Name: Sunyi Dean's review of Ten Low by Stark Holborn
Item: Ten Low
Rating: 5
Author: Sunyi Dean

Stark Holborn

Firefly meets Dune in a breakneck race to escape across an alien moon thriving with aliens and criminals. Ten Low is an ex-army medic, one of many convicts eking out a living at the universe's edge. She's desperate to escape her memories of the interstellar war, and the crimes she committed, but trouble seems to follow wherever she goes. One night, attempting to atone for her sins, she pulls a teenage girl - the sole survivor - from the wreck of a spaceship. But Gabriella Ortiz is no ordinary girl. The result of a military genetics programme, she is a decorated Army General, from the opposing side of the war to Ten. Worse, Ten realises the crash was an assassination attempt, and that someone wants the Ortiz dead... The pair bury their hatreds and strike an uneasy deal to smuggle the General off-world. Their road won't be easy: they must cross the moon's lawless wastes, facing military hit squads, bandits and the one-eyed leader of an all-female road gang, in a frantic race to get the General to safety. But something else waits in the darkness at the universe's edge. Something that threatens to reveal Ten's worst nightmare: the truth of who she really is and what she is running from.

Ten Low

Sherany

Sunyi Dean

A startling and surprising book (and written in first person present tense! Which I love! But thought I'd throw that out there so all the FPPT snobs can recoil appropriately lol.) I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, but TEN LOW defied those expectations in the best way nonetheless. 

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If you've read the blurb or the other reviews, you'll already know that Ten Low is an ex-con with an incredibly traumatic and complex past. Her name, Ten, refers to the sentence in years she is supposed to have served, and for reasons not readily apparent at the start, she is living on a tiny wasteland of a moon in the farthest reaches of the galaxy. This moon is, in fact, right on the edge of the Void - a great darkness from which exploratory ships have never returned (this chilling bit of information is casually dropped in at just the right moment.) 

Acutely conscious of her crimes and sins, Ten Low spends her time travelling painfully across the moon, trying to heal and help anyone she finds. Ten is a brilliant character. She is by turns stoic and paranoid, philosophical and superstitious, haunted and hunted; her self-imposed mission of mercy frequently spins out more disaster, and the people she kills or is forced to kill far outweighs the people she manages to help, despite her best efforts. 

In this context, Ten Low rescues a young girl from a crashed spaceship, who turns out to be an Enders Game-esque child-general--one who fought on the other side of the war from Ten Low. the General's motivations for working with an enemy are initially clear cut (survival), becoming more convoluted as the story unfolds. Ten's are complex right off the bat, and the explanations for them span the entire novel (a good thing.) 

There's so much I could unpack in this review: for example, my admiration of the craft skill needed to sustain a propulsive and action-filled novel with a *very* small cast of characters. Large swathes of the book are filled with just Ten Low and Gabi. 

The twisting of expectations and cliched relationships is another. World-weary old mentor figure and bratty naive warrior is an age-old combination, but everything about Ten Low and Gabi feels fresh, because the author doesn't allow the characters to ever slide into complacent, easy roles. Although initially sympathetic and admirable, Ten Low's past makes her a difficult character in some ways as the book progresses; meanwhile, although initially "spoilt" and violent in her presentation, Gabi actually has a clearer and more consistent sense of ethics than Ten, albeit a shade too much conviction for her own good. 

Mostly, though, when I think back on the book, it's the atmosphere and the setting which stand out to me--above and beyond the written descriptions, although those are good, too. The wonderful thing about frontier-settings is that they explore, in very literal terms, what the breakdown of society looks like, in a context where we can still see the original society (usually positioned "back east" in a historical western, or simply on developed planets in an SF one). 

And it's at this peripheral edge of civilisation where society frays that individuals can be put to the ultimate test, their natures laid bare and exposed. What does it mean to be good or evil, when ethics is a distant idea? What does it mean to be human when there is no room for anything other than survival? If there is no law to judge you, no system to weigh and process you, no eyes to see your actions, does it matter what you do, and who you are? 

Ten Low lives not only at the edge of human civilisation, but of literal reality: her moon, inhabited by whispering metaphyiscal creatures, stares straight into the universal abyss. And Holborn, with quiet grace and adroit craft, takes us right to that edge with her. 

Would definitely recommend this book, although the cover + mention of teens made me think it was YA at first. I only mention that in case it puts off anyone looking for adult fiction (or conversely, might disappoint someone hoping for a YA voice.)

Sherany &
Ten Low by Stark Holborn

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Sherany &
Ten Low by Stark Holborn