Ciaphas Cain - Novels

Novels

Cain is the main character of Sandy Mitchell's novels published by the Black Library. The Cain series currently stands at eight titles:

• For The Emperor
• Caves of Ice
• The Traitor's Hand
• Death Or Glory
• Duty Calls
• Cain's Last Stand
• The Emperor's Finest
• The Last Ditch

The novels are presented as Cain's personal and often rambling notes. After his death, a third party edited them into a more coherent form, interspersed them with footnotes or snippets of other accounts where Cain's first-person (and self-centered) perspective does not provide sufficient context, and made them available for use by the Holy Inquisition. This editor is revealed over the course of the first account to be Inquisitor Amberley Vail of the Ordo Xenos, Cain's long-time collaborator and herself a prominent figure in the accounts.

Cain also appears in three short stories (featured respectively in the anthologies What Price Victory, Crucible of War, and Bringers of Death):

• "The Beguiling"
• "Fight or Flight"
• "Echoes of the Tomb"

In April 2007 the first three books in the series and the 3 short stories were collected in a volume entitled Ciaphas Cain : Hero of the Imperium.

In October 2010 Defender of the Imperium, an omnibus compilation of Death or Glory, Duty Calls and Cain's Last Stand was released, and also contains the short stories "Traitor’s Gambit" and "Sector Thirteen".