Post-apocalyptic books have always been one of my favorite genres. This book was an amazing coming-of-age story in the aftermath of a world struck by global catastrophe. We meet Lash and what she considers family in what is now left of Las Vegas. This book was filled with eccentric over the top character's befitting the end of times, with just the right mix of angsty romance added i

Read pre-publish on NetGalley. (Thank you! ) Definitely a grab you by the throat story. I liked that it maintains a right focused storyline with accurate details... enough that you can see, smell and feel what's going on. The characters are developed without tarrying about or naval gazing. It carries from plot point to plot point in a believable manner ... enough to hope for a second book if not with the same characters maybe in the same world. While I appreciate the physics and science of things I felt like there was a combination of suspension of belief while standing in a pool of technical details that could be a little jarring to have simeaultaneously. Overall I really really enjoyed the book. The kind of hard "survival-poc" I like and look forward to the next one.

DNF @ 25%

Thank you for the opportunity to read this title. Unfortunately, I found the writing very dry and could not get sucked into the story.

It took a little while for me to settle into this book but once I did, I was locked in until the end. It was a well-written and creative apocalyptic story where there are two main factions at play. One basically believes that artificial intelligence, computers and cyborg type beings would benefit the new world the most while the other group is adamant in wanting to protect humanity from just that type of takeover. Because they are on such opposite sides, their battle is bloody and the groups are polarized. There is a great deal of misinformation circulating which makes it difficult for people to really understand who stands for what.

The creative world building that took place in this book was really impressive. I could basically imagine what it must have been like from the descriptions. I really enjoyed how the storyline evolves and you get the differing viewpoints. It was a fun read with some surprising twists.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

Post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, and the evils threatening to destroy the little bit of the world live in a hotel on the Strip....we sure this is fiction...?

It is indeed fiction, staring Lash, a young woman whose horrific life mid-apocalypse has left her, like so many others, with disfiguring bone-deep scars psychic and emotional. She and her scoobygroup need little enough to exist but even that is hard to come by in her Las Vegas.

Fights, squabbles, battles, all are normal in this hellscape...much like what we're told the world of the twenty-first century is in the US...and, as this book points up, it very much is not. This world is the fever dream of the seditious MAGAts.

It's also a rip-snortin' action-packed good time read, a great use of one's bits and patches of moments between things to enjoy and absorb this book. It isn't subtle, and it isn't pretentious. Give it to your teen grandson or nephew to woo him away from the console for that all-important family bonding time. (Of course, I'm assuming the family is like my own and reads together for fun.)

There's a map to satify the three-d screenhead. There's non-stop action. There's an impressive economy of verbiage that still evokes a strongly sensory world. There are betrayals and unexpected alliances. None of it has a word wasted. All of it makes up a beautifully constructed story.

I wouldn't give it to my granddaughter with the borning sense of women's oppression and the weight of the male gaze. Might not hand it to the boy who's into the awful J6 stuff. The gamer is going to be won over by its resemblance (evident to my eyes at least) to generations of videogames in storyline, plot, and action.

I don't intend this as a dismissal! It is, in its intent, an acknowledgement of the author's hard work to give the legions of gamers a reason to branch out into text-based storytelling. It is meant for them, and here I was flipping pages to see what happened next. That is one successful job, and a big round of kudos to the author.

Works well for its intended audience, and will make a successful gift for them.

Post-apocalyptic books have always been one of my favorite genres. This book was an amazing coming-of-age story in the aftermath of a world struck by global catastrophe. We meet Lash and what she considers family in what is now left of Las Vegas. This book was filled with eccentric over the top character's befitting the end of times, with just the right mix of angsty romance added in.

DNF at 14%. Has this author spoken to a woman before? This was the manic-pixie not-like-other-girls badass woman wet dream of a man who only consumes YA dystopia from 2010. Put it down when the main character plugged up a bullet wound with a tampon, in a fully stocked facility that has medical equipment. I’m just going to leave this excerpt to explain the rest.
“Lash pulled up her shirt to gaze at the Harvesters knife scars that now ornamented her perfectly proportioned breasts. She thought she resembled a Lowrider magazine model, a half-Latina lass with a figure that would look great bending over the hood of a restored, candy-green, hydraulics- enhanced, 1959 Chevy Impala.
She laughed at having missed her calling.”

