Advanced Triggernometry by Stark Holborn #BookReview

That gold you stole will burn a hole in your heart…

After pulling off the heist of the century, Professor Malago Browne and Pierre de Fermat are determined to hang up their protractors for good. But once you’ve been the most dangerous mathematician in the west, peace doesn’t come easy…

When three women approach Browne with a proposition, she can’t help but listen. Terrorised by a corrupt sheriff and his posse, the town need to hire the quickest and deadliest fighters they can find: in other words, mathmos.

Together with six unlikely allies, Browne once again finds herself facing incalculable odds in a battle for the town, its people, and the fate of every mathematician in the Western States.

And seven isn’t always a lucky number…

Title: Advanced Triggernometry | Author: Stark Holborn | Series: Triggernometry #2 | Publisher: Rattleback books | Publication date: 8th April 2021 | Source: Author

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.

4/5