Gabriella Ortiz has gone by many names. General. Dolores Lazlo. La Pesadilla. Ortz. Nine Lives. Gabi.
Child superweapon turned pit fighter, turned pirate, turned the Accord’s most wanted, she’s lived more than a few different lives. And she’s died a few deaths too.
Havemercy Grey is, by any comparison, nobody. A Deputy Air Marshall on a nowhere mining satellite at the system’s edge, any power they might wield is stripped from them by the violent Shockney family. So when an infamous outlaw crash lands on Jaypea, Hav can’t pass up the opportunity to escort them to justice – and the 20-million bounty doesn’t hurt either.
But Nine Lives is no ordinary criminal. And before Hav sets out for the nearest Accord outpost, they’re given a specific warning: “Don’t let her talk.”
Ninth Life sees author Stark Holborn return to her brilliantly imagined world of desert moons, corrupt governments, and the lurking Ifs, showing violent visions of what might be – the what but not the how. Where previous instalments Ten Low (read our review here) and Hel’s Eight focused on medic Low and her attempts to atone for a terrible crime, Ninth Life follows Ortiz, alias Nine Lives, the woman we first met as a teen general way back in the first chapters of The Factus Sequence.
Ninth Life’s blurb might paint it as a wild chase novel. But it is, in fact, a dossier, put together by Military Proctor Idrisi Blake. Desperately trying to piece together the story of the dangerous outlaw Nine Lives, Blake sets about collecting whatever information they can find about the mysterious woman. Which is no mean feat, as documents mysteriously vanish, files suddenly become corrupt, and archives go up in flames. It seems “Don’t let her talk” goes much deeper than just Hav conversing with a criminal. And of course, contrary to their instructions, Hav, does let Ortiz talk, and much of the novel is taken up with Ortiz sharing tales from her past lives – or, rather, the circumstances leading up to the end of each one. It’s this testimony that forms the majority of the novel.
Holborn’s writing remains as strong as ever – imaginative, evocative, and perfectly paced. And, like its predecessors, Ninth Life is compulsively readable. It’s also always exciting, with an ambush around every corner. Holborn brings Hav’s testimony, Ortiz’s recollections, and Blake’s research together with ease, embodying each section with a distinct voice and character. These shifting perspectives suit the world perfectly, tugging at strings, exploring half truths, changing destinies, and toying with the Ifs’ precarious realities.
There’s an interesting pattern at play – first book Ten Low had just one lead, Hel’s Eight split its time between Ten and the diaries of Pec Esterhazy, and here, in the third instalment, we bounce around three voices, with myriad narratives within them. It feels like a nod to all the possibilities that the Ifs tease, as they flock to every gamble, every risky play, and every toss of a coin.
But for all the probabilities and realities that the Ifs can show Ortiz -as they showed Ten, and as they will eventually show Hav – one irrefutable, immoveable fact remains. Legends are made, not born. And the Accord – despite every bounty they put on Ortiz’s head, every informant they paid off, and every piece of information they destroyed – made Nine Lives. From the moment they took a child and turned her into a war machine, and through every decision since, they have contributed immeasurably to the mythology of a woman they’re trying to deny ever existed. That’s poetry.
You’d be forgiven for being surprised that a book probably best described as a ‘space western’ left me ugly crying on more than one occasion. But as someone who devoured the first two books in the series – and re-read them in the run-up to the release of this one – Ninth Life just about broke me. There’s no shortage of return characters to tug on the heartstrings. It’s testament to not just the world Holborn has built but the found family she’s populated it with that I literally can’t think about a certain old robot dog or a young lovelorn fool with a metal hand without tearing up.
Emotional sucker-punches aside, new readers would also certainly benefit from the previous explorations of the Ifs, the Seekers, and Hel the Converter in Ten Low and Hel’s Eight. Ninth Life certainly could stand alone, and given the focus on Ortiz rather than Ten, perhaps it’s intentionally so. But, there’s so much depth to this world that it’s a crime not to go back to where it all began, and to understand the true tragedy of Gabi Ortiz.
Quite simply, it’s an incredible series, and Ninth Life wraps up The Factus Sequence in the richest, most intense, and most wonderfully poignant way.
And there I go again. Crying over an old robot dog.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Stark Holborn’s Ninth Life is out now through Titan Books. Grab yourself a copy from your local bookstore HERE.
For more by Stark Holborn, including the previous books in The Factus Sequence, check out her website.
