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So facts first:
Cain is an admitted liar, womanizer, cheat, scoundrel, layabout, and coward. He is a routinely shown as only telling the truth about his own vices. Which he freely admits. However, he is wrong about 90% of the other stuff. He, and Amberly believe Sulla to be an incompetent twit that is either a blood crazed psycho (Cain) or a insufferable and pompous twit (Amberly). Sulla is later confirmed to be one of the Imperial Guard's most decorated and revered soldiers and leaders in history. Cain thinks the "Emperor botherers" are all jerks and losers, yet routinely palls around with a literal Inquisitor, and a Blank, both of which should be enough to convince him of the Emperor's divinity.

Amberly is a rather dubious and unfaithful narrator, both fact checking Cain on trivial and pointless details, but also criticizing Sulla or any other woman in the books for essentially the same thing. She's a jealous brat who thinks good dramatic and intelligent writing is dreary slog, but fact and logic based accounts of the same are wonderful and interesting. She also holds semi-radical views for being a fervent puritan. She lies a LOT on behalf of Cain, in order just to further her own goals.

Sulla thinks the Orcs are barbaric blood thirsty monsters, but routinely does bull charges at the slightest hint of enemy presence.

Zyvan thinks Cain is a literal tactical genius, and is widely believed to be a shrewd and extremely intelligent man.

Brocklaw and Castine are both the aspirations of what Gaunt "could be" if he tried. Intelligent, dogged, devoted, loyal, and extremely capable. Yet neither of them are ever actually able to accomplish anything. They are always accidentally winning by Cain's miracles.

The most honest and true character in the books is always Ferik Jurgen. A slovenly pervert who is always doing the best out of everyone. Extremely capable, intelligent, loyal, and faithful. Excels at his job. Remains a private throughout most of his career, and is treated like crap by everyone.

I sometimes hate being in love with these books.

What a weird rant. I also quite like the Cain books. Though I started liking them because they where a bit of a parody of 40k sort of. It’s rare to find 40k comedy since everything is grimdark all the time. The author has stated that comedy has always been a way for humans to process difficult situations. Hence he thought it would fit well in 40k.

As for the rest of the rant yeah. Everyone is quite flawed in the Cain books. They are not really good people. But they don’t really have to be. 40k runs on prejudice and social hierarchies where competence is less important then status. It’s also considered heroic rather then stupid to do daring charges and such. Which puts Sulla and Cain at odds at all times due to their opposing philosophies. Cain wants to always play it safe at all costs but is constantly forced into dangerous situations. Sulla wants to take risks all the time which often goes surprisingly well. I guess the core concept of popularity versus competence is one of the themes that makes these books so entertaining. Regardless the victories of Cain, Zyvan, Amberly and Sulla are undeniable. Several wars where won due to the presence of Cain where they would otherwise have been lost. I guess that’s part of what makes it fun haha.

Amberly even does a meta joke about it in one of her opening statements. That most of her inquisitorial colleges (who are allowed to read cains memoirs) do so for light reading pleasure rather then the food for thought on imperial command culture she intended it to be. It’s the same with the audience.

I think the OP covers Cain’s opinion of Sulla accurately, but I don’t agree with the rest. The point made about Sulla’s writing being good makes me think that the point of the books has been rather missed, but I shall forge on regardless.

Amberly doesn’t really criticise Sulla’s record, just her writing style.

Cain never denies the Emperor’s divinity, just thinks the relationship should be pragmatic rather than fawning. Inquisitors aren’t members of the ecclesiarchy, so it’s not hypocritical for him to be palling about with an Ordos Xenos inquisitor. He knows a lot about the warp, hence doesn’t get all superstitious about Jurgen being a blank.

There are quite a few female characters that crop up, and the only one I can particularly think that Amberly routinely criticises is the Navigatrix, based on good old imperial uncomfortableness over the mutant, and the impenetrable sense of entitlement their mutation gives the navigator houses.

Radical views for Ordos Xenos would be extensive use of alien tech. Pretty sure that she uses good old human tech at all times. Not sure that learning alien languages is enough to found as radical. Lying on behalf of self or lackeys doesn’t seem to be super radical.

Zyvans opinion of Flavian is rather the point of the book series. How can such a flawed individual be viewed in such a positive light. He is either supremely lucky, so out of touch with himself that he can’t see the positives or actually touched by divinity, even though he sis a self described sinner.

Broklaw and Kasteen and other regimental characters deal with all the routine problems, all the way up to a Gargant. Cain is the small unit disruptive element supported by a perfectly competent command staff. They don’t really need his help for actual combat. Cain just stops the segmentum ending accidents, again, rather the point of the series.

