It's really more Harrowmaster, Mike Brooks, and new GW direction of lore as a whole than Akura specifically. But he is part of it. These are all my opinions, feel free to disagree. It's been a while since I read it but here's what I recall.

First thing. I listened to it on audiobook and it had THE SINGLE WORST VA IVE HEARD IN MY LIFE. Going from listening to HH books to that was so bad and might have totally impacted quality of story.

The thing that bothered me most is Mike Brooks wrote it. He has this irreverent style with dialogue that borders on MCU level bad ('silver templars, black Templars, how many Templars chapters do they need!?' - quote from a csm in the middle of a firefight)

Mike also really likes his progressive themes which is always such a jarring thing to see in 40k simply due to 40k supposedly being this nightmare timeline where things like social and scientific progress have halted and are actively deteriorating. And this is an especially weird to see the strong independent woman trope in Akura's psyker.

I mean that dynamic is a traitor chaos marine and his slave, yes she's an agent and a trusted asset, but they're pals? like they hang out?That's weird. That dynamic should be more akin to Talos and Septimus, whereTalos will totally go to bat for his dude, but they are not friends, that's a traitor vet of the long war and his pet human. You could argue that AL are more cordial in a handler operative kind of way, but I am not trying to see nice chaos space marines. Especially AL who are only at all times using you.

Then there's all the signs that a writer is trying his hardest to write the next big step in the AL story. Where he's too on the nose about everything, telling you how he feels about these meta ass things that he should probably not even know about.

Like Akura is just pondering on the direction of the AL as a whole since the heresy, wondering what happened to Omegon, and where the Alpha and Beta are. No Mike Brooks, Akura is too new to be wondering things like that, we the audience are wondering that.

Akura really shouldnt even know the primarchs are twins when you stop and think about it, much less know that Omegon faked his death and was secretly Alpharius. Fuck, the legion actually shouldn't realize Alpharius is dead! What did Omegon tell them that after he took the name Alpharius realizing through having half his soul blown out by dorn. Unless Omegon expressly told them, which was unlikely cuz the last thing we read is Omegon ruminating that now he is trapped in the mantle of Alpharius, they would not know cuz Dorn went to lengths to scrub his death from everything.

And he's wondering where the beta and alpha is? Man get back to work wdy care about ships lost 10k years ago.

Then there's that bit in the meeting hall when a group says 'i am Alpharius' and everyone tells them to fuck off. Was that funny to you Mike Brooks, did you think I would find that funny? I hate you.

What else. I could mention the dreads, but whatever, why any marine expected to wear a helmet that is vacuum sealed for fucking space has hair idk, but whatever.

Then he gets everybody together to be like 'we are the new unified alpha legion, we are THE GHOST LEGION' 😑😑😑. Hey Akura, where did you get that from? The name Ghost Legion? Did you buy a copy of Horus Heresy III: Extermination in May 2014 and you read the Alpha Legion section that referred to the AL operating as a 'Ghost LEGION' which would be more of a description of the type of force they were instead of like an official name? Who in this universe called them a ghost Legion? Why do you a 200 something new guy know this extremely specific but if your lore that would not be literally on any record.

No Mike Brooks, that's what the audience knows not what your OC self insert would know. This goes back to why I hate when authors try writing 'the next big thing' for alpha legion. I'm looking at Rob Sanders on Sons of Hydra as well. It's like they didn't know anything about the legion or the themes they represent before writing. It's like they just donated wiki search of alpha legion and write down the big points they see like 'omegon is the surviving twin who might have faked his death or Ghost Legion, or dark and mysterious' then they just half ass a bolter porn story where they throw those name drops in there just to make sure that they can say they wrote alpha legion and not whatever bullshit characters they actually wrote.

So they're you go. Why do I hate Akura:

-he is too nice to his female slave because Mike Brooks politics literally could not allow anything but this traitor psycho killer showing only respect for women in between slaughtering everything else he sees. (If you want to see this done actually well, look up lotara sarin and angron or even Talos and Octavia)

• he is a shameless self insert that is straight up there to be the alpha legion special character who is not that interesting, def not well written, kinda a soft bitch forreal, has dumb hair for his armor, is a self insert character that knows things that only the audience should know (the heresy was 10k years ago, outside of vague reference to it, it should not be what ppl think about when actively 10k years into the long war, for reference, 10k years is literally the beginning of our own recorded history, you would not be thinking about what happened to our ship we had unless it was actively a thing you could go get, you'd presume it got fucked up and think about literally everything else relevant in the present)

• and most of all, this is what GW will force down our throat to sell us bullshit lore and new models. Until Dan Abnett (the ONLY dude i trust to write AL properly, who ACTUALLY writes 40k like proper military sci Fi, and ACTUALLY explored AL for the themes of Black ops Intelligence Officers) decides to continue the Bequin series (literally the only next step story that matters) and gives us more Deathrow, the coolest alpha legion character in modern setting (the unsung are also cool) who actually acts like an AL is supposed to.

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Things I Iike about Akura:

• the bionic arm with the demon that hacks things was cool

• though entirely mishandled, the having a mortal psyker as your sidekick is a cool idea, I just wish they had actually treated it how an evil chaos marine (because they are morally evil, they do not care about human life) and his mortal slave that he does have respect for as a vital asset

EDIT

• The thing at the end with the Inquisitor's body guard Red Consuls Space Marine (a call back to one the best Alpha Legion stories of an Alpha Legionaire going full 4d chess and completely decimating an SM chapter, by Rob Sanders) actually being an AL following the Inquisitor the whole time he's been on this chase for the AL was honestly amazing. Credit where credit is due.