#Review - Hel's Eight by Stark Holborn

Hel's Eight
Stark Holborn
Titan Books, 21 March 2023

Available as: PB, 353pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803362298

I'm grateful to the author for sending me a copy of Hel's Eight to consider for review.

One day older and deeper in debt...

Taking place in the same setting as Ten Low, Hel's Eight picks up the story a few years later with ex-convict "Doc" Ten living in a shack in the forsaken wastes of the moon Factus.

As soon becomes clear, Ten isn't out there for her own good. She is doing what she can to treat the desperate people who scratch a living in the dust, trying to level the score, to atone for the great wrong she believes she did. And by living in isolation, accompanied only by her battered robot dog Rowdy, she hopes to avoid bringing down further trouble on anyone else. She's cut herself off from such friends and acquaintances as she still has, including her sometime lover Silas. 

Then one day, the past comes knocking on Ten's door. A showdown is looming with the acquisitive Xoon Futures corporation, which seems to have money - or at least, company tokens - to throw around and which has been muscling in on Factus, threatening the fragile lives and fragile independence of its inhabitants.  You'd think Factus a place so wretched and perhaps cursed that surely anyone sane would stay far away. We saw in the previous book how the moon is haunted by the bizarre Ifs - generally referred to in superstitious areas as just "They". They might be fates, gods or who knows what but They seem able to surf the possibilities of the future, feeding off the alternates. It seems now that Ten may have unfinished business with Them - or They with her - but others may now have learned that and have plans to make use of her. So Ten has to decide whether to listen to the call and come back for one last adventure...

As Ten struggles with that dilemma, we are given additional context about Factus through diary entries written decades earlier by 'Pec "Eight" Esterházy', a convict who came to Factus and whose fate may explain a little of what is going on. 

Ten is a fascinating and complex character who has lived a fascinating and complex life. One senses the tension in her, the regret at what she's done, the fear of what it may do to her, but also her desire to protect and to rescue the inhabitants of Factus from a grim choice between a grinding existence and ownership by Xoon. In this remote part of space (on the edge of 'the Void') those endless alternate outcomes that feed Them seem to be opposed by a commercial monoculture in which everything and everyone is owned and controlled. What play of possibilities can there be in that, what freedom?

It's just brilliant how Holborn takes the tyranny embodied by the "company town" and dials it up to, oh, twenty three or something, weaving it into a truly existential, spiritual menace that is only heightened because out here on the edge, there is nobody to ride to the rescue.

That concept is sharpened by the obvious fun that Holborn is having here with a setting that while firmly futuristic and more than a little bit weird, also echoes there classic Western - transport by some sort of vehicle referred to as a "mule", dusty, dead-end towns and trading-posts, abandoned mines and the gangs of 'Road Agents'. 

I just loved this book, equal parts horror, Western and SF (and some other things too) and fully, gloriously itself, its own twisted, wonderful thing, an absorbing read and a truly distinctive one.

For more information about Hel's Eight, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Ten Low by Stark Holborn

Design by Julia Lloyd

Ten Low
Stark Holborn
Titan Books, 1 June 2021
Available as: PB, 336pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy kindly supplied by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781789096620

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of Stark Holborn's Ten Low to consider for review.

After reading Holborn's Nunslinger, Triggernometry and Advanced Triggernometry, I had high expectations for Ten Low and they were fully met.

Ten Low is a person - a woman living on the remote moon Factus, somewhere out on the edge of known space. "Ten" refers to the length of the sentence she's served before release onto this barren world - a desperate, arid place inhabited by organ scavengers, smugglers, religious fanatics and outlaws, all kept alive by a dripfeed of resources from the ruling power of space, the Accord, much of which is however skimmed off before it ever arrives, leaving Factus only the dregs.