Reading your post does make me wonder if you have actually read the books.

Cain is almost certainly guided by The Emperor, but suffers from a strong Impostor Syndrome.

Time and again we see Cain not really take stock of the wider picture. He marvels at surviving one horror show at a time, but never steps back to see just how many things he’s survived.

 Flinty wrote:

Cain never denies the Emperor’s divinity, just thinks the relationship should be pragmatic rather than fawning. Inquisitors aren’t members of the ecclesiarchy, so it’s not hypocritical for him to be palling about with an Ordos Xenos inquisitor. He knows a lot about the warp, hence doesn’t get all superstitious about Jurgen being a blank.
.

Plus Inquisitors are no proof of Emperor's divinity. They are humans. Ones with high authority yes and good training and generally chosen for intelligence and physical qualities needed for the job. Some are psykers, some not but not that psychic is divinity proof anyway.

It's like claiming being pal with FBI/CIA agent is proof of god? Yea right.

 Flinty wrote:
I think the OP covers Cain’s opinion of Sulla accurately, but I don’t agree with the rest. The point made about Sulla’s writing being good makes me think that the point of the books has been rather missed, but I shall forge on regardless.

Amberly doesn’t really criticise Sulla’s record, just her writing style.

I always took Cains opinion on Sulla as him being so caught-up in his own impostor syndrome that he can't really grasp a character that's actually competent for the real thing - he immediately suspects another impostor or a clueless idiot, the concept of somebody totally believing his hype while being competent themselves is just completely alien to how he sees the world It's also meta-commentary on a person that would be the 'normal' protagonist of a BL series being literally unbelievable to their contemporaries

As for the rest:

The short of it is that it's Flashman in Space, don't read to much in it.

The long story is that Cain and his regular side characters are -mostly- likeable characters that live in a very broken, more than borderline fascist system, have been raised in an environment of religious fundamentalism, ruthless propaganda, with the treath of Inquisition, Heresy and Executions always hanging over them. Also, Hell is real and out to get you specifically, horrid aliens and mutants literally lurk around every corner, ancient terrors from times before humanity even existed regularly wage war against them and the only defense against all that is a dysfunctional bureaucracy that would rather sacrifice a million men than let a heretic escape which also lies and obfuscates even basic truths about the universe as a matter of standard policy.

Of course there are contradictions galore.

Cain and Amberley are in many ways stand-ins for the reader and for the author, to regularly remind everyone that the world of 40k is indeed messed up beyond repair, that you need to be more than a bit insane and hypocritic to even get out of bed in the morning instead of drawing your laspistol instead of ending it all. Cains heroics are not a thing he choses to do freely, he metaphorically gaks his pants every time he's forced to act up to his hype, but he does anyway because the alternative would be even worse - if he did not act when he needs to, he'd not even get a mercifully quick dead, but would end up in super-hell for eternity, or tortured by his erstwhile comrades, messily and painfully devoured by aliens or suffer any other number of hellish consequences too dire to contemplate. It all comes down to what good-ish people with reasonable tought processes would do in a ridiculously broken, comically horrible world.

I thought this was the whole point of the books? Aka everyone being a hypocrite and comedically unreliable when it comes to narration? I'm fairly sure the reader is not supposed to take any of the characters seriously.

I always thought they were meant to be kid friendly flashman, so remove the rape, misogyny and racism and all those awkward colonial era ideas he subscribes to or not to various degrees, add more unambiguously competent female characters and keep the funny bit?

The Sulla thing is just par for the course for the Imperium.

40k is all about hypocrisy. For instance, Angron railing at the Emperor as a tyrannical slaver, only to enslave his own gene-sons with the Butcher's Nails. The list goes on.

The Flashman Cain series play this straight as an arrow.

So in the book where Cain goes to the planet with no rotation, to fight off heretic raiders, Amberly actually displays some rather shocking racism. (For her). No one in the book is a big fan of anything other than humanity, or psykers, but for Vail to casually throw out the line: "A trumped up little mutant with a superiority complex" kinda shocked me. Yeah, I know, she's an inquisitor, but she'd never actually displayed racism before. Even with the Tau she was decidedly neutral. This leads me to believe that Vail is actually a rather arrogant and ignorant person, and not a very good inquisitor. Given her infatuation and love affair with a known liar and scoundrel we might also presume she puts pleasure ahead of duty, unlike many of her kind.

Finally, I always found it irksome as a character she is both supremely gifted, talented, equipped, and supported, but also rather consistently a damsel in distress.

