Hammered (Jenny Casey, #1) in Beyond Reality

Feb 14, 2009 Sandi rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2009, sci-fi

I find it really hard to believe that Hammered was Elizabeth Bear's first novel. The plot was so tight; the characters were so interesting; and the story was both intriguing and exciting. It was one of those books that took great willpower to put down when I to go do other things. I have read and listened to a few short stories by Bear that I thought were fantastic. It's nice to see that she handles the novel format just as well.

Jenny Casey is a protagonist that I can relate to. She's a middle-a ...more

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Nov 26, 2008 Wealhtheow rated it it was ok

Shelves: disabled-character, sci-fi, pocmaincharacters, cyberpunk

Jenny Casey is a war hero, but she's also a middle-aged woman with increasingly debilitating disabilities and a drug habit. Then tainted batches of Hammer (the combat drug she was addicted to) pop up on the streets of her home town. While her friends trace the drug back to its source, Jenny is coerced into joining a dangerous research project.

I really wanted to like this book, but it frustrated me all too often. This is the first in a trilogy, but there's a lot of backstory to this universe. I Jenny Casey is a war hero, but she's also a middle-aged woman with increasingly debilitating disabilities and a drug habit. Then tainted batches of Hammer (the combat drug she was addicted to) pop up on the streets of her home town. While her friends trace the drug back to its source, Jenny is coerced into joining a dangerous research project.

I really wanted to like this book, but it frustrated me all too often. This is the first in a trilogy, but there's a lot of backstory to this universe. I generally love in media res, but all the characters made vague statements like "She wouldn't let him try--not after the last time" and what happened "last time" is never explained! There are a half dozen different point-of-view characters, and all but two or three of them are unnecessary. I'd have preferred a single view point with a single tense than mishmash of every character even tangentially involved getting their own chapters. The narrative randomly jumps forward and backward in time, going from three weeks ago in one person's narrative to the present told from Jenny's pov to fifteen years ago...it's needlessly confusing.

I also don't see why the entire subplot of Razorface, Barb, Mitch, and the tainted Hammer existed. This is only the first book in the trilogy, so perhaps it will gain greater importance later, but as it stood it just provided more proof that Unitec was up to no good. Obviously! We already know! 50% of this book doesn't need to switch between Razorface, Mitch, etc's povs in order to tell the really basic story of "Unitec dumped some tainted drugs onto the street to test them." Look, I just did it in one sentence! Hell, the characters themselves figure it out in the first few chapters, so I'm confused by how drawn-out it was. It was like Bear had originally written this drug war as a stand-alone story, and then awkwardly grafted it onto Jenny Casey's.

I did like the characters. Jenny Casey is my favorite kind of badass--the kind that's very damaged but has mostly come to terms with it, and still inspires a mixture of fear and awe in those she meets. The lady psychiatrist was pretty fun too, with her blase attitude toward romance and sex. But my appreciation for the characters was hampered by the often unnatural dialog (there's a great collection of examples here) and the fact that by the end, half the dialog was in untranslated French. I do not speak French! When I come across whole pages of unintelligible dialog in nineteenth century novels, at least those authors have the excuse of assuming their readers are polyglots. Bear is writing in the 2000s! At least give us endnotes or something! (ps, sex scenes often have unintentionally hilarious dialog, but the repitious "je t'aime"s and "mon amour"s tipped it over into farce)

And I did like Jenny Casey's plot. I would have loved to read more scenes of her figuring out how to (view spoiler) What is there is written pretty well, although Bear has to strain to get her prose beyond "workman-like". If there had been more of Casey's adventure, and less incredibly obvious and unnecessary street fighting, I would have enjoyed this more. As it stands, I doubt I'll bother reading the rest of the series. ...more

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Apr 02, 2009 DivaDiane SM rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, beyond-reality-botm

I've read several stories by Elizabeth Bear and often read her blog, so I was curious how she would handle long-form story telling. I was not disappointed.

This is a tight story, fast-paced and exciting. It has all sorts of elements that I really enjoy in my SF: female protagonists who are "real", robots - or in this case AIs and cyborg elements for the humans, dystopian society, space exploration. This is very definitely a hard SF novel, but the story is really character-centric and Bear doesn' ...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Gaijinmama rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

I actually picked this one up for a reading challenge, which asked us to choose a book set in the place we were born. Well, let me tell you, there are not a heck of a lot of science fiction books where even part of the action takes place in Hartford, Connecticut!
In the not-too-distant future, Hartford is a hellhole. OK, that's believable. Certain parts of the city were headed that way even when I was a kid in the '80's.
Another cool thing: in this version of the future, Canada is a superpower. S ...more

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Jun 01, 2016 Tom Britz rated it it was amazing

A gritty near future novel. This is the first of a trilogy and it has enough storylines to carry it. The action is fast and the characters are brought to life. Ms. Bear has made a fan of me in this first book. It is also her first novel which bodes well.

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Aug 07, 2009 Tom rated it did not like it

Complete garbage.

Not a single interesting, engaging or sympathetic character. Multiple plot threads that go nowhere, with the most uninteresting one being the main storyline. No point in setting the book in Toronto as there is nothing referenced to make the location unique or realized. Brutal pacing and annoying insertions of non-translated French (oh, she's Canadian, she MUST speak French! Riiiight.)

Couldn't finish it fast enough, and I'd rather have another root canal than ever read anything ...more

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Shelves: science-fiction, cover-faceless-female, cover-skin-sells-stories

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Jun 29, 2009 Ruby Hollyberry rated it it was amazing

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Shelves: coverx-feet, year-2004, series-1st, h2-no-articles, locus-award-debut-novel-winner, h2, beyond-reality-science-fiction, science-fiction, e3, cyberpunk

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