I'm not sure whether this milieu is one that Ten chose, or whether there are reasons why she's here and not some more pleasant world, but it does seem appropriate for her because we gradually learn about some dark things she has to atone for. At the beginning though all we really know is that she's trying to save lives, trying to even up the score. Her status as a medic buys her a degree of protection, of neutrality, among her fellows even on Factus but it's not proof against all dangers - and particularly not the weird, fate-shifting effect of the mysterious 'Them'. 'They' are a race - or a supernatural power - or a myth - apparently native to Factus. You don't talk about Them, in case They hear and take a hand in things, causing, and feeding on, consequences and chaos. And Ten's all about the consequences, so she is constantly on her guard, looking for signs that They may be up to something.

Perhaps They are... into the blighted wastes of Factus comes an outsider, Gabi, a child General of the Accord, a woman (or girl - it's truly mixed up and I really don't know how to judge this) with plenty of blood on her hands, but of course absolved, as a member of the winning side in the recent war. Marooned after an accident with her ship, she's determined to get back to her command, but Factus isn't an easy place to escape. The two must make their way across the moon, trading for basic necessities at windswept outposts and evading an eager posse of bounty hunters, kidnappers and aggrieved citizens (it's complicated). Playing on the characteristic notes of a Western in a SF setting, Ten Low gives us one Woman With a Past and another woman - or girl - who may not have a Future (or who may have many Futures, if They have anything to do with it). 

The relationship between Ten and Gabi is initially hostile. The General assumes that Ten is a traitor, but the two need to cooperate to survive, and besides, Ten has obscure reasons of her own for wanting to save lives. The General is a decorated war hero, but rather at sea on this dusty moon and unable to call in help. Not a new setup, but Holborn truly makes it her own, allowing the two to speak for themselves (their character also becomes clearer through a range of allies and enemies with whom they have history). The relationship is complex, drawing on hurts and crimes and losses that are rarely actually described but which make themselves felt by their influence on the behaviours we see and on the goals and methods of the protagonists. Ten, for example, is reluctant to hurt or kill which frustrates the General but then something happens and we suddenly understand why she's like that. Gabi, the General, has clearly suffered some kind of conditioning to make her into a war-winning machine but there is more to her than that and you need to ask why she would - as she seems to have - cooperate with such a process?

Also unclear but (partly) revealed in the evolving pattern of this book is a developing mystery revolving around what 'They' want, something hinted at in obscure prophesies and startling moments where the hidden threads of the cosmos seem to be exposed. Ten seems important to that, although she doesn't understand the reasons any more than we as readers do (even though all this does at times seem to give her an edge).

It's a genuinely gripping story, driven by action on almost every page and the kind of book that once picked up, you don't want to let go till you've finished. Those desert wastes and enigmatic characters do grow on you...

For more information about Ten Low, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Advanced Triggernometry by Stark Holborn

Cover by Philip Harris

Advanced Triggernometry (Triggernomentry #2)
Stark Holborn
Rattleback Books, 8 April 2021
Available as: e-book
Source: e-book kindly supplied by the author

"The cash we stole dragged at our heels, bloody and guilty, but we didn't let it go. That's the problem with gold..."

A year ago, with Triggernometry, Holborn introduced a version of the Old West where practitioners of mathematics are outlawed - literally. In that book her outcast "mathmos", "mad" Malago Browne and her sidekick, Pierre Fermat, used their skills in advanced calculus and complex analysis to get an edge in every gunfight - not to mention the keen edges of their steel protractors, rulers and setsquares - and pulled off an audacious robbery. The Big One. The heist to end all heists. 

So as Advanced Triggernometry begins, we find Browne living as "Mrs Grey", apparently at peace, across the Border - as the way is, or was, in the Old West. 

She's teaching maths in a school, until one day three strangers arrive.

She should have stayed there...

Advanced Triggernometry is another riff on a classic Western theme - this time, the town defenceless against bandits. The three strangers want help. It's time for Browne to saddle up, ride out, and, accompanied by Dog, get the gang together agains.

