#Review - Ninth Life by Stark Holborn

Ninth Life (Factus Sequence, 3)

Stark Holborn
Titan Books, 23 July 
Available as: PB, 416pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803362984

I'm grateful to the author and publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Ninth Life to consider for review.

Ninth Life is a return to the universe of Ten Low and of Hel's Eight - a future dominated by the militaristic Accord, which ruthlessly exploits its colony planets for raw materials, assisted by various warlords, gangster capitalist federations and oligarchs. Opposition has arisen on the mysterious but especially harsh world of Factus with its spirits, the probability-bending Ifs, who are able - sometimes - to turn likelihood on its head. Also featuring are the Seekers, with their semi-religious trade in organs and blood.

Ninth Life follows the career of ex General Gabriella Ortiz, originally a child soldier and a former hero of the Accord. Gabi featured in the earlier books, and her arrival, dragged from the wreck of a crashed spacecraft, nods to that. Here, though, her story is given in full - although it's contradictory to say that because as the narrator of Ninth Life makes clear, he has limited, uncertain sources and somebody is trying to erase his work.

Military Proctor Idrisi Blake himself is as much a character here as Gabi. We see his understanding of, and sympathy with, the former general turned pirate and rebel develop as his researches proceed. The framing is complex, with at least two different timelines for Gabi and numerous witnesses and accounts used to substantiate her career, but it's made more so by a fourth wall breaking effect where she seems at times to be directly addressing Blake. Failing to heed the often repeated instruction not to listen to her, Blake falls more and more under Gabi's spell, as do most of those she encounters and as, I am sure, will most readers.

Yet Gabi remains something of a mystery. Through a series of battles, fights, escapes, downfalls, injuries and betrayals we learn a lot about her origins, motivation and fears - but less about her intentions. Hers has been a life with loss (you'll know that if you've read the previous books) and she's suffered both betrayal and failure, but even so, everywhere she goes, everything she does, seems to align with some unstated purpose. It's less than clear how far she knows and understands this herself (the asides to Blake suggest that she does) and how far she is is actively cooperating with it or how much she is being drawn along. The best I can put it is, the Ifs, who are an important part of this story, will offer their help but only on their own terms, and there is a cost. Gabi is clearly paying that price, but we don't know - and I don't think she does - how far she is being given fair weight in exchange for her coin.

All in all a heart-pounding and exciting story with a core of steel. As ever Stark Holborn is superlative in bringing alive these actively hostile, dead-end-of-the-galaxy locations, places which make each day's survival a heroic act and every character, therefore, a hero. They're like the desert environs of the typical Western raised to the power 100.  That will be familiar from the earlier books, but the story has now expanded beyond that Western-in-Space metaphor to a whole new level of weird, anarchic, punkiness that is just a glory to read.

I'm not sure if there will be more in this series - the ending is I think deliberately unclear - but if there are I will be delighted. Holborn's books provide something - a spice, a feistiness - which, while impossible to pin down, is I think unique in current SF and which I just can't get enough of.

For more information about Ninth Life, see the publisher's website here.