This post reads either as a troll post or just not absorbing any of the background. Navigators are all mutants, and to a certain extent protected even against the will of the Inquisition. Not sure why you are so shocked.

Nobody ever said Inquisitors were good people. Like….at all. Well trained, theoretically well read yes. But still human. Still fallible.

As for the character’s opinions? They’re just that. Opinions. Not Genuine Truths.

On Sulla? Think back to that annoying try hard you knew in School. The one always sucking up to teacher or otherwise being A Bit Much when trying to be friendly.

When was the last time you saw that person? If you met them again in later life, how much might they have changed?

That’s Cain and Sulla. At the time, and to Cain, she was a bit too Emperor Bothering and keen. But clearly, those traits paid off, elevating her to General, and by all accounts a pretty good one. But Cain being Cain, he can’t really see much beyond his own ego, and so only ever saw the traits that irritated him.

 Flinty wrote:
This post reads either as a troll post or just not absorbing any of the background. Navigators are all mutants, and to a certain extent protected even against the will of the Inquisition. Not sure why you are so shocked.

Indeed. Famously arrogant mutant witches who, while absolutely essential for the running of the Imperium, much of the hierarchy would dearly wish they could do without, but instead have to play nice to in order to get anywhere.

I can well see someone with nominally absolute power chafing at this and venting to her peers.

At least astropaths and most other essential sanctioned psykers ‘know their place’.

The most honest and true character in the books is always Ferik Jurgen. A slovenly pervert who is always doing the best out of everyone. Extremely capable, intelligent, loyal, and faithful. Excels at his job. Remains a private throughout most of his career, and is treated like crap by everyone.

If you haven't come across it, look for a short story called The Smallest Detail. It's explicitly a Jurgen, not Caine, story, and its rather good and interesting to see things from his perspective.

Brocklaw and Castine are both the aspirations of what Gaunt "could be" if he tried. Intelligent, dogged, devoted, loyal, and extremely capable. Yet neither of them are ever actually able to accomplish anything. They are always accidentally winning by Cain's miracles.

Casting may not get as much credit as she deserves because 'hero of the imperium' syndrome tends to throw credit at caine by default, but I think its unfair to suggest she achieves nothing. A fairly common theme in the story is that the 597th are fighting a desperate holding action of some kind when caine gets cut off, or figures out the critical element of the enemy plan (or Amberly does and drags him along!).

If the 597th wasn't a bunch of serious-grade veterans, led by extremely competent officers, they'd be broken or wiped out by whatever impending-certain-death scenario they'd got stuck in this week, long before Caine could do any good.

Cain is an admitted liar, womanizer, cheat, scoundrel, layabout, and coward. He is a routinely shown as only telling the truth about his own vices. Which he freely admits. However, he is wrong about 90% of the other stuff

He's honest, but not necessarily right, about those, too. Not that he doesn't have ulterior motives and isn't convinced he's a fraud, but the fact remains that whether motivated by slightly more enlightened self preservation or not, he IS the one who keeps volunteering to run into danger as often as he finds it by accident. He genuinely does lead by example and risk his own neck, even if he feels the example is a fiction of his own devising and he (or to be fair, he and jurgen) take down enemy warlords in person on a fairly regular basis, often matching space marines and ork warbosses blade-to-blade.

I suppose that's a big question the series is posing: if someone DID do the heroic stuff attributed to them, and did it knowing what they were doing at the time, doesn't that make them a hero regardless of their motivation?

Furthermore, real people in general tend to be walking contradictions, once you get to know them better.

That is a point in favour of Mitchell's novels.

Cain is also self deprecating, even if he doesn’t recognise it.

Whilst he sees it as self serving, his “spare the Rod” style of Command/Commissariat Duties not only ensures nobody shoots him in the back by “accident” but genuinely endears him to his charges.

His motivations might be questionable (anything for an easy life, pawning queries off on Jurgen), but the results are genuine.

His charges genuinely respect him. Not just for his acts of accidental derring do, but for being genuinely Fair. He won’t summarily execute if he doesn’t absolutely have to. If there is another way, he‘ll take that.

By palming off local dignitaries indignities and pointless queries on Jurgen, he’s freed up to do his day job.

He’s also not even remotely as cowardly as he claims. Yes he’ll try to avoid a fight where possible. But when it comes to it, he’s a highly capable warrior and combat leader. His lack of hidebound thought allows him to find victory where someone strictly By The Book wouldn’t have.