It's all great fun, working on three levels (at least). First, on the surface, there are the classic locations, characters and situations: the mining camp, the saloon bar fight, the corrupt lawman, the climactic shootout. Then, we have the joy of seeing Holborn recast everything in a mathematical framework, having the fights won by a keen eye, a quick brain and a well deployed instrument. This carries through to the chapter names and headings and the background and character of the protagonists (who must surely be drawn from a Valhalla of the science - Holborn manages to have figures together who were born hundred or even thousands of years apart: even Archimedes makes an appearance).

Finally, there's a serious note in the way society has gone here. A little bit Fahrenheit 451, a little bit The Handmaid's Tale, but wholly its own thing, the depiction of a nation where the Capitol has manipulated prejudice and greed to turn people away from learning and enlightenment is... not that far from reality, in some respects. And its fitting that the response, as depicted here, is to seek solidarity and mutual protection from the bullies.

The writing is sharp and authentic for the genre ('Noches was named for its trade: night pursuits, fuelled by liquor and as many bad decisions as could be crammed into ten hours of darkness', 'People began to emerge from the houses, their eyes guarded, words of welcome locked behind their teeth') but at the same time full of great mathematical in-jokes ('Évariste Galois. Careful of him. He's young, but he's a trouble-maker. Obsessed with radicals.') and in places Holborn both manages to hit a reference or work in a quote and to make her writing deeply moving.

To summarise, whole short, Advanced Triggernometry entertains throughout. It's a fun read, and raises some serious issues. I'd recommend.  

You can pre-order Advanced Triggernometry from Amazon for Kindle here. 

Stark Holborn's website is here.

Review - Triggernometry by Stark Holborn

Cover by Philip Harris

Triggernometry
Stark Holborn
Rattleback Books, 8 April 2008
e-book, 62pp

I'm grateful to Stark Holborn for a free advance copy of Triggernometry to consider for review.

I knew Holborn as the author of Nunslinger, an excellent alt-Western which I reviewed here.

Now Holborn is back with a novel that packs the punch of an even alt-ier story. Again all the Western touchstones are there - the wilderness, the railroads as lifelines, Frontier (lack of) justice, the protagonist who wants to put the past behind - and the past that won't be so put.

But here there is an exotic spin to the whole thing. This is a world, or at least an America, where mathematics and mathematicians are reviled, feared. They are the despised "maths" with prices on their heads, sometimes tolerated - just - for useful skills but only if those skills can be cloaked in some polite fiction, or hawked at dead of night, which is where we meet "Mad” Malago Browne and her sidekick, Pierre Fermat. Holborn has fun throughout introducing figures from the history of maths and, in Emmy Noether, physics. She generally paints them as a crew of hard-drinking, ruthless desperadoes, albeit fallen due to persecution rather than intent.

Of course there's a shootout.

Of course there are desperate nighttime rides.

Of course there's a loyal hound called, simply, Dog.

The central conceit is maintained very well: just why might maths be seen as dangerous? Holborn makes you believe that those instrument sets, those methods and solutions, may, indeed, in the wrong hands, constitute threats. Browne is deadly when she can find an angle, and she and Fermat are a formidable team. All the more pity, then, they had a falling out all those years back...

In a world of rough mining camps, ranches, anarchists, bank raids and posses, it all seems to make a lot of sense. The drive of the narrative, combined with Browne's bitterness through most of the book and her bickering with "Ferm", carries the reader along magnificently. In a relatively short book that relationship is central and Holborn conveys it very well - yes that love-hate thing between a pair of outlaws is another classic Western trope yet Holborn makes it into something slightly different, adding a wistfulness at the mathematical life that has been lost: at one stage Ferm whoops in delight when employing a particular clever technique to solve a problem and the book has that sense of infectious fun throughout.

A great read, whether you speak maths or not - if you do you'll spot some in-jokes and references as well as understanding the chapter heading equations, if you don't you'll still enjoy this fun and gripping story.

For more information about the book and to buy it, see the author's website here.