A certified banger and no doubt one of my favorite things I read in 2024. Although I read it slowly, I never wanted to put it down. This book is a queer, cyberpunk Ocean's Eleven style heist set in a futuristic Hawaiian inspired world and I had SUCH a good time reading it.

Prepare to fall in love with these characters and the world they live in. Despite taking place in a world with high tech body modifications, all of these characters feel realistic and relatable. Their concerns and motivations mirror those many readers will have, making them so easy to root for. I wouldn't say this is as warm and fuzzy as most found family tropes, but the vibes are definitely there. Found family but 2/3 of the family doesn't know how to express their emotions so they just do their best cuz they really truly do love each other, even if they don't know how to show it. Ditto on the romance, but I was here for it.

I also really loved the worldbuilding. I've never read speculative fiction rooted in Hawaiian culture, so this immediately felt very fresh and new and I fell for it hard. The little bits of language and dialect give such a strong sense of place. The details surrounding foods and social customs were the icing on top of what's already a rich, vibrant world that I would eagerly read about again. Add in the fact that this entire world operates outside of hetnorms and gender binaries and you've got a real win.

In addition to the fast-paced action and dramatic character development, the author also manages to take a solid look at social issues like classism, the poverty to prison pipeline, and the desperate things people will do when they feel trapped. In a bizarre way, it reminds me of the contestants on the show Squid Game - desperate people in helpless situations willing to risk their lives just for a chance to climb out of debt or make a better life for their families or afford necessary but unaffordable medical care. Take those same concerns and that willingness to risk it all and you've got a solid idea of what lies at the core of this book.

A fantastic debut featuring a richly detailed world, characters I'll miss hanging out with, an action-packed heist, and even a friends-to-enemies-to-lovers romance. Highly recommend. Can't wait to see what this author writes next, but I know I'll be buying it.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for an ARC in exchange for review.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

A sci-fi heist with a fun team and some emotional heft, Hammajang Luck is a good read if you want something super queer about stealing from the super rich.

I'm glad the jacket copy provided the finition of Hammajang! It borrows from the Hawaiian pidgin, which if you don’t know, is a language created between two peoples who don’t share a language - they take bits and pieces of both as it develops. Sometimes, it turns into its own language, but mainly, it’s used by both groups as a sort of pseudo-language. Some cultures develop to speak them as their main language, which is so interesting to me.

Anyway, this book includes a bit of that in dialogue between two characters, but it’s easy enough to follow and quite minimal.

The characters are the focus of the story, and it’s told in first person by Edie. At first, I wondered how that was going to work with the heist aspect, as the best part of heist stories is how it all fits together with people doing different tasks, but the way it is shown is clever (generally through descriptions of video feeds or via dialogue) but also because the story is less about the heist than the characters and found family aspect.

The story does suffer a little from pacing. It takes awhile for it to get the team gathered and the heist to actually start, but that did give us time to understand Edie and their background.

Yet, one aspect that needed a bit of bolstering was Angel. I found it hard to understand why Edie seemed unable to just drop her, and her dilemma around their friendship could have been broadened.

The other characters were fun, but they could have used a few more scenes devoted to them for me to really grow to care about them on a deeper level.

Yet, the world-building is easy to understand and picture. It’s a dystopian corporate world where the rich are getting richer and the poor even poorer. It’s also about gentrification, technology, and family ties. It’s not exactly cozy but it’s also not dark. It’s like Ocean’s 11 if everyone were queer.

Anyway, read this book if you like:
Stories where nearly everyone is lgbtqai+
Heists where taking the bad guy down a notch is almost better than the money
Cultures adapting to diaspora and that diaspora being in space!

This book is many things: a heist novel; a romance; a found family narrative that doesn't skimp on the blood family ties; and all of that in an SF setting, Kepler Station (a location never clearly defined, but definitely far, far away from Earth). The heist plot feels very heisty: mastermind Angel has a plan to steal tech from her unscrupulous employer. She's put together a dream team of specialists, and her first recruit is MC and POV character Edie. Edie has just been released from prison, and they. have a complicated relationship with Angel... because Angel is Edie's first love, first partner in crime, and the reason Edie has just spent 8 years in prison.

The SF here is used with a deft touch: we know this is set in the future and on a space station, but the year and location are never specified. It feels like a near future dystopia. The issues Edie and their family and friends face are things like paying for medical treatment (Edie's niece has cancer, and while cancer has been cured in this future, the treatment isn't free) or finding jobs that aren't soul sucking.

For me, the really interesting part of the book is in the characters' sense of identity. Edie is part of the Hawaiian diaspora, as are many of the residents on Kepler Station. Much of their dialogue is in Hawaiian pidgin, lending a sense of authenticity and depth to the characters. (Also super fascinating and led me down several research wormholes!) Edie is NB and many in the heist circle are LGBTQ: Edie and Angel revolve around each other with simmering sexual tension; the team's "grifter's" are a devoted sapphic couple; their "muscle," Cy, is trans. The way these overlapping identities are woven into the narrative, matched in the overlapping genres of the book, make this a unique read.

