The book is, without a doubt, one of the BEST sequels I have read. It took every aspect from Ten Low and amplified it to the max. The inclusion of a prequel/origin story throughout was just the cherry on top. Not to mention, the ending felt like the warmest of hugs. I definitely shed a few tears because it was that perfect.

Stunning. This series is one of those "cannot put it down" series where every book is getting better. Pace, characters and universe is fantastic. The perfect mix between Mad Max. Firefly and a western movie. Looking forward to reading the third installment.

Thank you to Titan Books for including me in this tour!

When they say for fans of Gideon the Ninth, they mean it! What a fascinating world that Stark Holborn has created! Reading this was like watching Alita: Battle Angel but darker, heavier, and with more grit.

I found this book so easy to read, the pace, the dialogue and the descriptions flowed so well. Sometimes science fiction novels can feel gruelling to read and understand but as someone who hasn’t read book 1 (trust me I plan to) there was no floundering around, the premise was so well explained and digestible from the very first page.

Hel’s Eight is described as a space western, mixed with gangs, outcasts and rebels. The themes on redemption and morality were fantastically portrayed throughout and made the characters relatable. Truly such a fantastic sci-fi book, I have to recommend it!

Very good. I missed the previous book in the series, but enjoyed this nonetheless. I'll have to circle back. This is a good story, well-executed. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

Star Wars (and Zack Snyder’s upcoming Rebel Moon) might be flying the flag for the space western on screen, but Stark Holborn is definitely a genre frontrunner in the book scene. Their latest novel is Hel’s Eight, but don’t be put off by the fact it’s a sequel to the earlier Ten Low. Sure, some baggage is inevitable, but Hel’s Eight is, for the most part, a standalone thrill ride — and what baggage it does bring doesn’t weigh it down.

Much more than Star Wars, the book is very explicit about its western heritage. In that respect, it’s more like Firefly, except even more hard-nosed. It’s shanty towns and shootouts. It’s motley, mechanical transports called mules and oxen and drays. It’s vicious gangs with names like the Sand Vipers and the Metaldogs. It’s a world where chance is at once everything and nothing. It’s amplification of Western trappings — endless deserts contrasted against glittering cities, a pitiless scrabble for survival against the elements and the promise of a better life just beyond reach. It’s a hostile frontier moon called Factus, where ordinary folk are trying to eke out the most basic of existences, while the powerful try to crush them under jackboots and seize complete control over the moon.

The “why” behind that class conflict is one of the more intriguing elements of Hel’s Eight. It takes the story beyond the familiar, flirting at the fringes of slipstream fiction through the presence of fantastical horrors, known as the “Ifs” and more commonly referred to only as them. They feed on chance and live in the Void, a vast, uncharted area on Factus that is death for almost anyone who dares to enter.

In Ten Low, the eponymous character was one of few to ever survive venturing into the Void — but she was irrevocably changed by the experience. Hel’s Eight picks up five years later. In the interim, Ten has been living alone in the desert, atoning for her tally. This self-imposed hermitude comes to an abrupt end through two events. First, when a figure from her past steps out of the dust, and second, when she gets caught up in a firefight and draws on her arcane skills to support and protect those around her.

It’s a powerful one-two punch of circumstances that will draw in both veterans and newbies of Ten’s adventures. Holborn wastes no time in the setup, and what follows is an equally breathless and frequently breathtaking journey to challenge the forces that are enabling these raids and discover the reasoning behind their desire to control Factus.

There are relatively few new characters, with Rouf being the clear star of the debutants thanks to their capriciousness; they’re an uncomfortable bedfellow, and you can never quite be certain of where their allegiances lay. Of the returning characters, child-soldier-turned-rebel Gabi is again a highlight. She doesn’t get as much page space this time around, but her presence is always electric and you get a real feel for just how deeply Ten cares about her.

However, the real surprise comes in the form of Peccable Esterházy. Interspersed between Ten’s story are diary entries from Pec’s past, explaining how she came to Factus as one of the first colonists, with this history and what’s happening in the present having powerful crossovers. Even discounting its clear relevance to Ten’s adventure, Pec’s story is fascinating, offering an entirely different lens to survival and truth on Factus.

