2.5⭐️ (rounded to 3⭐️)

First and foremost, thank you to Netgalley and Harper Voyager for the eArc!! I wanted to like this so badly bc it hit a little close to home since my hubby is from O’ahu, and I was excited for the cultural aspect of it.

I, however, was a bit let down, as I feel like it was definitely not what was advertised - I don’t agree that it was an Ocean’s 8 heist comparison kind of plot. I feel like the overall plot was a bit lacking. I will say that the vibe was kind of like a low key Arcane (comparing Angel and Edie to Violet and Caitlyn)… I had high hopes for the characters, but I honestly didn’t care too much for any of them.

I will say that I really enjoyed the setting of the book, and as I stated earlier, the cultural aspects of it and the inclusion of pidgin. I felt the banter was fun, which is what kept me interested enough to read & push through.

I’m a sucker for original sci-fi station life world building, and Hammajang Luck’s combination of that, a fun heist plot, Hawaiian culture and community, and a fraught, complex queer relationship hooked me.

I found Edie’s character development and relationships with Angel, their sister Andie, and their niblings to be really compelling and felt so grounded in reality. I also enjoyed Edie’s interactions with the side characters, both the wide range of personalities in their Ocean’s 8-esque crew as well as local community aunties and uncles.

The plot follows the general beats of a classic heist and felt fast-paced, but the great characters and unique world building were really what kept me engaged throughout. I’d definitely recommend Hammajang Luck for anyone looking for a fun, fast-paced sci-fi read with diverse characters.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for this ARC!

I have to admit that I was screaming at Edie “No, no, no, don’t take the job. Run away as far as you can!” (chuckle) Makana Yamamoto sucked me in right away and didn’t let me go. I freaking love Edie. They are a survivor and a fighter. They love their family and when they love, they love hard.

Yamamoto creates a fascinating world that you want to watch a bunch of thieves win in. The secondary cast is fabulous. Edie’s sister is in their corner even while fighting their own battles. Then you have the cute car crashing humor of Malia. Then of course there is Angel in all of her high style and cold drama. The author keeps you hooked because you just don’t know with a cast of criminals where this can go.

I simply loved Hammajang Luck. It’s action, drama, sarcastic humor, and friendship. Oh and let’s not forget crime (chuckle). It’s a story about struggle and the things we will do to survive and provide. I love Edie and I think you will too.

I absolutely loved this book. One of my most favorite reads this year (so far). It’s like sci-fi oceans 8 heist. Absolutely recommend this book.

I liked this but didn't love it. I don't know why big heist crews work better for me in film than in books -- maybe it's just harder to properly introduce that many characters without visuals? The anti-gentrification throughline was more compelling than the capers, which surprised me, and I very much enjoyed Edie as a protagonist. Definitely recommend for folks who enjoy anticapitalist antics in space! I understand why it was meaningful to the author to include the Hawaiian pidgin but my personal preference for rendering dialect into text is to just leave the words that are clearly "English, but I'm writing them different so you know the character has an accent" alone and let the rhythm of the speech and the words that are NOT "English, but I'm writing them different" convey the accent instead. (Scottish brogue written out also drives me bananas.) Again, that's a personal preference, I understand why the author didn't want to do that, but it may be useful to other readers to know in advance how it's handled!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC!

Hammajang Luck was a pretty formulaic heist book - a main character who has been out of the game but brought back in for ‘one last heist,’ a motley assembled crew, a high pay off job that will set everyone up for the rest of their lives, and of course a billionaire villain who deserves to lose a little money.

Overall, the book met my expectations in terms of a heist but fell short in terms of world building, character development, and stakes. It’s intended to be sci-fi themed, taking place on a space station, but I often forgot that the setting wasn’t just earth in present day. The characters felt a little flat to me, especially the development of the main romance. It seemed like very little changed for them to go from hating each other to realizing they’d been pining after one another other than forgiving long-standing grudges (some rightfully earned) and setting aside misunderstandings. The stakes never truly felt high - I think if the world building was more developed, I would’ve really grasped the high stakes of this heist on a space station.

3.5 rounded down to 3 stars

I enjoyed the atmosphere of the story, and I felt like the blurb fairly accurately captured the aesthetic and vibe that the author wanted to create. However... this book took me absolute AGES to want to finish, because I ended up getting a bit tired of the plot. At a certain point I found myself questioning if I *really* wanted to bother finishing, but I was determined to stick things out.

All in all I don't necessarily regret the time spent reading - I think the author absolutely excelled at painting a diverse, lively, unforgettable cast of characters, but I do wish that it would've *wow'ed* me a little more, I'm very excited to see what the author will do next, and I'm eager to keep tabs on them as they grow in their writing career.

As always, all my thanks to both the Publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to review this ARC!

