Welcome to this instalment of Rapid Fire, my ongoing series of quick interviews with authors talking about their new releases. These are short and sweet interviews, with the idea being that each author will answer (more or less) the same questions – by the end of each interview I hope you will have a good idea of what the new book (or audio drama) is about, what inspired it and why you might want to read or listen to it.
In this instalment I spoke to veteran Black Library author Graham McNeill about his second Siege of Terra novella, Fury of Magnus, which is available to pre-order this weekend as a swanky Limited Edition hardback. Expect the standard editions in roughly three months time. Whether you’ve been following the Horus Heresy every step of the way or you’re just a massive fan of the Thousand Sons, this promises to be an epic conclusion to a fascinating character arc!
Here’s Graham to tell us more…
Track of Words: How would you describe your new novella Fury of Magnus?
Graham McNeill: It’s a story set amid the catastrophic, spectacular violence of the Siege of Terra, with the final arc of Magnus’s plan now set in motion. While lesser beings make war in the physical realm, Magnus takes his scheming into realms beyond the mundane with a move nobody sees coming. It’s the culmination of this particular arc of Magnus, with him finally coming to a point where all the mental gymnastics he’s been performing to keep the cognitive dissonance in his head in check finally unravels, a place where the truth of who he is cannot be escaped any longer, and where he’s finally forced into the position of self-awareness he’s avoided for so long.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
GM: The main characters are those of the Thousand Sons we’ve spent so much time with, the cabal closest to Magnus: Ahriman, Amon, and Menkaura. And in opposition to them are the Salamanders who brought Vulkan to Terra, and the Space Wolves who last faced Magnus in the ruins of Nikaea. There are others too, but I’ll let the readers discover them on their own…
ToW: Can you talk a little about whereabouts this takes place on Terra, and at what point during the Siege?
GM: This story takes place directly after Saturnine, with the shockwaves of those events still ringing around Terra. And it travels from beyond the walls to the very heart of Terra itself.
ToW: How much is this a direct sequel to The Crimson King? Are there other stories that feed into it?
GM: It’s a direct sequel to The Crimson King, yeah, but also pretty much every story I’ve told of Magnus and the Thousand Sons feeds into it. This is the culmination of a number of story threads from their tales and those of the other characters who take the stage here. In many ways, it’s a story of endings, but also one that, for some, heralds new beginnings too. Cryptic, much…?
ToW: This sounds like it’s more connected to wider events in the Siege than Sons of the Selenar was – how did you find writing this and making sure everything tied in nicely to the rest of the series, and also John French’s Ahriman series?
GM: Yeah, Sons of the Selenar was more of a deliberately standalone story, one I chose to place somewhat outside the main arc of the Siege. I saw that book as more of a conclusion to my Shattered Legions arc, even though it threaded a needle between The Solar War and The Lost and the Damned, than one directly connected to events on the surface. This book ties directly into events subsequent to Saturnine and The First Wall, and offers threads that will be picked up in later books. As far as tying in to other Thousand Sons books, it doesn’t rely on them too much beyond some of the characters and references to how – if you’ve read those books – you know how some of those arcs end.
ToW: A Thousand Sons and The Crimson King were huge, grand-scale stories, but as a novella this is obviously a shorter story – what impact did that shorter length have on the style of the book, or the narrative you chose?
GM: The length of the story didn’t much affect the epicness, to be honest, as it’s still a sweeping story with grand set-pieces, vast-scale battles, and a weighty emotional heft. As all the stories of Magnus are wont to do, it grew in the telling, and ended up longer than I intended, which allowed me the space to do this finale justice.
ToW: When you first wrote A Thousand Sons, did you have a sense of what Magnus’ end-point of the Heresy would be? If so, how did that compare to how things ended up?
GM: In the writing of A Thousand Sons, certain outcomes suggested themselves, yeah. The more I wrote of Magnus, and the more I came to truly understand what drove him, the more I began to see how he had become the character he is in the 41st millennium, and what decisions and mindsets were necessary to allow that to come about. So, by the end of that book, yeah, I had an idea of what that final arc might be, and the telling of The Crimson King only reinforced that. But the full, down in the weeds, nitty-gritty of this book’s ending only really became apparent after reading the other incarnations of Magnus in my fellow scribes’ novels and working out the most emotional gut-punch to deliver.
ToW: Looking back at this whole arc, do you have a favourite element of the journey you took these characters on? Something you really enjoyed writing, or are particularly proud of?
GM: From a technical point of view, I think the Battle of Tizca was one aspect I was particularly proud of, as it had so many moving parts that needed to align with what I wanted to do with the story and what we already knew of that part of the Heresy. That I had readers, even die-hard Space Wolf fans or folk who figured Magnus got what he deserved, come out of A Thousand Sons with a bit more understanding of what had led to that moment was something I still allow myself a quiet smile over. The scene in The Crimson King where events of Dan’s Prospero Burns are woven in was one I was particularly pleased with, but it’s all been building to the ending(s) of this book, which will, I hope, linger long in the minds of the readers.
ToW: Your first Siege of Terra novella, Sons of the Selenar, had a real emotional weight to it (by which I mean it hit RIGHT in the feels) – are you aiming for something similar here, or does Magnus’ story take a different direction?
GM: That’s great to hear, and I hope this book has an emotional core and an ending that will run far deeper than Sons of the Selenar. The endings in that book were, to a degree, the only right and proper endings, ones you could in hindsight expect. I think the ending to this book will take readers to places they didn’t see coming and will have them questioning their current life choices… Let’s put it this way, in my final red-pen read-through, I had a lump in my throat and damp eyes at more than one scene – and not always for the reasons you might expect.
ToW: What do you hope Horus Heresy fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
GM: I feel they’ll come out of this story having had a thrilling rollercoaster of emotions and with a deeper respect for Magnus and his sons. And, with that, I hope they’ll have an understanding of how someone can do terrible things for what they felt were good reasons and how love can ultimately be the thing that simultaneously redeems and damns a soul forever.
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Big thanks as always to Graham for taking the time to answer these questions and give us all the lowdown on his new novella. Personally speaking, I’m a massive fan of Magnus and the Thousand Sons so I’m really looking forward to reading this!
Fury of Magnus is available to pre-order (via the Games Workshop website) as of the 19th September 2020.
Click here if you fancy taking a look at some other Rapid Fire interviews. If you have any questions, comments or other thoughts please do let me know in the comments below, or find me on Twitter.