Characters like Pec, Gabi, and Malady Falco, alongside the question marks of the Ifs and the even bigger questions around exactly who — or what — Ten is, make up that baggage I mentioned at the start. However, Holborn doesn’t trot them out as memberberries. Instead, their reintroductions are built into the story in such a way that familiarity isn’t necessary. Ten knows them, and a light smattering of characterization and backstory is all that’s needed to give them an identity. And Holborn doesn’t linger on any of it; the story is constantly pushing to explore new ideas and tread new ground — I would go so far as to suggest it’s entirely possible to work backwards, starting with Hel’s Eight and then fleshing out certain elements by reading Ten Low.

In some ways, Hel’s Eight feels very specific in its overt space western vibe. And yet, it also has immense crossover appeal thanks to elements of the anachronistic western, weird fiction, horror, fantasy, and distinctly literary concerns. It’s a book that’s not afraid to bend genre to the breaking point, which combines with strong characters and breakneck pacing to make it a surefire hit.

And if none of that convinces you, Holborn is also lead writer on the upcoming Shadows of Doubt, and you can get a free taste of both their games writing and the world of Factus in an interactive story on itch.io.

We first met Ten ‘Doc’ Low in Ten Low, a woman, a medic, with a dark past and sins to atone for. Hel’s Eight picks up her story several years later, and we find her in self-imposed exile. But the ghosts of the past refuse to stay buried on the moon, Factus, and the future spins out possibilities ahead.

I really loved the first book, the mix of Western and sci-fi, describing it as a mix of Mad Max, Firefly, and a sci-fi Dark Tower. This time, the vibe is that bit darker – I’d say we lose the levity of Firefly, and instead bring in a dark threatening feel, perhaps a little Pitch Black-ish?

As Ten Low is pushed into reconnecting with characters from the first book, including the teenage General, Malady Falco, and more, she’s also forced to acknowledge the past’s promises and her own existence. We get a lot more insight into the strange goings-on of Factus, of They, the ‘Ifs’, the reasons why games of chance are so deadly here. A lot of this happens in excerpts from the diaries of Pec Esterhazy, someone whose story seems more than a little entwined with Ten’s – and not just because the name might seem familiar from book 1. The slow unfurling of events is just delicious, finally hitting the reader with that big reveal…!

Throw in a dastardly corporation intent on increase its power base, vicious gangs, literal payment in blood – and a myth of Hel the Converter, someone who it is said can control the Ifs. Wouldn’t that be power worth getting your hands on?

You could theoretically read this as a stand alone, and if I’m honest my memory is so dreadful that it’s almost as if I did, but I absolutely recommend both books. As I say, I found this one a little darker, bleaker, but also rewarding the reader with so much more ‘lore’.

I do hope there’s more to come from Factus!

The woman with many names is back in Stark Holborn’s ‘Hel’s Eight’, and she’s still got her debt to repay.

In Hel’s Eight, we return to the sandy-cyber wasteland that is Factus. We’re back with Ten, who’s busying herself helping those unlucky enough to end up bleeding on the deserted moon. Isolating herself from the world, she realises that loneliness is something she cannot achieve when the If’s are around — an ominous supernatural presence that people are eager to control.

When she experiences a haunting vision of conflict — one that includes people she once called friends — she’s catapulted back into the fight. Back with her rag tag crew, Ten must trust again, and give second chances. And thirds. Sometimes maybe even a fourth.

Holborn’s descriptions are palpable — lived in. The insights into Ten’s mind are tangible, flooded with admissions of guilt, moments of shame, and the desire to be ‘good’ in a world that inspires bad.

One day older and deeper in debt...

Taking place in the same setting as Ten Low, Hel's Eight picks up the story a few years later with ex-convict "Doc" Ten living in a shack in the forsaken wastes of the moon Factus.

