Cadia Stands (Astra Militarum)

Cadia Stands, by Justin D Hill, is about the battle for Cadia during Abaddon’s 13th Black Crusade. We follow the perspectives of a few different Cadians as they try to survive a loosing battle. I have a bit of history with the novel. Back in 2018-19, I had been out of Warhammer for a while, until I heard this novel mentioned in a RimmyDownunderGaming video. I thought it seemed neat, so I picked it up. And now I’m back into Warhammer, and its arguably thanks to this book. But I haven’t read it since 2018-19, so I’m interested to see how good it really is. Cadia stands takes the perspectives of a handful of different characters, some only for a few pages or a chapter, and some get several chapters. Most of the characters who just get a few pages just die, or a implied to die later in the battle. I kind of like this, it gives us faces to the untold masses being killed, and can help make it really feel like it is a losing battle. We even briefly get a commissar who everyone hates for killing too many people. A bit of hatred towards Imperial hierarchy is always nice. For the more longstanding characters though, we have General Bendikt, General Grüber, and seemingly the fan favourite based on how many novels she has, Whiteshield Minka Lesk. Bendikt doesn’t start off as a general, he begins a rank bellow Grüber but is promoted by Ursarka E Creed. At the start of the novel it feels like Bendikt is an important character, but honestly he doesn’t really do much in the novel. For basically half of it he is stuck up a mountain waiting for orders, but he does get let loose eventually with a horde of tanks to give salvation to the rest of the Cadians. However even when this happens, its not too interesting. Its just ok. He doesn’t really have much agency of his own. I didn’t expect Grüber to be one of the more important characters, and I felt that way for most of the novel. By then end of it though, he is basically the main character for the last quarter of the book. He actually has a bit of development which is kind of nice to see. He starts of as just a grubby general without much charisma to him. He is annoyed by Creed for being a young upstart that everyone likes, but he does eventually realise the charisma is necessary for him to be a good commander of his troops. He proves himself later as a courageous soldier, and eventually ends up being basically the leader of what remains of the Cadians. As I mentioned, Minka is clearly the fan favourite, or at least Hill’s favourite, because as far as I can tell, she’s the only one of these three in the next few Cadia novels. I can kind of see why she’s a favourite. Bendikt doesn’t do much, and Grüber is pretty much just a general, so Minka, a Whiteshield, a new recruit fighting in the most important battle since the Horus Heresy is something interesting. And she does actually get to do things. She fights in battles and has some difficulty in getting of planet. As well as this, she is basically the first Guardswoman that I have seen in Warhammer novels, which is nice to see, and likely contributed to her popularity. So now I’ve mentioned some positives and gone over the main characters, its time to lay down some criticisms. Remember how I mentioned that Bendikt is stuck up a mountain for a while? While he is stuck, the first hundred or so days of the battle for Cadia is happening. We don’t get to see Minka, or anyone else’s perspective of these days, we just get told that the Cadians are losing day by day. We do get to see one random General getting demolished by a Chaos Lord, but it is mostly just stuff being told to us. After this though we are shown not told what is happening. Like I praised before, randoms being killed and our main characters fighting is good, its good to show us characters experiencing something rather than just being told it’s happening. Now while it is good to show characters, it feels a little off here. We keep being told that the Cadians are losing, and we see random Cadians loosing, but for most of the novel our main characters don’t really struggle, even Minka, who definitely struggles the most of the three, doesn’t feel like she’s doing that bad. But then again, when Cadia actually begins to fall, as in when the entire planet literally breaks, we do feel like they’re losing. The ground is shaken, evacuation plans are broken immediately, and randoms loose hope. There’s a nice part in the book where instead of Creed doing his daily announcement a voice just reads passages from an Imperial propaganda book. These movements feel hopeless, I just think Minka and the others should have been more in line with this tone. In the end, Cadia Stands is a decent book. Its not exceptional, the tone can feel a little off at times, I think our characters could have struggled a bit more, and one character didn’t really feel like he did much. Despite this though, Minka, and too my surprise, Grüber were enjoyable enough for me to not be able to dislike the book. In the end, as I said, its decent. With this and Minka’s two next novels, Cadian Honour, and Traitor Rock being collected in an omnibus soon, I think I might pick it up and see how she goes.