I can confirm this is NOT like Ocean’s 8 meets Gideon the Ninth. -____-

I wanted to love this very much. Your girl loves a heist. But it was a bit too cheesy and cliche for my taste. Neither the characters nor the world ever had a chance to really set down roots in my brain.

😔

A lovely queer heist novel.

I can definitely see the comparison to Ocean's 8 with this one, though in my opinion it has very little to do with Gideon the Ninth other than both share a butch main character. With Blade Runner it shares the cyberpunk aspect, though Hammajang Luck, while still playing in a capitalist hellhole setting, is nowhere near as bleak. I found this to overall be a rather positive and upbeat book that makes you feel good while reading.

Despite this being a heist novel, this felt almost low stakes. Thus I find the Ocean's 8 comparison much more fitting than Six of Crows, simply due to the humorous tone and how things just simply... work out, with very little pushback. There is still tension, near misses, and high octance scenes that will get you excited while reading! I just never got the "omg I have no idea how they could possibly get out of this" feeling. Instead, it's more celebratory, triumphant adrenaline of watching the characters overcome the obstacles and succeed.

Plot-wise, the book is pretty straightforward. Edie is released from prison, and the very person who betrayed them is now looking to hire them for a job again. But with a family to support, and a big payout at the end of it, and few alternatives, Edie finds themselves agreeing. There's a crew to recruit, bait to lay out, traps to plan, routes to prepare, and finally, the big heist.
There were no big surprises or big twists, though it wasn't exactly predictable, and never boring. Just nothing groundbreaking new, which is perfectly fine!

I really enjoyed the side characters. The final crew was diverse and fun with multiple trans and nonbinary characters of different varieties (some directly referred to as Māhū), and I really enjoyed reading their banter. I almost wish we had learned more about the dynamics within the crew, as ultimately it didn't go very deep. The Hawaiian Pidgin was new to me but a lot of fun to read!

Where the book was underwhelming for me was the romance. I generally found Angel to be one of the weakest characters. She is cold and standoffish, keeping up the image of the unflappable leader, which unfortunately also meant we never really got to glimpse behind the mask. And the few glimpses and honest open conversations were too little too late for me - or rather they just weren't enough for me to believe the romance from it.

Another aspect is how Edie's prison time feels almost forgotten a lot of the time. Eight years is long. And yet they are still considered to be one of the best "runners", meaning able to make their way through the dangerous, impassable corridors of the station. When they haven't been doing it for eight years??? SO much must have changed??? And then they have 2 heart-to-heart conversations with the childhood friend who sold them out, and they are in love and all is well and nothing changed??? It unfortunately broke my suspension of disbelief.

Overall this was a lighthearted read with some pleasant action. It didn't wow me, but it was fun and entertaining depite its flaws.

This was such a fun, fast-paced book. Hammajang Luck is essentially Hawaiian Heist Lesbians in Space, and every part of that is delightful. The casual way the book incorporates Hawaiian pidgin was enjoyable and added a lot of depth & feeling to the worldbuilding, which is essentially a futuristic space colony living late stage capitalism. I loved getting to know Edie and their relationship to family, to their past, to their own identity, and to the other members of the crew. The heist portion moved quickly with some tension but was not too stressful—in that sense, I think Ocean’s 11 as a description of the vibe is right on the mark. Everything wraps up quickly and in a generally satisfactory way. I do wish we had gotten a little more with the other members of the crew, but I think the focus was always more about Edie than about the heist. Very fun.

We need more space heist books.

Hammajang Luck promised me one thing I couldn't resist: outcasts on a heist. It's compared to Gideon the Ninth, but I almost wish it wasn't because the only similarity is sapphics in space, and it fails to include what makes this story unique: the family dynamics.
This is a heist story. It doesn't have any particularly novel scenes, but that doesn't matter because we're here for the fun of it. Edie, upon being released from prison, is roped into yet another crime with their friend - and maybe more - Angel, who betrayed them before. Together with their team of outcasts, Edie and Angel organize a heist against a technology guru trillionaire. I thought the stakes were relatively low for a heist novel, but I didn't mind too much. There weren't a ton of plot twists, either. For as much as the heist was emphasized in the blurb, I feel like this book focused more on vibes than anything...which I didn't love.
I think the issue for me was that I didn't really connect with any of the characters. I'm going to take partial blame for this; a lot of Life Things were going on when I started this book, and I didn't really get into it until after the characters had been introduced, so I didn't really get to know them well enough for a found family book. As far as the main characters went, I thought Edie was fine as a narrator, but they were more avoidant than active. I didn't love Angel, but I didn't hate her. Andie was probably my favorite because it's rare we get to see someone outside the heist have opinions on it.
Hammajang Luck is a sci-fi heist story perfect for fans of found family and real family mixing together.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free e-ARC!