As soon becomes clear, Ten isn't out there for her own good. She is doing what she can to treat the desperate people who scratch a living in the dust, trying to level the score, to atone for the great wrong she believes she did. And by living in isolation, accompanied only by her battered robot dog Rowdy, she hopes to avoid bringing down further trouble on anyone else. She's cut herself off from such friends and acquaintances as she still has, including her sometime lover Silas.

Then one day, the past comes knocking on Ten's door. A showdown is looming with the acquisitive Xoon Futures corporation, which seems to have money - or at least, company tokens - to throw around and which has been muscling in on Factus, threatening the fragile lives and fragile independence of its inhabitants. You'd think Factus a place so wretched and perhaps cursed that surely anyone sane would stay far away. We saw in the previous book how the moon is haunted by the bizarre Ifs - generally referred to in superstitious areas as just "They". They might be fates, gods or who knows what but They seem able to surf the possibilities of the future, feeding off the alternates. It seems now that Ten may have unfinished business with Them - or They with her - but others may now have learned that and have plans to make use of her. So Ten has to decide whether to listen to the call and come back for one last adventure...

As Ten struggles with that dilemma, we are given additional context about Factus through diary entries written decades earlier by 'Pec "Eight" Esterházy', a convict who came to Factus and whose fate may explain a little of what is going on.

Ten is a fascinating and complex character who has lived a fascinating and complex life. One senses the tension in her, the regret at what she's done, the fear of what it may do to her, but also her desire to protect and to rescue the inhabitants of Factus from a grim choice between a grinding existence and ownership by Xoon. In this remote part of space (on the edge of 'the Void') those endless alternate outcomes that feed Them seem to be opposed by a commercial monoculture in which everything and everyone is owned and controlled. What play of possibilities can there be in that, what freedom?

It's just brilliant how Holborn takes the tyranny embodied by the "company town" and dials it up to, oh, twenty three or something, weaving it into a truly existential, spiritual menace that is only heightened because out here on the edge, there is nobody to ride to the rescue.

That concept is sharpened by the obvious fun that Holborn is having here with a setting that while firmly futuristic and more than a little bit weird, also echoes there classic Western - transport by some sort of vehicle referred to as a "mule", dusty, dead-end towns and trading-posts, abandoned mines and the gangs of 'Road Agents'.

I just loved this book, equal parts horror, Western and SF (and some other things too) and fully, gloriously itself, its own twisted, wonderful thing, an absorbing read and a truly distinctive one.

An amazing sequel that lives up to the first novel, Hel’s Eight is a riveting, action-packed story with a tortured heroine and wonderful diverse side characters.

While this novel could easily have just piggybacked on the first book, in terms of setting and characters, it is not just a “this world is already established” sequel. We have a new antagonist and new stakes. While we have some characters reappearing (which was great!), they are all five years older. And the world-building in this book is almost more expansive than the first. In book one, we are given enough of a backstory to set the scene and explain Gabi but it felt like Factus existed as this kind of abandoned penal colony of sorts, whereas in Hel’s Eight we’re shown not only how and why this dumpy planet is important to the universe at large, but we see other places! There’s a really cool dystopian Blade Runner-like world at one point that was so interesting; I wished we’d spent more time there.

Like in the first book, the action in this book is impressive, immersive, and gritty. It retains a very Western feel with lots of shoot-outs, hand-to-hand, and realistic wounds. Where the book really shines though, are the few scenes where we get more explanation (or at least extrapolation) into what the “Ifs” are. It gives an almost fantastical element to the story that, paradoxically, serves to ground the action.

The characters are fantastic and fun and loveable. I’ll never get over the cleverness of the name “G’hals” for the one gang of women. I loved the edition of a journal by one of the characters from the previous book, which helped explain a lot of things about book one and the world itself. Ten, as usual, was a conflicted woman who wants to be moral but keeps getting dragged into crappy situations. One thing I will say is that this novel needed more Gabi! I was kind of sad that she was no longer a kid, as she was hilarious as a preteen, but I also really liked the dynamic between her and Rouf. They were also a great addition to the story as well. I’m also super fond of Rowdy, the robot dog.

