Teaser

Darya Nevic is once more thrust into battle, even as she and her squad reach breaking point. There are heretics and mutants around every corner, but what if the real danger comes from a face from Nevic’s own past . . .

Review

One of the best runs of novels to come out of Black Library in recent years has been the Astra Militarum range. Each book takes a different regiment and tells a standalone story, with a different author at the helm each time. The defining feature was that they were first published in paperback, so it was a great way to find new authors. As far as I can tell, the range is still ongoing, but there has also been a new twist in the past year. Some of these books have been getting sequels, alongside hardback reprints. Rob Young’s sniper-centric story Longshot was one of the highlights of the range, so I was delighted to learn there would be a follow-up. Obviously, the hardback sold out before I could blink, but I am more than happy to go for the audiobook alternative. Especially when Colleen Prendergast is narrating. For me, Prendergast is the undisputed voice of Cadia, and Young gives her great material to work with.

Following a book as magnificent as Longshot was always going to be difficult. Happily, I can say that Ghosts of Cadia is largely up to the task. It doesn’t quite hit the same heights, but that’s mostly because it lacks that special something that comes with discovering a debut author. Plus, Longshot had a lot of great things to say about propaganda to give it a boost. Ghosts of Cadia is more of a straightforward war story, but there are two elements that I want to single out.

First, this is a book that is unafraid to tackle the trauma of war. Nevic’s fracturing psyche is a driving force for the novel. A lot of the time when people go crazy in the grimdark future, it’s because there’s some arcane sorcerer driving them insane. Not so with Nevic. Here it’s just the accumulated trauma of a lifetime spent at war. Even after so long serving with Cadians, Nevic is seen by many as an outsider, leaving her isolated even as everyone else is feeling the same stresses and burdens. It’s surprisingly deep stuff for a book based on a game about sending waves of plastic soldiers to blow each other to pieces.

The other aspect the book handles well is time. It’s easy to say that in the grim darkness of the future there is only war, but Ghosts of Cadia shows us as well as telling us. Not only are the soldiers stressed form constantly rotating from one warzone to another, spending hours, days, months, and even years under heavy fire, but we also get to see the generational extent of these conflicts. Nowhere is this clearer than when we learn that soldiers are now fighting alongside the children of their colleagues. Few other books have quite driven home the forever war aspect of the franchise. It’s not an easy thing to pull off in two fairly short, self-contained books, but Rob Young does it masterfully.

As a final note, there’s also beastmen in this book. Rare to see in Warhammer 40,000, but a fun little piece of the convoluted worldbuilding that reminds us all of just how horrific the fantastic future is.

If you’ve read and enjoyed Longshot, then tackling Ghosts of Cadia is a no-brainer, but even if you haven’t, you’ll have a whole lot to enjoy treating this as a standalone. Long live the Astra Militarum range and all its hidden gems.

Book Stats

• Narrated by Colleen Prendergast
• A sequel to Longshot
• First Published 2026
• Runtime 10hrs 38mins