3.25/5

thank you to netgalley for the arc!

i ended up really enjoying this, which i am glad about because it sounded really good when i requested it :) the found family heist squad is really cute and honestly was my favorite part of the whole thing. malia and tatiana are such funny characters to me. the second chance romance was also pretty good as second chance romances go although, as usual, i wish we got a few glances into what life was like during the 'first chance' (and, alright, this wasn't even an actual second chance romance because they technically never got together but it sure felt like it lol)

and finally i wish we got more paige. what an icon

I quite enjoyed this one! I absolutely appreciate that the heist is brought up in chapter one and that there was no slow build up to it. It also remained a constant plot device through out the story and did not get lost, even if it did seem to take a back seat to Edie's relationships with those around them at times. Not that that was bad though because those relationships and Edie finding their place again after being in prison so long was actually my favorite part. I came for the heist and stayed for the community.

I haven't watched Oceans 8 in a while so I do not know if this is the comparison point for any reason besides being the most recent Oceans movie but I will say that I did get Oceans Eleven vibes so it definitely hit the mark for the genre. I don't really agree with the Six of Crows comparison though and cannot comment on the Gideon the Ninth.

There is so much culture and representation laced throughout this story though that even if you don't much care for heist novels this would be worth the read for that alone. All in all a wonderful debut and I look forwards to more from this author.

The story's focus is as much, more probably, on Edie’s relationships as the heist itself. When it comes to Edie’s family – their sister, her kids, and even Edie’s father who passed away before the story began – I was invested. Edie has some of that wild younger sibling to Andie’s more settled adulthood, but they’re both adults now and the relationship has shifted to something more mature. Edie wants to be the protective one and someone Andie can rely on but struggles with it. I would have liked even more of their relationship and how it was reshaped after Edie’s time in prison. Edie’s thoughts on their father were great too. Edie’s feelings that their home – the space station itself – had betrayed them by taking their father greatly interested me. Their family still has its ties to the homeworld, but the station has long since been their world and they must see it as more than a sterile, artificial compartment. Through Edie’s thoughts on their mechanic father, there are hints of a more complicated relationship to this place as a land and a home.

The other relationships were less interesting though. I think the author was trying for a found family vibe with the heist crew, but I didn’t see that kind of depth or bonding from them. I liked the way some of them played off each other, for sure, but it stayed fairly shallow. Then, the romance between Edie and Angel… eh, I wasn’t compelled by it at all. Angel wasn’t developed enough and we didn’t get to see beneath her cold, calculating front enough for me to feel compassion for her. She kept betraying and hurting Edie, someone she supposedly loved since childhood. When it was just something she did eight years ago, even if it took so much from Edie, I could understand them still wanting her and still being able to have a functional relationship with her. But she kept manipulating them and making their life worse for her own gains the whole damn time. It wasn’t offset by showing enough love in their past for me to really accept why Edie went back to her and loved her through it all. I can get behind a toxic relationship that feels inevitable no matter how bad it gets, where circumstances have led the characters to feel like nobody else will ever understand them and what they’ve been through but each other, so who else could they go to? This was not that. The end acted like they’d settled into something healthy, but there was no reflection or dealing with their issues to warrant that. Everything up to that point left me thinking they’re going to go through a series of shitty, painful breakups for a few years before they finally grow up enough to move on to other things.

sad to say that i unfortunately did not care for this book as much as i would want to. i was REALLY excited but i had a hard time connecting with the characters because they were so unlikeable & mean to our protagonist (Edie) and to think i was expecting some found family trope because of the group of friends. i did liked the representation of lesbian, nonbinary, and trans characters because it was very diverse but maybe the story just wasn't for me.

i HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who wants a queer heist novel that reminds them of the movie Ocean 8 and the world building just like Gideon The Ninth. it won't disappoint i promise.

thank you Avon Books!

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager | Harper Voyager, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book!
I truly enjoyed it as an adult book., and i loved the relationships between the characters, almost as much as I loved the culture woven and preserved throughout.

Hundreds of years later, and it's hung on, and done more than survived-- it's thriving, resistant and strong.

I also loved the butch representation, something that is (thankfully) starting to become more common in sapphic speculative fiction, and the nonbinary representation on top of that! The butch community? The trans community? Absolutely beautiful.