The prose is wonderfully descriptive and full of evocative yet grounded metaphors, with lines like, “A fresh smell of wet green branches that makes my body cry out for mist and leaves and forests” and “my eyelids are steel doors that I have to heave open.” These lines may be altered or removed in the final printing (as I read an ARC).

On top of being an extremely quick read (I flew through it because I have no self-control when it comes to reading and, well, pizza and some other things), it also carries a theme about predetermination vs choice and what that means about the choices you make. What choices do we really have, sometimes? And how much blame are we allowed to place upon ourselves for mistakes that are sometimes the result of outside forces?

Overall, a fantastic novel that I really could not put down. It’s so much fun! I loved it.

Hel’s Eight returns to Ten Low, an ex-army medic with dark secrets that won’t stop stalking her. Ten Low must reunite with the crew from book one when she realizes that the forces that impact her life are not done with her yet. Ten will need to rally her allies, gather medical supplies, and try to control her fate in a world that is determined to take her choices from her.

Hel’s Eight is a high-action and dystopian adventure. There is never a dull moment! The supporting cast really helped raise the stakes and define who Ten Low is, a character with a very mysterious past. Ten is intent on making amends for her past mistakes, which was very compelling to watch. I was really interested to learn about the mysterious and often malevolent forces that pressure Ten to make unimaginably hard choices. I’m curious to see this revealed even more in the next book!

Hel’s Eight would be perfect for readers who enjoy Stina Leicht (Persephone Station) and Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth). Fans of Mad Max: Fury Road would also love this book! Hel’s Eight is available in the US on March 28, 2023. Thank you to Stark Holborn, Titan Books, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc

Ten Low was one of my favourite reads of 2021. It blended together dystopia, science fiction, western aesthetics, gritty action, and mystery into this wonderful creation that left you wanting more. Luckily, we now get more, as Stark Holborn takes readers back to the desolate moon of Factus as war is about to break out.

It's been several years since the events of the first book, and Ten Low has been living away from society, on the Edge, where she can avoid people and try to make up for the things that she's done in her past. However, when a nearby settlement she's visiting comes under attack from a roving gang that is being backed by Lutho-Plex, a huge off-world corporation that's trying to take over the satellite. Having to give up on staying out of things, and taking several lives, Ten realises that she's not going to be able to wait out what's happening on Factus.

Meeting up with several of her friends from the first book, she takes part in the mission to try to save Factus from falling into the hands of the villainous Lutho Xoon. However, she soon starts to learn that there's more going on than she first realises, and that the Ifs are a big part of it. Delving into the history of Factus, Ten will learn ore than she ever imagined about the true nature of the Ifs, and the path that she will have to take.

Ten Low was a wonderful sci-fi western story with a grizzled older lead protecting a kid as they fought to get them through a dangerous area to a place of safety. It's a popular genre, and the book did it extremely well. It crafted an incredibly interesting setting in the form of Factus; and a large part of that was down to the otherworldly elements that it included. Factus isn't just a desert moon home to raiders, gangs, and outposts. It also holds a dark, unknowable form of life. The Ifs.

The Ifs weren't explained in any great detail in the first novel. They were this ghostly presence that almost bordered on cosmic horror. They were this thing that existed on the edges of the story, with rules that the reader would learn along the way, but we never found out much about them. Hel's Eight is the book where the spotlight very much shifts to focus on the Ifs. And it makes it such a good follow-up.

Holborn could have easily copied the style of the first book, could have focused on the human elements of Factus, the warring clans, the struggle to survive; and the book would have been great. But, rather than doing that, this time round we get a deep dive into the history of the moon, the first people that came to call it home, and those people's connections to the Ifs. This shift away from the more grounded elements in order to lean into the fantastical makes this feel like more than just a simple sequel. Holborn isn't just retreading the same ground, but is instead creating whole new ground. This includes going backwards in time, and providing us with interesting and at times really creepy, history as we get diary entries from one of the moons first inhabitants, Esterhazy.

