Review - Triggernometry Finals by Stark Holborn

Triggernometry Finals

Stark Holborn (illustrated by Philip Harris)

Rattleback Books, 4 February 2025
Available as: e, print length 63pp   
Source: advance copy
ASIN: B0DT6S5PW5

I'm grateful to the author for sending me a copy of Triggernometry Finals to consider for review.

As the title may suggest this is the final book in the Triggernometry sequence, following Triggernometry and Advanced Triggernometry, showing us the ultimate fate of  Professor “Mad” Malago Browne and her desperate associates in an alt-West where academics in general, but especially mathematicians, have been persecuted and banished, knowledge trampled down, and ignorance exalted. Any resemblance to the present day is I'd conjecture, purely intentional, especially in the glimpse we're give at the start of the book of how this state of affairs originated.

Anyway, as the story opens, things are more perilous than ever, with the forces of the Capitol closing in and our little band of reluctant "math" heroes losing one of its leading analysts. It seems only one desperate, last play remains to them...

As in the other books, the writing here is great fun, Holborn clearly combining mathematics with the genre of the Western so that geometrical instruments, solutions to equations, and infinite series (among other things) are weaponised and deployed among guns and dynamite to make mayhem. There are gunfights in bars, parched desert and lawless towns where Browne's face appears on "Wanted" posters. The atmosphere of violence reminds us of the underlying concerns that Browne had in the first book when she was, you may remember, lying low not only from fear for her life but from disgust at the destruction her field had wrought and which was part of its downfall.

We are though beyond that ambiguity now, with various mathematical heroes brought out of the pages of journals and assembled in one company, ready to take on the forces of reaction and darkness. Their presence in one time and place may be anachronistic but it works, Holborn infusing each with a recognisable character that reflects their body of work. Taken as a whole they do of course show how any academic discipline evolves in dialogue with its past. 

It's a swift moving story, with plenty of darkness and fear as to how things might turn out, and some shocking twists. The Capitol has its way of suborning the "mathmos" - gold talks, and can everyone really be trusted?

A suitable, and enjoyable, conclusion to this fast-shooting series, one which keeps all the plates spinning right to the end and then, as it were, shoots them all down with one fantastic trick shot. Strongly recommended.

For more information about Triggernometry Finals, or to purchase it, see the author's website here.