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

This book was actually pretty hard for me to rate. It was advertised as Oceans 8 meets Gideon the Ninth, and I go feral for anything Gideon related. Sadly, this was misleading, and it was absolutely nothing like Gideon the Ninth. But let’s get into it.

The good: the characters are SO lovable and cute. I loved Duke and Nakano, and I thoroughly enjoyed the main character. The writing was great, and the plot was enjoyable. I liked seeing every step that it took for the heist to be successful, and seeing the different roles everyone played.

The bad: this book was SO. SLOW. Like, nails on a chalkboard slow. As someone with very bad ADHD, it was a chore to push through even though I enjoyed it. The villain was cartoonish in nature, and I never really bought him being some kind of mastermind. I wanted to slap Angel. I had a really hard time visualizing the world-building— but I think that is a personal issue more than anything. The author was very descriptive, I just couldn’t comprehend it.

Overall, it ranged somewhere between 3-3.5 stars. I’ll keep it at 3 I think? Again, I had a hard time rating this. The ending alone was 4.5 stars, but the first 4/5 of the book were a solid 3.

You know what? Hell yeah!
I don't read sci-fi very often, but I found this a refreshing take on the genre, featuring a voice not often found in trad pubbed spaces. Yamamoto features an incredibly diverse array of characters, making for a fun and compelling take on an exciting heist tale in outerspace!

This was a fun and fast-paced heist story. I blitzed through it after the heist and team were established. The team was well fleshed out and enjoyable—with enough tension—as a unit. I expected more conflict during the heist; there were only a few hiccups. Angel was not a lovable character. And I was surprised by the romance between the main characters. I didn’t buy it. I also didn’t see enough growth from Edie. Eight years in prison didn’t seem to change them much—maybe that’s the point, but it wasn’t enough growth for me. Overall, it was a great read and I’m glad I found it through NetGalley!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Made it to 10%, was getting interested in the story and the premise of Eddie getting out of prison after a job went wrong 8 years ago and what came next, but then they went ti visit act an old friend and started talking Pidgin-I’m sorry but having to decode what reads like pages and pages of typos totally took me out of it.

To start, I will say that I really enjoyed this cast of characters—they were incredibly well written (very show and not tell) and definitely entertaining. This was probably one of the first heist-style stories that I have ever read. And while I’m not sure this plot/trope is necessarily for me, I did enjoy this book as a story and would definitely recommend it for anyone looking for that heist style story!

I think the only thing I have to say about this book, is that for me, reading it actually felt a little less culturally impactful and, particularly given the way the character dialogue is written and the incorporation of Hawaiian Pidgin phrases (as evident from the title). I think that listening to a narrated copy would have potentially made a bigger impact on me as the reader. However, I did love how the Hawaiian culture was written into this book, and it has great representation, so I wouldn’t let the format deter you from reading by any means - just something to point out if you have options!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing the eARC for an honest review. (Rounded up from a 3.75)

Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto is not my typcial read. Once I started reading I could not get into the story and found it hard to finish.

3.5 stars.

The vibes in Hammajang Luck remind me of that Fast and Furious meme where Vin Diesel emphasizes that nothing's stronger than family. And while I'm a hater at heart, the way that this book presents that theme is actually pretty heartwarming and I ended up liking it.

TLDR; I came for the heist, but stayed for the cozy family vibes and Hawaiian community ties.

And I'll admit, as someone who works in a similar field (sadly, not black hat heist related), I really appreciated the attention to detail when it came to the heist portion. The physical security cracking and code breaking were right up my alley, and you could definitely tell that the author did research on all of this.

I also loved the family drama, and I'm saying this as a hater of sappy family dramas and sob stories. Edie, her sister, and Angel's relationships feel so real that I felt like I was a part of their family, like some cousin hanging out at the periphery waiting for the tea to spill.

The Hawaiian pidgin added another layer to the family dynamic and closeness I felt to the characters. While I spent my childhood on an island that's almost 7k miles away from Hawaii, the pidgin felt so familiar that I could easily feel myself among family members. It's details like this that'll always make me an advocate for representation and diversity in books and all media.

While the villain and the other characters that took part in the heist were ultimately forgettable, I honestly still had fun with this book. I'd recommend this for someone looking for a lighter futuristic read.

Thank you to Harper Voyager and NetGalley for this arc.

This was such a fun and fast-paced sci-fi heist story. Edie is released from prison and immediately pulled into another job by the person who betrayed them. The characters are vibrant, the stakes feel real, and the story weaves in commentary on class disparity and capitalism.

The tension between Edie and Angel was great with their shared history and unresolved feelings. I wish their relationship had developed more naturally earlier in the story, but it was still an engaging part of the book.

The heist itself was clever, full of risks, and packed with twists. It reminded me of Ocean’s Eleven in a futuristic, cyberpunk setting. Although I wanted to spend more time getting to know some of the side characters, this was a thrilling and heartfelt read.

