"Hammajang Luck" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

A few questions to get us started:


1. What did you think of the world?
2. What did you think of the characters?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?

[Melanie, the neutral party]

Bonus Questions:
Now that you've read it, critique the book's recipe.
How would you modify the recipe?

[HeyT]

I read this in Feb of last year and enjoyed it. The comparisons to Ocean's 8 made me immediately watch the movie once I finished the book. Both were a good time.

[Geri]

This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. First, the good. I enjoyed the actual heist section; it was relatively taut and engaging. I enjoyed the way the station was described; it felt pretty real and lived in, and the disparity between the haves and have-nots is nicely done. The addition of the small business relationship with the neighbourhood is also nice, it reminded me a lot of my home when I was a kid.
The bad. The relationship between the two mains felt completely unearned, especially at the end. There were a lot of holes in the actual plan. Now, in a book like this, I normally wouldn't let that bother me. But there were a couple of instances of the main character getting angry with Angel due to her treatment by her boss, right after being really angry with Angel and knowing about her betrayal, which just took me out of it. The hacker was so annoying, but more than that, a bit of a Deus ex machina. I hate how hackers are often portrayed this way. The stakes didn't feel that high, and the romance felt unearned. There just wasn't enough lost for what was gained. I almost put this down, but I'm glad I didn't because while all of that is true, the heist section, the interplay between everyone, and to a lesser extent, the party was very well done. And that meant something. I think if you are willing to overlook some really predictable characters and a few plot holes, but enjoy some fun dialogue and well-done settings, this is a book you may enjoy.

[Megan]

I finished this today!

What I liked:
* the family plot. I really liked how strong Edie's and Andie's relationship was, their family history, and how they both struggled to navigate the emotional burdens they carried--and those they didn't want the other to have to carry.
* characters speaking Pidgin! I was born and raised on the mainland, but my family is from Hawaii, and it was a delight reading this aspect
* the portrayal of a Hawaiian diaspora community in spaaaace. It just seemed so plausible to me that the pan-Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander community could be a labor source likely to be transplanted to a space station like that

I did struggle with the plot a bit (okay, a lot). I think I wanted more out of the heist plot, something with more twists and complexity. A feel-good found-family team is sweet, and I 100% believe that an evil tech trillionaire would be as pathetic and cartoonish and boring as this one is (considering evil tech billionaires in the real world...!), but I still wanted like some kind of plot friction, a stronger sense that something (aside from the boring feds) might throw a wrench into the completion of the heist plot.

[Becky]

Finished this tonight. Ended up rating it 2 stars (generously, maybe, considering the rantiness of my review). I just found very, very little to be believable about this story, and that made it hard to enjoy for me.

My ranty review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Thieryn]

This book felt like the Sci-Fi equivalent of "Legends and Lattes": mellow, pretty "meh" plot/characters, and with a female lead I wanted to slap a few times (Angel).

On the plus side, it read easy, and the family relationships were very warm and wholesome. They understood the circumstances, didn't judge, and left me with a very happy feeling.
Additionally, for someone like me who gets bored with long descriptions of settings, I found myself engaged in the world-building. I am guessing the novelty of the alien element kept me intrigued.

Sadly, the author did not deliver on half the promises she set up.
- The characters had no real arc, and three of the secondary characters (Tatiana, Sara, Nanako) felt like the same person, only focused on a different trait each time.
- Edie was so deflated, so absolutely "middle of the road" annoyingly average in all of her reactions, there was no real pushback on anything, especially with Angel who, as previously mentioned, deserved a harsh dose of reality, preferably straight on the nose.
- Nothing surprised me until the very very end of the book, and that was only because one of the characters does something so out of character for them, it almost felt like it didn't fit.
- The villain, Atlas, never really felt villainous. He was not dangerous, cunning, or threatening in any tangible way. Sure he's a vile creature, but there's a difference between a horrible being and a horror-inducing one.

All in all, it felt like the author wanted to dip her fingers in all manners of "female empowerment" pies, some of which felt very lip-service-y. Even the heist itself wasn't all that heist-y. Stakes have to be shown, not told.

[Becky]

Thieryn, I agree with all of that.