Hel's Eight manages to weave the stories from these two time periods very well, and both move at a decent pace, encouraging you to keep reading. The book has plenty of mystery, action, and character moments in each time period that both feel like fully realised, fleshed out stories in their own rights. Speaking of characters, the sections in the present does introduce a new character into the narrative that was particularly enjoyable to read. Rouf Cinque is a gang member that Ten picks up along the way. At first they're something of an antagonist, forced to work with our protagonist against their will; but over time they slowly start to integrate into the main team, and eventually feel like a part of it. They're also referred to with they/them pronouns, so it's great to have a gender non-conforming character as part of the core group.

I had a really good time with Hel's Eight, and it's a fantastic follow-up to the first novel. I'm excited to go back and read both of them again, and can't wait to see how well they work going straight from one to the other. Much like the first book, the ending does feel like an end. In a lot of ways it feels like Ten's character has been put to bed; but, I thought that come the end of book one, and then she came back in a new and exciting way. So, I guess I'm hoping that happens again, that perhaps we might get a trilogy or more out of this character and her story. But, if this is the end then it's a fantastic end.

This one was really well-paced - between sections narrated by Doc and fragments of Esterhazy’s personal record (aka diary). I would have liked to see a bit more of Xoon and what they really wanted, but it felt more true to Doc as the narrator to only see the pieces that we got, to experience her horror and outrage and confusion despite not having all the answers.

I also really like that the Ifs were a bit more concrete (in a cosmic horror way) and played a larger, more direct role than they did in Ten Low (where they were more like an unspoken fear than an entity with stakes in the game). The world remains bleak and the characters desperate and hungry - it was nice to see how some money and shiny new toys really threw everything on its head compared to the starved and dying husks from Ten Low.

I will say that I wish the Accord played a bigger role, particularly with Xoon encroaching on their territory so heavily - and with the knowledge that Xoon has been encroaching for decades, seemingly without issue and not directly impacted by the war that we can see. (The war obviously happened between the events of Esterhazy’s diary and the events of Ten Low, but it would have been nice to see a little bit of how that may have overlapped)

Overall, solid space western with a fun monster and solid big bad and good worldbuilding and supporting characters.

**Thank you to NetGalley, Titan Books, and the author for the ARC of this incredible title!!**

If you haven’t checked out the first book in this series yet, Ten Low, please do yourself a favor and start there!

Hel’s Eight picks up where the first book left off. I truly wish I had reread the first book before I got into this one, but even without doing so I LOVED this book. Holborn has created an insanely immersive world that I just can’t get enough of. It took me a couple chapters for my brain to catch back up, but once it did I couldn’t put Hel’s Eight down.

Everything comes together in this book, with all the gangs, groups, rebels, and weirdos from Factus dealing with a central enemy - Xoon. Xoon is buying up all the land, all the people, and all the property they can - destroying anyone that gets in their way.

Ten Low / Life / Doc, must decide wether she is ready to come off the edge and deal with ‘them’ again. The ancient forces that secretly (and not so secretly) control everything on Factus.

Please check this book out if you love sci-fi, fantasy, space themes, terraforming, badass characters that you will fall in love with, and books that you can’t put down!

Hel's Eight, an exciting follow-up to Holborn's Ten Low provides lots of thrills, including a journey through an extraterrestrial universe. Low is cursed and lives a reclusive life. The curse also allows her to see countless potential scenarios of things. After Low sees a vision of one potential future in which her old friends perish, she decides to go back to her previous life and reunite with her old friends in an effort to avert an impending war.

We get great writing, likable characters, good pacing, and lots of cool ideas.

Hel’s Eight is an enjoyable read and a worthy sequel to Ten Low.

It’s a story that can be described as a dystopian space western taking place in a science fiction distant future. In this installment of the story our protagonist, Ten Low, finally gains answers to the true nature of the ‘ifs’ and what exactly are the seekers. The plot is solid, the characters are flushed out fully, and the story is brought to a satisfying conclusion.

Like the first novel, I found it to be a page turner that I was able to finish in a single sitting. If you enjoy “space westerns” then Hel’s Eight is exactly what you are looking for.