Hammajang Luck is heist-light, and community-strong. I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the special edition!

I was intrigued by this book because the theme of it basically is "be gay, do crime" except in space with an Ocean's Eleven stylish flair and a nonbinary protagonist. I love seeing more nonbinary characters in SFF and I loved the transmasc nonbinary rep in this.

Edie has been in prison for the last eight years, betrayed by her best friend and partner in crime, Angel. For years they have danced around the sexual tension between them but Angel's manipulated Edie for her jobs, though they started getting into trouble as a united front and it wasn't like Edie was naive. I am not a fan of betrayal arcs and where this lost me was that I felt like Angel never redeemed herself and their romance just came out of nowhere. I never saw the sexual tension or chemistry between them, just hate, mistrust and hurt. Their sexual attraction was there but so subtle I thought it was "Oh this person is hot but she's betrayed me so many times and I'm going to be gullible one more time for her because she's hot."

That said it's tough even in the future for an ex-con to get legitimate employment so I understood their motivations for taking the job.

I did like how Edie had a backbone and stood up for themself. In a lot of betrayal tropes the LI is a total pushover and Edie was not that.

I also didn't care for the found family vibe with the heist crew. They kept teasing Edie for being analog and were completely tone-deaf to their long prison sentence. It started to feel mean rather than like bonding moments. The crew never really felt like a family, they were all in it for themselves and cocky, unlikable characters.

However, I really enjoyed the spotlight on Hawaiian culture and the moments between Edie's family, how they kept their immigrant culture going in space. I liked how Atlas was a Musk or Bezos character times ten set in the future and the space heist plot to take him down.

But this just didn't work for me. I couldn't emotionally connect with any of the characters.

I also really hope that Goodreads cover isn't the final cover. I would have completely overlooked this book with that cover. Those colors are meh and the design has little to do with the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I love love loved this trans, Native Hawaiian-inspired, futuristic Ocean's Eleven heist novel. Yamamoto's debut shows that they are one to watch, no question about it.

I expected a queer, sci-fi, Ocean's 8-esque heist story, and this book delivered exactly that. I am going to link to another review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5486893267) that does a much better job than my singular braincell ever could in summing up so much of what makes this book stand out and what its themes are.

Okay, now that that's done, let me get into my own review, which will be much less eloquent but life's just full of disappointments, isn't it?

As mentioned, this book really delivered on what was promised, so if you're looking for any of that in a story - and honestly, you should be looking for all of that in a story - then Hammajang Luck is a book to take a look at. It was creative, fun, and full of so many things that I love. I didn't quite love how it all came together in this book, but I still appreciate the bones of it.

As far as sci-fi goes, this isn't hard sci-fi by any means, and doesn't really have a lot of sci-fi elements. It's set on a different world and in a different society, but you could pretty easily set in on Earth with only minor changes. A capitalist kind of society with an evil billionaire? Hmm, that does sound a bit familiar . . . I personally would have liked more worldbuilding, but I also did get a decent enough feel for the world, and if you're not a sci-fi fan, don't let that dissuade you.

I love found family. I'm a big fan of that trope and it warms my heart, gives me reason to live, etc. This has all the elements of found family, as the whole premise centres around putting together a group of people for this heist and obviously they're going to bond, what even would be the point of this if they weren't bonding, and the character archetypes themselves were all I could have asked for. So it was a sad day when I realized pretty early on that I wasn't personally connecting with any of these characters, and found them to be quite shallow. I really wanted to love each and every one of them, but didn't feel like I really got to know most of them beyond just, well, their archetypes.

What really connects with me in a book is characters. This book was more plot, and yes, a lot of that plot was the relationship between Edie and Angel (and I don't mean that in a strictly romantic sense by any means, but their past and how they could work toward some type of future), but it was just plot. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I never quite grew attached to anyone, which made it difficult for me to really love this book beyond the things on the surface that I connected with (which, again, because it can't be stated enough how great those things are: a very queer, very diverse sci-fi Ocean's 8, come ON).

Overall, a fun read that I do recommend, even if it didn't give me the emotional resonance (and damage, let's be real) that I so crave. 3.5 stars.

Thank you to the publisher, Harper Voyager, and to NetGalley for the ARC.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Avon Harper Voyager in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded to 4. This is queer coded heist story. Edie is freshly out of prison, looking to start over, and immediately their old best friend, who turned them in, shows up. Angel is gathering the best of the best for a super hard job with a huge payoff. The world building in this story is really interesting. Space Hawaiian immigrants populate an industrial planet, but are slowly being pushed out and gentrified by a huge corporation. The story intertwines Hawaiian slang, pidgin, and culture with futuristic technology.

