Control Review: Alpharius: Head of the Hydra

Looking for someone…

I, Dalton Lewis, read Alpharius by Mike Brooks. Unlike some of the other primarch books this one shows a first-person perspective which offers a strong look at the main character. There’s no window through which to see the primarch: we see him ourselves. We see him living his life, being found by the Emperor, and his subsequent search through the galaxy for…answers. We see him lying and manipulating the world around him. There’s no lens: we see his schemes as he creates them, giving us an excellent character for whom to root.

Alpharius is one of the primarch series, a series of books about the original Space Marines who founded each space marine faction. Alpharius founded the Alpha Legion, the Hydra forces. They eventually went over to Horus and joined his Traitor Legions in the Horus Heresy but helped the Space Marines until then.

Alpharius tries to fight for his legion, for his emperor, even if it means doing morally questionable things. He also hires people who eventually look like him. He makes it impossible to know who is really him — who is Alpharius. He is drawn to a curious case in a planet far away — a case in which someone fights aliens with the strength and speed of a primarch. He wants to investigate this appearance, this person, and figure out who it is.

There’s a section where Alpharius dares himself to sneak into the Palace of the Emperor — mostly to see if he can. I liked the way he tried to use the palace’s defenses against themselves and tried to focus on being a brilliant agent. I liked the way he tried to challenge himself to get a shot on the Emperor if he could. That made for an interesting situation — and a difficult one to extract one’s self from.

Then the novel turns into a pursuit of a man, a goal, looking for someone. I won’t spoil the person for whom Alpharius is searching, but it is an interesting and useful mystery. He has to fight through several groups of enemy forces and sacrifice a number of his own soldiers to get to the person he is seeking. The enemy forces are weird, numerous, and scary — effective for one of these pulp sci-fi books.

The main character’s persona — his personality — was the most interesting part of the novel for me. He thought everything through and anticipated every eventuality. He had to face a number of surprises and had to alter his plans repeatedly as his soldiers fell in battle.

This novel doesn’t have the pure anger and rage that Angron’s book does — it doesn’t have the memories of being in the slave-pits — but it does have a character that one can root for a lot more than the other primarch books. Angron is a crazy psychopath and Kurze is a crazier psychopath. I was pleased to read about a primarch who wasn’t all evil, all the time.

Lastly, I find myself wondering how many people sneak onto the Vengeful Spirit. It seems to have unwanted visitors all the damned time. They really should up their security. They have people visiting all the time. Just a suggestion, Horus.

Thanks, and take care, friends.