“A little knowledge can be dangerous, but a lot of it can be deadly. We learned that the hard way.”

Professor “Mad” Malago Browne – thief, killer, and one of the most wanted outlaws in the Western States – is trying to forget her bloody past and fight back against the tyranny of the Capitol, one maths lesson at a time.

The only problem? Gold talks and mathmos everywhere are listening, selling their skills – and each other – to the enemy for the price of freedom. There’s only one person with the power to stop them: Browne’s old mentor, Carl “the Cannon” Gauss.

But when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Browne – and a rag tag faculty of numerates and renegades – to do the impossible: unite the mathmos and bring the fight to the Capitol’s door, one last time.

Little do they know the eleventh hour might arrive sooner than they think…

Triggernometry Finals is the third and final instalment in the Triggernometry series, mixing the grit of the western with a cast of mathematicians from across history to create a unique and explosive adventure.

Mad Malago Browne rides again wielding her weapons of Maths instruction with deadly aplomb as the late and the great genii of the only field of academia not to have Nobel prize ride into battle once more. There was an urban myth that Alfred Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician which is why the great dynamite inventing chemist decided his scheme of prizes recognising a broad spectrum of human achievement would eschew the entire field of mathematics, however this juicy story has been roundly debunked as has been explained here. Along with the hypothesis that Nobel decided against including a prize for mathematics because he “did not consider mathematics as a practical discipline, and too theoretical to benefit humankind.” Both assertions are ones that Browne and company vigorously refute in teh pages of this delightful novella.

The mathmos’ adversary is again a furiously innumerate Capitol that is waging a war on science, facts and education (Sounds kinda familiar doesn’t it). Unfortunately the Capitol has gone one stage further in embracing the philosophy of ‘set a thief to catch a thief.’ So the renegade mathmos find themselves opposed by their own kind recruited by gold or bullying into serving the enemy – somewhat like the Ottoman Empire’s use of Christian Janisseries to attack (amongst others) the Knights of Malta.

Full of Stark’s trademark captivating imagery and lyrical prose this is another delight to digest, it’s 60+ pages easily consumed in an evening or so.

The premise of the world of Triggernometry is a strange version of the 1880s wild west and the 1920s prohibition – a place and time where mathematics (rather than alcohol) has been outlawed and those who know it, teach it or use it have been criminalised.  However, the mathmos make formidable adversaries bringing their specialised knowledge of projectile trajectories, statistical probabilities, mathematical instruments and the laws of parabolic reflection to make a lethal art out of bar brawling and gunslinging.

In this latest instalment, our protagonist – Mad Malago Browne – is living on the edge of society, hunkered down with her long-time companion in arms Fermi (aka Pierre de Fermat) after their triumphant robbing of the Capitol gold train. I had so many lines that caught my eye so I will have to ration myself in quoting – but here are a couple that capture Malago’s companion and her immediate environment so beautifully.

A figure slumped at the stable, asleep on his watch. Fermat. His cheek rested on pages covered in a frantic, spider scrawl of calculations, drool blurring the symbols to uselessness. He still clutched the pen, his fingers wretched with ink, an empty whisky bottle on the floor beside him.

Beyond the shack, the Badlands stretched, an unbroken sheet of paper in the moonlight, white to the horizon.

One of the joys of the Triggernometry series is how Holborn plucks figures from the dusty annals of mathematics and transforms them into bands every bit as heroic as any Magnificent Seven or Dirty Dozen. And for anyone who thinks the halls of academia must be corridors of calm collegiality devoid of the cliques and internecine feuding that plague the mundanity of everyday life – well Holborn has news for you.

I recognised quite a few names. I’ve heard of Gauss, who comes Gandalf-like to summon Browne from Badlands retirement. I knew of Bernoulli, though I didn’t realise that there were two of them – brothers, but William Playfair was entirely new to me. As with Malago Browne herself, Holborn has me rifling the pages of Wikipedia for mathematical biographies and smiling at how she has integrated the known (or rumoured) history of these academic trailblazers into the way they manifest on the plot and pages of Triggernometry Finals.

However, you don’t need to know mathematics or mathematicians to appreciate the lyrical prose and compelling characters around which Holborn weaves another plot of desperate plans that go through several iterations en route to a solution.

The epigrams at the start of each chapter are mathematical equations – more a visual delight than an attempt to educate, while the dialogue has a faint sprinkling of mathematical notation whose meaning is clear from the context. These motifs raise a smile and an appreciation of how thoroughly Holborn has built her world. In the fantasy community we are used to magic systems of the hard and the soft variety and everything in between. We happily absorb an array of terms ‘threads’ ‘elements’ ‘auras’ etc that manage to carry us through the story without ever imparting a precise meaning. Holborn raids the lexicon of mathematics to give us a different kind of magic – from the lethally sharp-edged blade of a 180 degree protractor, to the dazzling illumination of a parabolic reflector – which makes for a world it is a delight to immerse yourself in.

There are so many lovely lines that I will leave to enjoy them in the context of the work as a whole, but this one is a lovely Kingly quote near the end of the book.

“The mathmos fled into the desert and the future followed.”

I like the optimism that the anti-science movement – which we seem to face in contemporary political life just as much as Malago Browne and Co faced in this imaginary Wild West (WWi) – will not dictate our future.

Triggernometry Finals is due for release 4th February – you can pre-order your copy HERE