I recently finished a new novel that launches an entirely new series. At its heart is an ancient Atlantean artefact: an amulet containing a technological suit of armour.
The opening book is set in modern-day Manchester and follows the suit’s new bearer as she discovers not only its power, but its sentience. The armour is not simply a tool. It questions. It reacts. It forms opinions. That awakening — and the moral tension it creates — becomes the spine of the story.
What began as a single idea quickly expanded into something far larger. If the suit is sentient, then it has a history. It has passed through other hands. Other lives. Other ages.
Among its former bearers is the figure we know as the Minotaur of Greek myth. But he is not alone. A Roman legionary. A Norse shield-maiden. A Japanese warrior. A Caribbean pirate. Each host shaped the armour, and in turn was shaped by it. The mythology of the world grew naturally from that premise: a symbiotic technology mistaken for legend wherever it appeared.
When I turned to write a prequel, I chose a figure from the Ulster Cycle: Cú Chulainn.
That story came with unexpected force. The words seemed to arrive already formed. Rather than retelling the myth as pure fantasy, I grounded it in something more tangible — less overt magic, more speculative science — while preserving the emotional truth of the folklore.
Cú Chulainn’s infamous ríastrad — the warp spasm that twists him into a monstrous engine of destruction — becomes the suit’s manifestation of his uncontained rage. The armour does not simply enhance him; it externalises what is already burning inside. It constructs a physical form around fury. The monster of legend is not conjured from nowhere — it is built.
Following his training under Scáthach on Skye, the suit learns to manifest the great spear, the Gáe Bulg. The legendary warrior returns to Ulster not as a boy with talent, but as something sharpened to a lethal edge.
It is, at its core, a tragic story. A life burning too fiercely to endure. A warrior forced to kill his closest friend — a brother not just in arms but in spirit. The glory of becoming Ireland’s greatest champion carries the inevitable price of dying young. The curse is not mystical; it is structural. The very intensity that makes him unstoppable ensures he cannot last.
In reshaping the mythology, I also reimagined figures such as The Morrígan. Traditionally depicted as a powerful, near-divine being, she becomes in my telling an ancient shapeshifting alien presence — an entity that has embedded itself so deeply in human culture that it became myth. The three “sisters” are not separate beings but three personalities housed within one form, sliding beneath the surface as circumstances demand. Her conflict with the suit is not spiritual but technological — a patient predator seeking an artefact she has encountered before, on other worlds.
One of my favourite moments is far quieter. When Cú Chulainn returns to Culann’s forge after years away, he is reunited with the hound he once helped train to repay his debt. Seven years have passed. The animal recognises his scent instantly. For a brief moment, the warrior is simply a man greeted by a loyal creature who remembers him. The reunion does not last long — but it grounds the epic in something painfully human.
The prequel remains unfinished, yet it has become one of the most enjoyable pieces of fiction I’ve written. Ironically, it has also cast new light on the original novel. The voice feels sharper. The themes feel more confident. The emotional weight lands harder.
That has created an unexpected consequence: I now feel compelled to revisit the first book. The prequel has raised the bar. If the series is to hold together as a cohesive whole, the opening novel must match the intensity and clarity that emerged from Cú Chulainn’s story.
Sometimes expanding a world doesn’t dilute it. Sometimes it reveals what it was always meant to be.