This is a perfect pick for anyone who loves ensemble adventures and queer representation in science fiction. I am excited to see what Makana Yamamoto writes next.

Thank you to Netgalley & Harper Voyager for the review copy! 🖤

First read of 2025 and I was not disappointed! Giving this a 4.5 out of 5. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

At its core, this is a queer-normative sci-fi heist against capitalism and I love it! The characters in the crew are each nuanced and you honestly are rooting for them to succeed. In some ways I wish there was more clear/explicit confirmation of individuals identities, because bi erasure and saying the words helps with visibility, but given how clearly enmeshed queerness is to the story and the world building a lot can be assumed.

My main critique is the romance between Angel and Edie, because while they have a lot of history going back to their childhood, in my opinion Angel SERIOUSLY did Edie wrong in several places and never expressed remorse or even explained themselves to Edie until they were forced to. I wish ye physical part of their relationship started earlier in the novel and then allowed us to see them progress back to trusting each other, because as is it felt a bit rushed. But we also don't see a lot of what happened behind the scenes.

Overall FANTASTIC read.

Gods I loved this book. One of the best books I've read this year with the cast of characters encompassing so many identities and the use of pidgin in the book made it that much more real to me. The stakes were high, the jokes were hilarious and I think so many folks will fall in love with the characters like I did! All the stars!

This ended up being a really fun heist novel, with lots of double crossing and complicated emotions (ie dealing with being on a heist with the person who landed you in future jail the first time around and the fact that you're still in love with her), and the feel goodness of taking on a major shitty corporation and getting away with it. Debut novel, and recommended for a great bright read this winter.

Such a fun read! A queer space heist that deals with gentrification, betrayal, and class disparity. Edie is released from prison after a job gone wrong, and is immediately pulled back into one last heist- by the person who got them sent away in the first place. This book quickly grabs your attention as you meet all the players for the heist, and slowly learn more about Edie and Angel’s past. The characters are all really interesting with their different skills and motivations for taking on a risky job. And I loved getting into Edie’s head as they grapple with teaming up with the person who cost them eight years of their life- but when there are no other options, is there really a choice? I really liked this book, can’t wait to see what the author comes up with next.

Makana Yamamoto's Hammajang Luck is an awe inspiring sci-fi heist, but more importantly a treatise on identity and family. Overwhelmingly enjoyed!

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager | Harper Voyager and NetGalley for providing an eARC for a honest review.

Cyberpunk Ocean’s Eleven-esque space heist?! Yes.
Edie has just been released early after an eight year stint in prison only to be brought home by the one person who put them there. Angel Huang was like a sister growing up but now could not be anymore of a stranger. Angel has one last job that would set Edie and their family for several lifetimes. Drowning in debt, a sister expecting her third child, and a niece undergoing cancer treatment, how can Edie say no?
How could you not love this beautiful cast of characters? They were so easy to root for and love. The light banter was fun and matched the fast-paced plot. The friends-to-enemies-to-lovers was so well done and didn’t feel rushed at all. I loved it all and couldn’t put it down!

Thank you NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the ebook arc!

This book is a great classic heist story, made even better by being set in a futuristic space station. The stakes are high as a great cast of characters attempt to steal from a tech CEO in what should be the last job of their lives. The main character is fresh out of prison and has to team up with a person from their past to pull it off, even though they hate each other's guts.

The plot moves pretty fast in this book. The main cast has about eight characters, and we go through all of their backstories and about half have fleshed out character arcs. In my opinion this is the selling point of the book, I can see it being pretty big with fans of things like Six of Crows, and similar books with group adventures.

The only downfall of this book is that it feels a little short. Like I said, most of the characters get plotlines, but I thought that more time could be spent getting to know them. However, this is mostly nitpicky, and I still had a great time while reading.

This was exactly my brand of fun sci-fi adventures, and I'm really excited to see what the author puts out next.

I enjoyed the heist parts of this. Edie has just gotten out of prison, and a person from her past is ready to recruit her for a heist so that Edie won't ever have to work again. Angel, the blast from the past, is the mastermind behind the whole thing, and between her and Edie they start recruiting the other members they will need to pull this off. Grifters, thieves, a hacker, and Edie our resident runner.

I loved Edie's relationship with their sister, niece, and nephew. I also really enjoyed the antagonistic relationship between Edie and Angel. You find out why early on and can tell there are more emotions under the surface, so each interaction is pretty entertaining. At a bit over halfway through their relationship shifts, and it wasn't something I was rooting for. Their relationship is definitely a bit on the toxic side.

I also think this was a bit longer than it needed to be, there were some parts in the middle that I found myself zoning out for a bit.
I think where this book really shines is the heist itself, it reminds me of Oceans 11 a bit and I found that part super enjoyable, and Edie and their relationship with their family, old friends, and new.

I really wanted to like this but unfortunately 42% in and I was just not connecting with the characters or the plot.

I don’t think it’s a bad book, just not one for me.