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.

#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.