a Cadian Commissar seems beside the point. Commissars are definitional outsiders.

Well no, that's the point.

The Cadians have always been associated with not actually *needing* Commissars. Their own officers had training that would allow them to fulfill the role that a Commissar normally would. The only real attached Commissars can't by definition be called Commissars, as they're specifically attached to the Sanctioned Psyker Support--which technically makes them members of the Adeptus Telepathica(I think that was the Sanctioned Psyker branch. I don't have my Munitorium book anymore).

I think the Remnant might have called them Stormtroopers a few times, but I remember mostly seeing Kasrkin when it was just the Cadians talking amongst themselves.