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Stark Holborn is a very talented and interesting writer and one that I’m eager to see more from.
When I read ‘Triggernometry’ I assumed it was a one off. Reading this sequel it now seems that this is going to be a series, like Holborn’s excellent debut ‘Nunslinger’. That was a 12-part series of western novellas about a gun-toting Sister in the old West. Packed with wit and incident, it had the pace and cliffhanger endings of a Saturday Morning pictures series and was effortlessly entertaining.
The ‘Triggernometry’ books are shaping up to be just as much fun, but there are differences and similarities between the two series. The humour and thrills are similar, but whereas ‘Nunslinger’ felt like a clever but fairly conventional take on the horse opera, ‘Triggernometry’ is far more quirky.
The books are set in an alternative universe where mathematics is outlawed and mathematicians are, well, outlaws. They follow a gang of “mathmos”, led by Professor Malago Browne, who are on the run and trying to live a relatively quiet life. In classic western fashion, they get called upon to defend the citizens of a small town in this second outing.
What makes the books so much fun is the fact that Holborn resolutely refuses to accept how absolutely crazy the concept is. The mathmos are drawn from throughout history, and this instalment introduces Archimedes, whose dialogue is written in Ancient Greek. Everything else is written with a straight face, the result being a gripping adventure that just happens to be set in a universe that makes no sense. The juxtaposition makes for a read that is pure entertainment from beginning to end. It’s fun, funny, and thrilling. What’s more, Malago Browne is shaping up to be as likeable and convincing heroine as Sister Thomas Josephine, the Nunslinger, was.
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Welcome back to a world of train jobs, posses and the violent application of mathematical instruments (if you didn’t bring a protractor to the gun fight, you’ve already lost it, you just don’t know it yet).

Where Triggernometry played on classic heist tropes, Advanced Triggernometry channels The Magnificent Seven then delivers the tongue-in cheek joys of both a recruitment and a training montage along with a daring rescue from a lynch mob and an epic shoot-out.

Stark Holborn once again has enormous fun riffing on the familiar, but there’s sly commentary in the on-point world-building: the villain is a former entertainer who rose to prominence for discrediting mathematicians back when their stock in trade was still theorems rather than violence. A society that has been manipulated by corrupt men into brutally rejecting reason – along with any experts who might challenge the discourse – is disturbingly familiar…

Highly entertaining - here's hoping for further mathematical adventures in future as the mathmos take the fight back to the Capitol.

Full review

I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. ( )