A fantastic read. It's an epic heist that isn't typical of your average epic heist, with a much larger focus on love, forgiveness, found family, and devotion to one's home. That's not to say there weren't some moments where I held my breath for each and every person in this fantastic crew. So good!

All the stars, every single one, because even though I could nitpick, I do not care- this book is so fun and reading it meant so much to me.
The only other book I’ve read that had a cast of butches like this is Stone Butch Blues, which is HARROWING but also very important to me. Hammajang Luck however is the first book I’ve gotten to read with a bunch of butches that is fun and genre-fic and ends happily (spoilers I guess, but c’mon, you’ve seen Ocean’s 8). And just so many lesbians, trans people, and sapphics!! I also loved the way Yamamoto incorporates their Hawai’ian culture into the story- they build on current diaspora experience to what that would look like within a SF context. It reminds me of some of the ideas re: diaspora across space in Record of a Spaceborn Few (which I love) but specifically informed by the author’s own background and experience, which was so interesting. I love when authors combine the deeply personal and deeply real with SF or fantasy elements to push and explore current questions- there’s such warmth and lived-in-ness to the world Yamato creates and those grounded details I think are key.
My friend has good-naturedly teased me for only reading sapphic books, but when I look at what I actually read, it’s only about 25%. The world we live in pushes LGBTQ+ folks to the margins so even that much seems like a lot. I’m not used to feeling seen by stories the way I was by Edie, our butch agender lesbian icon who has also been my gym inspiration for a few months, so I’m pledging to myself that I’m going to actively seek out books with butches (pl) for the rest of this year. (Will this put me even further behind on my tbr? Yep. SHHHH)
I loved this book in the same way I loved EKT, my Greek house in college where one of our FAQs whenever we had open forum for questions was “do I have to be lesbian or bi to join?” (the answer was “no, you just need to be chill with being surrounded by sapphics!” but for some ~funny reason~ a lot of the ‘straight’ folks who joined realized they were bi before graduation). I’ve realized in the few years since graduating how freaking lucky I was to have that community, where being a non-binary lesbian wasn’t even something to interrogate, where I was welcomed and loved for my gay-ness and that gave me a safe space to explore my transness. It wasn’t perfect, we fought a lot especially in leadership meetings, but it was all the normal drama of running an organization in college- being queer was never part of that equation and that was so freeing. Funnily enough, EKT also had a proportionally significant number of indigenous members- all this to say, Hammajang Luck felt like the sort of fun, queer, f-the-oligarchy SF heist story of my dreams, and it also felt like home.

This book promises to be a queer, cyberpunk Ocean’s Eleven, and that is exactly what you get, plus some. It is confident, has a strong and engaging voice, and is a lot of fun to experience. I loveeeeeeeeed Hammajang Luck and will definitely be rereading in the future. Thank you NetGalley and Harper for an arc!

I read somewhere that the author's working title for this one was "Heist Lesbians" and that's exactly what this is!

I'm not much for heist books. But I did enjoy the found family aspects of the Ocean's Eight crew that was put together. I'm a cis woman, but I found our main character Edie to be pretty sexy and just generally an interesting character. Edie's just out of prison (early) and finds that her friend Angel has facilitated this because Angel is "putting together a crew" and Edie is the best runner on Kepler station. This means that Edie knows the back ways and secret accesses throughout the station, which is necessary to plan an entrance and escape route.

Edie is passionate, impulsive, fiercely loyal, and great at improvisation. She's a great character. I didn't like Angel, her foil, nearly as much. Angel is icy, brittle, and mad at Edie a lot for arguing with her when Angel's betrayal is the reason that Edie doesn't trust her anymore. These two spark a lot. And even though I didn't like Angel, I've got to respect the author for creating two such distinct characters.

When Edie is down for a person (or her family) though, she'll do anything for them. Anything at all. Edie's love for her family and her frustration at not being able to take care of them better are a prime motivation for her. This trope can get tired for me, but the author made me believe it. Edie's family are Hawai'ian Japanese who moved to Kepler station some time ago for a better life, but that life has been elusive. Theirs is a typical immigrant story. I loved the pidgin used in characters' speech and the richness of Edie's heritage is something else I enjoyed about the book.

The heist itself I could take or leave. I didn't get a sense of edge-of-your-seat tension from the book, but maybe that's because I'm familiar enough with these sorts of stories to not get as tense about how it plays out any more. I'm not sure that the science fiction aspect was essential to much of the plot: safe-cracking is science fiction to me anyway, finding a secret escape route through the station could have been through the underpassages of any big city and the information they were planning to steal was stored in a weirdly low-tech way. But I didn't mind the trappings or the science fiction flavor.

This was a very strong debut and I'd definitely read more by this author. They've got the ability to make me care about their characters.

