Hellflower

by Rosemary Edghill

Somebody had nailed Moke Rahone to his Desk. . . . Moke Rahone’d been human, and someone had butchered him open. It was dainty-like. Real bodysnatcher work, done with something sharp—something that didn’t burn like a pocket laser or chew up the meat like a vibro. And there was one other thing. It was sticking up out of Rahone’s insides and it hadn’t been part of his original manifest. It might tell me who killed him, and who might be interested in taking over the cargo I had for him. I pulled off my glove and yanked out the optional extra somebody’d left with Brother Rahone. What I got for my trouble was long and thin, pointed at one end and with feathers at the other. It was mostly red, but where it was dry it was a kind of blue animal bone with carving on it. I’d seen bone like that before. Hellflower work! I’d just shut the door on the inner room behind me when the outer door opened. The hellflower standing there wasn’t Tiggy, but he looked real pleased to see me anyway. “Ea, higna,” the hellflower said. Then he went for his heat. . . .

268 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 31, 2023

About the author

She was born long enough ago to have seen Classic Trek on its first outing and to remember that she once thought Spock Must Die! to be great literature. As she aged, she put aside her fond dreams of taking over for Batman when he retired, and returned to her first love, writing. Her first SF sale (as Eluki Bes Shahar) was the Hellflower series, in which Damon Runyon meets Doc Smith over at the old Bester place. Between books and short stories in every genre but the Western (several dozen so far), she's held the usual selection of odd and part-time writer jobs, including bookstore clerk, secretary, beta tester for computer software, graphic designer, book illustrator, library clerk, and administrative assistant for a non-profit arts organization. She can truthfully state that she once killed vampires for a living, and that without any knowledge of medicine has illustrated half-a-dozen medical textbooks.


Her last name -- despite the efforts of editors, reviewers, publishing houses, her webmaster, and occasionally her own fingers -- is not spelled 'Edgehill'.


Also writes under the name Eluki Bes Shahar.

Reviews

[Robert Jenner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oddly Touching

This isn't an easy book to approach. The protagonist speaks in a linguistic patois that is far removed from our own, and it's difficult to arrange one's language parser to adapt, but before long I was beginning to think in the same fashion myself. Once one gets past the initial hurdle, the reader is greatly rewarded with an exciting far-future deep space opera, featuring a hardscrabble, tough-as-nails rogue trader (who's not really as tough as circumstances have forced her to be) with an old spaceship who's just trying to get by. With one single, ill-advised act of compassion she finds herself in the midst of two separate galactic conspiracies. It's also about a lonely woman who, despite herself, finds love and a family. I liked both stories. This novel isn't for everyone but it's definitely for me, and I'm looking forward to reading the other two books in the trilogy. Dzain'domere!

ETA (Edited-to-add): Nice work on the cover for the new Kindle Edition, forbye. Rosemary Edghill isn't overly effusive with description, because Butterfly isn't, but unlike a lot of books out there, the new covers to the Hellflower trilogy depict Butterfly and Tiggy almost exactly as they're described in the books (though Butterfly is described as "the little redhead" in Book 3).