He also never places his charges in needless danger, because he himself wants to avoid it where possible for as long as possible. And when that fails, he goes for survival, rather than glory. Which more often than not leads to victory. And because victory is glory, the glory comes all the same, he’s just massively uncomfortable with it, as he labours under the illusion anyone particularly cares how a given victory was actually achieved, only that it was, and that for propaganda reasons a name and face can be attached to it,

Side note on the Cain books, I really enjoy how Mitchell changes his writing style for each of the narrators. I suspect several aspects of the writing styles are poking fun at common editorial complaints, but I can only guess at that. I keep meaning to expand to other 40k series, but keep finding myself reaching for one of the Cain books. I can't tell you how many times I've read them at this point. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a half dozen times each (other than the latest one, haven't picked that up yet); to be fair, I tend to reread book a lot anyway though.

From the Cain books I've ready, I've just interpreted most of the contradictions as a source of comedy/the results of Caine's self-deprecation. A lot of the comedy (to me) stems from characters just taking a second to be reasonable instead of over-the-top zealots and ending up far more practical as a result.

In a setting cranked up to 11, dialing a few characters down to a 6 makes them entertaining subversions of expectations and also surprisingly effective.

I’m currently back on The Traitor’s Hand.

Commissar Tomas Beije is the very “usual zealot” you speak of. A pompous little man, who puts me in mind of Sir Henry Simmerson, out of Sharpe. Particularly the TV adaptation.

Well. Only the TV adaptation, as I’ve never read the books.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m currently back on The Traitor’s Hand.

Commissar Tomas Beije is the very “usual zealot” you speak of. A pompous little man, who puts me in mind of Sir Henry Simmerson, out of Sharpe. Particularly the TV adaptation.

In case you do not know, Tomas Beije is also a literature nerd meta-joke about Cain being Flashman in 40k and Tomas Beije being Tomas 'Beige' which is a pun about Tom 'Brown':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brown%27s_School_Days

Tom Brown is an old school comrade that Flashman used to bully ruthlessly.

Oh I’m aware of that

I love the subtle pun work in the Cain series. Planet names in particular.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh I’m aware of that

I love the subtle pun work in the Cain series. Planet names in particular.

I know

I hope that one day we'll get a Jeeves&Wooster-style one-shot about Cain and Jurgen and their adventures with the Administratum and Munitorum.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
From the Cain books I've ready, I've just interpreted most of the contradictions as a source of comedy/the results of Caine's self-deprecation. A lot of the comedy (to me) stems from characters just taking a second to be reasonable instead of over-the-top zealots and ending up far more practical as a result.

In a setting cranked up to 11, dialing a few characters down to a 6 makes them entertaining subversions of expectations and also surprisingly effective.

Which is a nice microcosm of 40k in general and the satirical point of the setting. The Imperium claims it does terrible things because there is no other option and it has to do this to protect you, but the truth is it gets in its own way as much as all the threats to it do, if not more.

There is a Skavenesque element to The Imperium for sure,

 Haighus wrote:
The Imperium claims it does terrible things because there is no other option and it has to do this to protect you

I find it strangely wholesome that the Imperium makes an honest effort at explaining/excusing its behavior despite its sheer scale and supposed grimdarkness.

I mean, there is a level of truth to it. As I’ve mentioned in other threads, 40K can’t have a Satanic Panic, because Daemons are actually for reals. And Chaos Cults will in fact eat your babies and that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I mean, there is a level of truth to it. As I’ve mentioned in other threads, 40K can’t have a Satanic Panic, because Daemons are actually for reals. And Chaos Cults will in fact eat your babies and that.

Sure. It is just very nice of them to explain that to everyone. You would think the Imperium doesn't care at all, but they really do. Awwww.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I mean, there is a level of truth to it. As I’ve mentioned in other threads, 40K can’t have a Satanic Panic, because Daemons are actually for reals. And Chaos Cults will in fact eat your babies and that.

Well, yes, but thats the point: even with literal daemons out to eat your soul, totalitarianism is not a good solution.

I actually think the recent lore about blind faith being objectively beneficial against warp spawn is not good for the setting as a whole, and dampens the tension between Guilliman and the Ecclesiarchy. It undermines the core satire.

 Haighus wrote:


I actually think the recent lore about blind faith being objectively beneficial against warp spawn is not good for the setting as a whole, and dampens the tension between Guilliman and the Ecclesiarchy. It undermines the core satire.

Imho the problem started when the 'God-emperor' became an actual reality and not just in-universe misunderstanding of how psychic powers and such worked. It changes a fundamental outlook on the whole setting, and imho cheapens it, but that ship has sailed a long, long time ago.