I loved this! A fun, emotional, queer sci fi heist book.

I did want a bit more heist and a little less focus on the main character’s motivations, which were quite clear early on.

But overall, I’ve been raving about this book since I read it.

This was a fun ride. You can see the anxieties of the present quite clearly in this sci-fi setting, mixed into a heist filled with colorful crew members.

I absolutely fell in love with this book. The characters were diverse and had so much depth to them. Eddie was a really likeable character with the internal struggle of not wanting to cause trouble for her family but also falling back into her criminal past. The heist element was great, the supporting characters were all complex and you felt for all of them. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

This was a fun ride, and a great read if you're looking to escape.

The book begins with Edie getting out of prison after receiving an 8 year sentence after being snitched on by one of her closest friends. She wants to be on the straight and narrow, but she's been blacklisted for the majority of jobs, and she needs to make money. Angel, the friend who snitched her out, offers her one last job, and Edie doesn't want to, but she can't say no.

Hammajang Luck is fairly fast paced with an interesting world and wonderful characters. I wasn't completely hooked, but it was a book that had me enjoying myself and not thinking too deeply. It is wonderfully queer, which I loved. If you're looking for a good time, I would recommend.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Blade runner meets Ocean's 11 is exactly how I would describe this story. But add way more emotion, queerness, a desire to provide for their family, grief, revenge, found family, etc.

It's important to know that While the story centers around a heist, it's about much more than that. It's a character study told through the process of a heist.

I quite enjoyed reading about Edie's re-entry into domestic life and I loved meeting all the other characters too. Yamamoto does an amazing job letting us know who each Character is - and there were quite a few. Also, I loved them all, which is also such a feat. I was slightly worried that the book would be "too steam punk" for me, but it was far more scifi and I just really enjoyed it.

If I could ask for a novella, I would love to know how humanity got to the point that they are in this book, I'd like some world building because I am so curious!

Unfortunately, DNF at 43%

I just couldn't get into this book and this story. I wasn't invested in the main character and the plot. I picked this book up and put it down over the course of a few months before I decided I just couldn't finish it. I might listen to the audiobook one day to get through it, and maybe change my mind based on that, but for now it's a DNF.

That being said, I really appreciated the representation in this book.

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this ARC ahead of release. I absolutely loved every minute of the adventure. It was engaging & unique, and I instantly had to preorder a physical copy for my shelves!

Hammajang Luck is a queer cyberpunk heist story that features Hawaiian culture and queer characters on a level that I absolutely ate up. After the comps I've seen to Gideon the Ninth and Six of Crows, I was honestly really worried that it wouldn't live up to the hype for me and while I get the complaints that I've seen for it, this was absolutely a book for me.

First off, the cyberpunk vibes in this story mixed with the Hawaiian culture were immaculate. There is a lot of Hawaiian pidgin in this that I had to go look up but I absolutely did not mind because it made me feel immersed in the culture of the story. There is a found family around Edie that was honestly so compelling and heartwarming. I loved seeing them get to be part of their sister's family again and be the auntie that they hadn't been able to be in prison. And having to reckon with whether Edie's own ambition will lead to Edie going back to prison and missing yet more time with that family. And how Edie feels like they have to do more to belong and to make things better without recognizing that they already belong. That identity and fitting in was just so well done.

The romance with Angel is definitely on the toxic side but honestly, in a way that definitely made me feel the Locked Tomb vibes. There is a lot between Angel and Edie that's unresolved and they don't always handle that responsibly but I did like seeing them explore what forgiveness and understanding looks like.

And again, I loved how much this story focused on the neighborhood and queer communities that often get pushed out by wealthier, more corporate groups. It had all of the little guy vs giant corporation cyberpunk vibes that I always want but with diverse perspectives. And I adored the banter and the conversations between the characters, even when I sometimes found the teenagers as obnoxious as Edie did.

I will admit that the heist elements leave a bit to be desired. If you've seen Ocean's Eleven or any heist, there won't be a lot of surprises here. And the threat of anything going wrong is often quickly solved by the characters. But honestly, I loved the characters and the cyberpunk vibes so much that it didn't impact my enjoyment for the heist elements to be standard.

Your mileage may vary if you pick this up for the heist element, but Hammajang Luck is doing everything I want to see more cyberpunk do and focused on perspectives that I want to see more from. I loved Edie and the found family that formed around them and I'll happily pick up anything else Yamamoto writes.

It was a big miss for me. I think the premise is promising, yet delivery was extremely boring. The conversations between characters were dragging and not very informative. At the same time, it was like taking Hawaii, telling me it is on a different planet and doing it in a one setting sentence, leaving it out all together in terms of worldbuilding. Like it was obvious. I wanted to like it so badly.