My favourite examples of turns of phrase in the Ciaphas Cain series:

“’Deader than Horus,’ she confirmed.”

“All right, calling Jurgen a bit untidy was rather like saying Abaddon the Despoiler gets a bit cranky in the morning, but I knew adopting a casual attitude would be the surest way to get under Beije’s skin.”

“Beije, I was amused to note, was staring at it as though it were Horus himself risen from the dead.“

“In my experience troublemakers tended to gravitate into them like sump rats down a waste pipe, where they were Horus’ own job to winkle out again.”

“Stuck on the top of a thin spire of rock as we were, we had precious little room for manoeuvre, and if it looked as if we were about to be overrun our only option would be to run for the shuttles and Horus take the hindmost.”

“Pelton’s group had almost made it back to the shuttle, double-timing it as though Horus himself was after them, little puffs of grey dust being kicked up by their hurrying feet, and their weapons at the ready.”

“At the time, we had no reason to believe that Abaddon’s latest rampage would have any more of an impact on the Eastern Arm than the previous ones had, which amounted to little more than vague rumours and unsubstantiated battle reports trickling down the astropathic network long after the dust had settled.”

“Abaddon was finished after the Gothic War, everyone knows that. He wouldn’t dare show his face in the Emperor’s realm again.” I’d faced the servants of the Great Enemy more often than I cared to contemplate, and in my experience it was never wise to underestimate them. Particularly a ten thousand year old madman, who’d been marinating himself in the raw stuff of Chaos for most of that time.”

“And maybe the Traitor Legions would come to their senses, renounce the Ruinous Powers, and return to the light of the Emperor, which seemed almost equally likely.”

“‘That would mean overriding the blessed safety protocols,’ Dysen protested, his expression resembling an ecclesiarch who’d just overheard someone suggesting that perhaps Horus had been a bit misunderstood.”

“‘And if wishing made it so, Horus would be the Emperor,’ I concluded, falling back on one of the platitudes from my childhood which censorious adults used to use to manage over-inflated expectations, though inflecting it as a joke, in case it was taken for a genuine rebuke.”

“I glanced at Rakel, hoping for some clue as to their intentions, as her precognitive flashes had saved my life on more than one occasion – but she was simply muttering to herself as usual, staring at Jurgen as though he were Horus incarnate, and keeping as far away from him as possible.”