Did anyone else feel like the score was just too big to believe? A TRILLION credits, split 8 ways, with each person getting 125B just seems laughable, something so outrageous that nobody would take seriously and agree to that job. Authorities would NEVER just let that go. You can’t just throw 125B through a couple transactions and then dump it into your account like it’s legit. That kind of money leaves a trail. What kind of account holding company would see 125B credits suddenly appear a week after they were stressed about covering a 20 credit debt, and not investigate that?

What kind of Fed deal allows thieves to keep that money and agree to ONE 3-year term? Edie was in prison almost 3x that sentence!

It was so unrealistic to me and it hurt my brain to even pretend to try to ignore the logistics of how many ways that doesn’t work.

[Riyadh]

I really didn't enjoy this book. I don't understand how she can come out of prison and suddenly start trusting the person that got her in there in the first place - was very unrealistic.

Also at the start it seemed like she was being watched by the authorities but somehow she never got caught planning for the heist?

I kept waiting for some sort of twist at the end but it never came.

The romance added no value to the story.

Sadly not for me.

[Eleanor]

At first, I was surprised that I was enjoying it more than I expected too, given other negative reviews. But as the story went on, the stakes never felt "real" enough. Rather than enjoying seeing a heist come together, I felt like I was watching a disaffected teenager who I knew was never going to face real consequences for the plot we were reading.

I enjoyed elements of the world-building, though. While it ruined the pace of the rest of the book, the descriptions of the space station and elements of the larger galaxy intrigued me. Wish we had more of that bigger world, but instead, apart from the cyberpunk elements, it felt like this could have been New York or LA.

[Nastia]

I got bored very quickly.

What was the point of the story to take place on another industrial planet?

If they are in space, the cigarettes that were smoked nonstop must have cost a fortune.

A lot of things didn't make any sense. Like, why would Angel add the main character to a blacklist?

The whole book is written in a way that it was meant for a movie. (The author can dream about it).

I gave it 3 stars, and I was generous.

[CJ]

Nastia, your comment about how it was written as if it was meant for a movie makes sense to me. It's one of the things that bothered me about this. I felt like, "Who is this written for?"

[Becky]

Nastia wrote: "I got bored very quickly.

What was the point of the story to take place on another industrial planet?

If they are in space, the cigarettes that were smoked nonstop must have cost a fortune.

A lo..."

Not only expensive but dangerous to smoke in an environment like that.

Angel added Edie to the blacklist when Edie got out of prison to force them into agreeing to participate in the heist as they’d have no other option for money or employment without leaving the station/their family. She did it so Edie would be desperate and sign up for the insanely too good to be true job.

[Netanella]

Aaaand that's just another reason why the love-match between Edie and Angel just felt . . . wrong.

[Becky]

Netanella wrote: "Aaaand that's just another reason why the love-match between Edie and Angel just felt . . . wrong."

Agreed.

[Kaia]

I think I went into this one with low expectations, given the "meh" response from a lot of the book group members, and, in a way, that worked in my favor. I liked the book overall, more than I expected. It filled my reading need to have an audiobook that was engaging, more "cozy"ish, and easy enough to follow while doing other things. I really loved the family and neighborhood relationships, the Hawaiian / Pacific Islander cultural representation, and the friendships of the team.

I do agree with others who said that the romance between Edie and Angel felt unearned. I would have preferred that they came to a kind of friendship truce in the end. I thought of Angel being more like a family member to Edie, which made it harder in a way for Edie to just dismiss her completely after she gets out of prison.

If I think about the heist and the way things wrapped up (and some other aspects), I know that it's not realistic, but I was fine to go along for the ride.

[P.E.N.]

That’s interesting, because it almost sounds like the book is asking for a different kind of agreement from the reader.

Not “does this make sense?”… but “does this feel consistent enough to stay inside it?”

Sometimes when a story leans more toward atmosphere or emotional familiarity, the logic starts to matter less, not because it disappears, but because it stops being the center of the experience.

Which might be why it lands so differently depending on what you’re looking for when you go into it.

If you expect the structure to hold everything together, it feels fragile. But if you’re following the relationships and the tone, it almost works in a completely different way.

Curious if that’s what carried it for you in the end, more the feeling than the mechanics?