Hel's Eight by Stark Holborn

I would like to thank the author and Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £8.99 paperback £6.64 Kindle eBook

Please note this book is a sequel to the excellent Ten Low by Stark Holborn — Runalong The Shelves but I think you could read this book first and come back later to the first too if you’re tempted (which you will be)

Who controls the future, controls it all...

Ten “Doc” Low is a medic with a dark past, riding the wastes of the desert moon Factus, dispensing medicine to the needy and death to those who cross the laws of the mysterious Seekers. Cursed by otherworldly forces, she stays alone to keep herself safe, and to keep others safe from her...

But when she experiences a terrifying vision of conflict and the deaths of those she once called friends, she must drag herself back to the land of the living to stop a war before it begins. With rebellion brewing, the Accord’s grip on the Outer Moons weakening and a sinister tycoon buying up all land in sight, Ten must find allies where she can and face the past in order to save the future. The cost will be greater than she could ever have imagined...

The Western is often about a border. Trying to survive in a wilderness. Some trying to impose their sense of order on a world that doesn’t need it. They can invoke ghost stories because the boundaries between the worlds are being stretched thin and who knows what will come out. Now add science fiction to the mix and you have the epic, fast-flowing action-packed and deliciously eerie Hel’s Eight as the border moon of Fractos becomes a bloody battleground for all seeking power and control.

Ten is a medic, convict, traitor, spy, and mass-murderer but also a herald of the mysterious entities known as the Ifs. Creatures outside of space and time who hunger on possibilities and the lives wiped out or saved. After an epic battle Ten has gone into the wilderness of Fractos but life is never going to be quiet for too long. They become aware that a new ambitious businessman named Xoon is buying up holdings (either via cash or violence) and they too seem very interested in the Ifs. As Ten’s old friends gather Ten also finds Xoon is keen to capture Ten for themselves and learn more about the strange forces that lives on the moon hidden from human sight. For Ten this also becomes a reckoning and someone she follows in the footsteps of will finally tell her tale that explains further why Fractos is so dangerous.

I loved Ten Low it was gloriously creative; character-focused and action-packed. Safe To say I think Hel’s Eight is even better and impressively I think very tonally different to its predecessor – its not simply the same story old again. In this story Holborn increases the weird western focus of the story. It’s a science fiction border moon but one that is charged on every page with something that is equally alien and supernatural that the unwitting humans that wandered into. Its broody, bloody and ominous and Xoon’s action are really stirring with powers they do not really understand. It’s a cosmic horror tale this time compared to Ten’s previous outing as a redemption tale and I relished that Holborn has the confidence to play with the format so soon in the series.

Holborn makes you feel the heat, dust and constant bloodshed in Fractos and the action rarely lets up too. We get rescues, betrayals, attacks and the ever increasing threat of mass gang war as people try to stop Xoon in their tracks. It’s a world where if you’re mortally wounded people will harvest your remains so others can live. Life is both cheap and yet nothing goes to waste. We get a little more exploration into the political set-up of the world and this time we also look at a memorable character we only glimpsed last time the one-time Fence Pec Esterhazy; a woman who also knows something of the Ifs and seemed to expect Ten’s arrival. We get interludes of her own compelling backstory as she first arrives on Fractos and how she connects to both Xoon’s business and Ten’s own future. Again, these are bristling with horror as Pec and a small group of seconded prisoners realise that they have been sent to Fractos not just as hard labour but also bait. Those sections really help ramp up the tension not just for Pec but also heighten that Xoon really is poking with forces best left alone and Ten is about to be in the firing line for the next attempt….

This leads again to ten and she is for the main plot again our narrator. Holborn makes her narration again hugely compelling. Ten is a character filled with a ned to pay back the many lives she is responsible for taking but she also now battles a desire to hide and be forgotten; to live a life again and most ominously resists serving the Ifs in a different capacity - becoming their mysterious representative and avatar – a figure known only as Hel. If the first book was Ten explaining who she was this story is focused on who Ten will be. Hard and painful choices abound and now Ten can see all the possibilities she knows what she may have to leave behind. I would note though despite all this grimness, action, and horror we get warmth especially when Ten’s old friends from the previous book make a return and we see what has or has not changed in the gap since we last met them. WE need these moments of light just tp remember what this fight is all about and I really liked that we get to see the humanity of the characters still shine through/

Hel’s Eight for me is an even stronger novel than Ten Low. Sleeker; never a moment wasted and knows when to give us and the reader time to breathe and digest what we have just gone through before the next magnificent wave of action starts. It skilfully dances from gritty SF; western and horror with glee and a confidence that carries you along. It also could we read as a standalone and then you can come back to the earlier book if you’re a newcomer. It also hints Fractos has more mysteries to return to and explore. Definitely this story is underlining that Holborn is one of our most interesting authors in the UK and a book I am strongly booktempting you to get your hands on.