I love stories about stealing from rich corporations, and I love stories with a wide range of people and cultures. I did feel like a large majority of the drama in this book focused on a huge lack of communication, and I always find that a little frustrating. I would have loved the world to be explored a little more, and the characters to be a little deeper.

Honestly this story is VERY cozy core, but with a couple of stressful situations and one descriptive sex scene. I think readers of Legends and Lattes will enjoy this book as it checks off a lot of similar boxes.

Thank you NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the ARC.

A solid heist story with a lovable cast of diverse, queernormative characters. The way this team is full of lesbians, including trans and nonbinary ones, is so refreshing. I do like the inter-team dynamic as a whole, but I'm not quite sold on the main romance between protag Edie and their former partner Angel. Especially when their sex scene came at a time where I felt it was completely unearned because at that point, Edie still believes Angel betrayed them for self-serving reasons.

The preparation and build-ups to the heist actually interested me far more than the heist itself, which didn't thrill me nor did my jaw drop at any time. Overall, it was fine.

I had looked forward to Hammanjang Luck for several months before starting it. Perhaps that anticipation colored my reaction but I found the book to drag and not really offer anything new. There is nothing wrong with this as a heist story but it didn't really need to be SF. Seemed to rework familiar tropes. Not actively bad but nothing that excited me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

'Hammajang luck' has been a wildly anticipated book for me for what feels like years, I mean, there's everything you could possibly want, a lesbian space heist?? sign me the hell up!

And don't get me wrong, I had a great time, there were shenanigans, great family dynamics and heist elements I LOVED. But, for the majority of this, I felt bored and a little let down. For a book that promised so much, it felt like I was reading a normal heist story but they changed money to credits and did other small changes. For a sci-fi, it felt very contemporary, and almost felt disjointed when the sci-fi elements were brought up. But, for a heist story it was fun, had a great main character with a really distinctive voice, just fell a little flat in some areas. The romance was also a really fun sub-plot, I was eating up every one of those interactions. Very excited to read more from this author.

I normally am not a big sci-fi reader, but this book was pretty light on the sci-fi and very approachable. The Ocean 8 comp is also pretty spot on as well. Hammajang Luck felt to me like a book focused on the characters and set against a sci-fi heist, so it was a nice book to dip into these types of books.

The thing I loved most was all the relationships in the book and how Edie was trying to navigate them all and still keep true to themself. I really enjoyed Andie and Edie's relationship the most and it was really refreshing to see their sibling bond. The rest of the crew was also a big draw. I would absolutely love to see where Duke and Nakano go from here because they were one of my favorite duo and I see a ton of potential for more stories involving them. I also want to know what Malia, Tatiana, Sara and Cy get up to after.

The Hawaiian culture and pidgin throughout the book also really drew me in because I was hearing and seeing pieces of my family throughout the book. A lot of this beautiful book just resonated with me and I had such a great time reading. The only reason this is not a 5 star for me was the way Edie and Angel's story got wrapped up (I want more stories with Edie in all honesty). I guess I was expecting something a little different instead of a sort of epilog wrap up. I still enjoyed everything about this book and will definitely be on the lookout for more stories from Makana Yamamoto!

I was so excited for Hammajang Luck. It was described to me as a combination of Oceans 8 and Bladerunner. And I gotta say the comparison is pretty spot on. Like Ocean 8 we have a group heist of a few characters who seem like an unlikely rag tag bunch. Much like Oceans 8, there's a genuine sense of loyalty and friendship formed within. Similarly, the setting comes from the Bladerunner comparison. We have a futuristic society full of powerful corporations and technology.

3.5 stars
This was definitely very heisty, and though I had some minor quibbles, I overall enjoyed this quite a bit. I'd definitely check out more from Makana Yamamoto in the future.

You know it's going to be a good book when you haven't even finished the first page and you're already highlighting things that made you laugh.

I ADORED everything about this book, but I think my favorite part was the Hawaiian pidgin in the dialogue. I normally can't hear character voices in anything other than my own internal voice, so this was one of the very rare times that I could really HEAR the characters. The dialogue was just so, so well written. I was floored.

I also fell in love with the cast of characters - I love a good found family vibe.

There was something about the ending I didn't vibe with, but I can't really put my finger on what? But overall, this book is definitely entering my list of favorites.