RAPID FIRE: Mike Brooks Talks Alpharius Head of the Hydra

Welcome to this instalment of my Rapid Fire series of author interviews – today I’m chatting to Mike Brooks, author of Alpharius: Head of the Hydra. This is Mike’s first Horus Heresy novel for Black Library, and the 14th novel in the ongoing Primarchs series, and promises to be a treat for all fans of the ambiguous XX Legion – the Alpha Legion. I asked Mike for the lowdown on the new book, and despite all the secrets in which it’s shrouded he was able to reveal a little information about what to expect. Alpharius: Head of the Hydra is available to pre-order in swanky Limited Edition hardback on Saturday 16th January, with the standard hardback, ebook and audiobook versions presumably coming three months or so later.

Without further ado, let’s get on with the interview.

Track of Words: How would you describe your new novel Alpharius: Head of the Hydra?

Mike Brooks: It’s a first-person account of the Primarch of the Alpha Legion, detailing certain important events in his history.

ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters joining Alpharius in this story, and what do we need to know about them?

MB: A lot of the characters are ones you’ll likely already be familiar with from other works, so I’ll say “wait and see” for this one.

ToW: Where and when is it set?

MB: Ah, now that really *would* be telling. Suffice to say that there is more than one answer to that question. Sorry to be so mysterious: it’s not just being in character, there really are things that I would only want people to find out when they read the novel! It’s not just “Alpharius and the Alpha Legion are on a planet you’ve never heard of and have to solve a problem”, let’s say that.

ToW: How important would you say it is to have read previous Heresy-era Alpha Legion stories before starting this? Is there anything that you’d recommend reading first?

MB: I think you’ll definitely get more out of it if you’ve done so. Although I would say that if anything, John French’s Praetorian of Dorn and Chris Wraight’s Valdor: Birth of the Imperium will give relevant background to some of the events and references in the novel.

ToW: This is your first Horus Heresy novel, which I imagine must feel both daunting and thrilling – and to top it off, you’re tackling arguably the most tricky character(s) in the whole series! What were your first thoughts when you set out to write this?

MB: Well, initially it was “has someone else dropped out at short notice?”, but it seems that wasn’t the case. It was tremendously exciting to be offered this chance, especially a Primarchs novel, which are almost more special than ‘standard’ Horus Heresy or Siege of Terra novels, given that (so far as I know) there’s only going to be one each. It’s certainly a challenge to take on Alpharius, given the great work that’s been done on the Alpha Legion before, but there is also the fact that because the entire legion is so secretive and deceptive, I didn’t feel I necessarily had to stick exactly to every detail that had been written before. That went doubly for the fact that it’s a first-person narrative, which felt entirely correct for Alpharius, but he is of course the ultimate unreliable narrator.

ToW: How much of a fan of Alpharius and the Alpha Legion were you before you started work on this book? Can you tell us a bit about how you see this legion and their Primarch(s), and what appeals to you about them?

MB: I find the Alpha Legion more interesting than most other Space Marines, to be honest; mainly because they’re not normal Space Marines. The insurgency rather than straight-up warfare, the intrigue, the ongoing lack of clarity about how many of them are actually on which side, and why…all of these things are subtleties that most other Space Marines lack, and appeal to me (which might be a surprise given my well-know affinity for orks, but there you go). I’m not sure how easy, or indeed appealing, I’d have found it to write a novel for any other Primarch, but this one definitely caught my interest.

ToW: The Alpha Legion have been tackled by lots of different authors in the Heresy so far, which seems to suit their nature as being difficult to pin down. With that in mind, how did you go about choosing a story to tell for a book that will inevitably be seen by fans as being the ‘definitive’ Alpha Legion story?

MB: I don’t think you can have a definitive Alpha Legion story! They’re so varied, even in the Horus Heresy days, and of course you can never be sure what information about them is accurate. Now, I’m not saying that nothing in this novel is ‘true’, of course, because that would make the novel pointless. I wrote it with the intention that any or indeed all of it can be true…but it doesn’t have to be.

It’s worth remembering that *I* don’t actually know what’s ‘true’: Black Library make those calls! There were some things I suggested including that they said I couldn’t or shouldn’t, so nothing in there should contradict anything that’s considered important in canon. Mainly, however, I wanted to give possible, plausible answers to a lot of different questions that have come up over the years: including exactly how Alpharius Omegon first encountered the Imperium.

ToW: How did you find the writing process for this book – did it throw up any interesting challenges, or require you to do anything different to usual?

MB: I was required to do a slightly more in-depth synopsis than usual, I suspect because I was writing something that directly intersected with other people’s works for the first time. Otherwise, it was largely business as usual.

ToW: What do you hope Horus Heresy fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it? Are there any key themes that you’d like readers to take away from it?

MB: I hope people will get some answers to some long-standing questions (and admittedly, possibly some new questions to take their place). I wanted to make a few things slot into place, and I hope I’ve achieved that in a way that people are satisfied with, without ruining the mystique of the legion.

ToW: Finally, have you got any plans to write further Alpha Legion stories, in any time period?

MB: …I can’t say.

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Big thanks to Mike for taking the time to do this interview, and for giving us the lowdown on what sounds like an intriguing novel. If you don’t already, make sure you follow Mike on Twitter to keep up with all his writing news! Good luck to everyone hoping to snag a LE copy on Saturday – I’ll be looking out for this when the standard edition lands, and will hopefully get a review ready soon after that.

See also: the main Horus Heresy reviews page on Track of Words.

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