Liked the book. The framing of the story as a personal journal being edited by someone else was a clever touch -it allowed the author to provide "infodumps" without distracting the reader too much from the storyline.

My only gripe with the book is that it is not yet available (legally, anyhow) in ebook format. I enjoyed this book, and think I would enjoy the series if I could get them electronically. ( )

It was fine. I just got tired of it. No reason. If I can't finish a book this long in a month I probably am not going to finish it at all. ( )

This was a pleasant discovery, and it will go down for me as one of the best reads for 2008. In fact, it was the last book read for 2008 for me. I had never read any Warhammer 40K books before this one. I was familiar with the strategy game. I just happened to pick this volume up in a bookstore out of curiosity. The description for Ciaphas Cain as a sly rogue looking for an easy life, yet ends up the hero who does the right thing, seemed like the perfect thing for my mood at the time. I am very glad I picked it up after reading the first chapter. I was hooked. Commissar Cain has become one of my favorite literary characters. This series blends military scifi in a pretty grim far future with humor. Cain's adventures, always with his malodorous sidekick Jurgen, are filled with humor, adventure, and the search for the easy life. He may not want to be a hero, but the galaxy needs a hero, and he is it whether he wants the job or not.

Another appeal factor, and this may work for librarians like me, is that the Cain novels are written from his own point of view, then an archivist is putting together Cain's narrative. So, there are footnotes, "editorial" asides, so on, which make the tale entertaining, and can be as amusing as Cain's own words. For people who may not have read any Warhammer 40K stories before, this may be a pretty good introduction. I know it worked for me, as I will be looking for other titles. I will definitely be looking for other Cain novels. I highly recommend this.

If you like characters like Lazarus Long, you may like this as well. This volume collects the first three Ciaphas Cain novels, plus three short stories, which makes the volume a pretty good value overall. ( )

This book was a difficult but rewarding read. Written in a style completely alien to me it took a bit of getting used to, but I thought the diary/history journal extracts were a nice touch. It's good to read a novel with such a morally a ambiguous character. Worth reading if you want a taste of the 40K universe. ( )

(Alistair) So why, you might well ask, given my expressed taste in books and universes, am I reading a Warhammer 40,000 spin-off. given that it's the ultimate Crapsack World, and books set in it tend to be grinding splatterfest slaughter-porn with optional cosmic horror-fu? Which, for those of you who are new here, is not to my taste at all.

Well, because this one isn't. Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium (an omnibus which collects the first three of the currently six novels and three of the short stories) uses the same setting to produce a darkly humorous Harry Flashman IN SPACE!

And does so without turning the whole thing into a farce, too.

Thank you, TV Tropes, for revealing the awesomeness that lurks in this unlikely spot.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2009/06/mass_booklogging.html ) ( )