Hammer of the Dogs has interesting scenery in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. But it felt too much like YA and something of that Mad Max era. I just didn't find the story interesting.

Thank you to University of Nevada Press and #NetGalley for the early copy in exchange for this review.

I love anything Vegas so I was hugely drawn to the idea of a post-apocalyptic world set in Vegas. While Lash is engaging, I'm not sure how I felt about the romance aspect. It felt at times out of place with everything going on. Otherwise, I enjoyed Hammer of the Dogs although it was a touch to violent and graphic for my tastes.

After nuclear weapons destroyed the world, pockets of civilization fight over resources and technology. Lash is one of the oldest students at a paramilitary school set at the Luxor on the destroyed Vegas strip. The school teaches that cyborg Jesus will restore the world. When lash is captured by the school's enemy, she realizes that her life has been based on a lie.

I'm not sure how to rate this book. It wasn't what I was expecting. I do not particularly enjoy the cyborg, technology-mad stories. I prefer the dystopic novels where technology has been destroyed. I had a hard time relating to Lash and the other characters. Despite this criticism, the book was well written and well paced. I'm sure many will enjoy it.

This one had potential. It was fast action and cool technology and if you like mad max and YA this book is for you. Me, not so much. This just felt generic, like I've read it before in the early 2010s. Not that it's a bad thing, just that I've grown out of this type of YA book.

"Set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Hammer of the Dogs is a literary dystopian adventure filled with high-octane fun starring twenty-one-year-old Lash. With her high-tech skill set and warrior mentality, Lash is a master of her own fate as she helps to shield the Las Vegas valley's survivors and protect her younger classmates at a paramilitary school holed up in Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. After graduation, she'll be alone in fending off the deadly intentions and desires of the school's most powerful opponents.

When she's captured by the enemy warlord, she's surprised by two revelations: He's not the monster her headmaster wants her to believe and the one thing she can't safeguard is her own heart. Hammer of the Dogs celebrates the courageousness of a younger generation in the face of authority while exploring the difficult choices a conscionable young woman must make with her back against a blood-spattered wall. It's a story of transformation and maturity, as Lash grapples with her own identity and redefines the glittering Las Vegas that Nevada is known for."

If you're obsessed with the newest season of Miracle Workers, like I am, well this book is for you.

I did not finish the book. Overall, the book fell pretty flat to me. It was pretty clichéd and the main character suffered from pick-me syndrome. I liked the concept of technology in an apocalyptic world though!

What a thrill ride! Set in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas this story excites and delights the reader. The cast of characters is amazing. Lash is interesting and fun. The story plot is great. I definitely want more from Jarret Keene! Thanks#Netgalley and #UniversityofNevadaPress for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine.

This was a apocalyptic thrill ride. I loved the pacing of this novel. As someone who can get bogged down in the science of science fiction ( and this offers plenty of tech and weapons talk), I found the writing style allowed me to follow the story line without any real trouble. The characters were interesting and I enjoyed learning more about their backstories. It really made the story more believable by understanding the motivations of the characters.I also appreciated that I felt compelled to look at the bigger picture and perhaps see a bit of a cautionary tale here. As the news and social media is ablaze with talk about advances in AI and we as a species find ourselves more and more reliant on technology, this story is chilling in its presentation of our potential future.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing me with a copy of this title free of charge. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated


What I liked about the book:
- The environment, post-apocalyptic Las Vegas makes for an awesome city/desert setting
- The tech, the gadgets in this novel are really great along with the descriptions
- The action sequences were fast paced and provided good detail, felt cinematic at times
- The main character "Lash" was really cool, a badass Latina metalhead that doesn't mind going savage

What I didn't like:
- I really didn't care for the "love' story here, felt cliché, almost comical (which may be the point?)
- Didn't care for Richter's backstory either as he didn't really interest me as a character and felt a bit generic
- It felt like the story was dragging at times or nothing interesting was really happening

Overall it's not a bad book by any means and I even found myself enjoying it at times. It just suffers a bit with the flow and the "romantic" parts of the book.

And thanks to the publisher for allowing me to read the ARC, really appreciate it.