By Sinclair Adams
With a synopsis that includes the descriptor “Ocean’s 8 meets Blade Runner,” I entered Makana Yamamoto’s debut novel, Hammajang Luck, with optimism. Heist stories run the risk of being formulaic and perhaps predictable, but the sci-fi background felt full of promise. I read this book looking for a fresh take on the classic “team heist” story. By the last page, I was more than just entertained—my heart was surprisingly warmed.
Hammajang Luck begins when protagonist Edie Morikawa, a nonbinary criminal in their late twenties, is released after eight years in prison. They are not sure why they have been granted parole sooner than promised, until they are approached by a conflicting face from their past: Angel, who is Edie’s childhood best friend, former partner in crime, and the reason why they were sentenced to years in prison. Angel tattled on Edie to avoid time in prison herself, but has bailed Edie out with the intention of recruiting them for a job. Not just any job—the fabled “one last job” that will set both of them up for life, while simultaneously toppling the empire of a tech mogul who has been taking advantage of the working-class districts from which both Angel and Edie hail. Edie and Angel must bitterly work alongside each other as they gather a team of experts and plot out their heist, all while Edie struggles to reconnect with their remaining family. What at first seems like a revenge plot quickly grows into a story about finding a place in the world when you thought you had been left behind.
The story’s brisk pace invites you into the futuristic setting. The entire book takes place on Kepler, a cold and rocky planet that has long since become a home for colonies of humans. Society has become integrated with new technologies, but the same cycle of invention and capitalism has maintained a disparity of wealth in Kepler’s human community.
Edie narrates the story, and their familiarity with Kepler makes the worldbuilding feel naturally integrated into the plot. There are no long beats where overwhelming amounts of information are dumped, and the pacing flows speedily along the pages. The descriptions are crisp and colorful, capturing a lot of dynamic momentum with few words. The entire book has an almost cinematic quality to it, especially during the sequences of Edie’s team working together to sneak around and gather intel.
Edie is such a unique and refreshing protagonist. They are an authentic non-binary character with very charming traits, yet very human flaws. Their non-binary identity presents no conflicts within the story itself, and they are joined with other gender-diverse characters woven organically into the plot. What makes Edie truly stand out is their perspective as a person in a quarter-life crisis. Edie spent their twenties in prison and has trouble finding their place in the world upon release, especially as it relates to younger people, and their lack of guiding figures. Edie is joined by younger and fresher thieves in their cohort, and is also expected to step in and be a guardian for their sister’s children. This drives doubt into Edie’s heart from all angles, which is such a welcome addition to the plot, as it can be relatable to many other people in their twenties. If a person’s teen years are typically spent forming an identity, then their twenties seem to be spent finding out how their identity places them into the world. Edie Morikawa captures this light angst perfectly.
Another defining characteristic of Edie, and most of their family and peers, is their culturally Hawaiian identity. While the characters’ complete ethnicities aren’t outright stated, it is clear that Hawaiian culture still has an impact on them as Hawaii was their ancestors’ home before they had to move to a planet in outer space. This leaves a lot of room for readers’ imagination to explore the migration of people from Earth to space, while paying loving tribute to the characters’ Earth origins. Starting with its own title and ending with the author’s acknowledgements, Hammajang Luck is full of Hawaiian phrases and customs, showing a deep love and appreciation for the characters’ island origins that they hold onto even in a futuristic space setting. Edie and their friends sometimes exchange words in Hawaiian pidgin, which is captured verbally in the text. Writing out accents and other languages in prose is a debated topic among writers, with some thinking that it takes readers out of the reading experience. However, in Hammajang Luck, the usage of pidgin feels essential to characters to capture their voices, and without a doubt belongs in this book.
On the subject of language, there are aspects in this book that do feel underwhelming, namely the language of the future. As is common in sci-fi stories, this book has the problem of characters speaking like they do in today’s world and using modern slang, but occasionally throwing in one fancy word that sounds vaguely futuristic. Most of the sci-fi worldbuilding felt underdeveloped, as it had little impact on the characters’ daily lives. There are some passing mentions at biological modifications, holograms, and other ambiguous futuristic technologies that are used as tools for the heist, but otherwise, there is nothing about this book that makes it feel like it needs to be sci-fi at all. This is just a small critique, as the futuristic aesthetics that fill in the backdrop of the story are very striking to the imagination.
My initial reservations about reading a predictable heist story were happily proven wrong. Because so much of the story revolves around Edie’s emotional stakes with the people they have returned to, the dramatic tension lies not in the outcome of the heist itself, but rather the character’s decisions and reactions. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are several twists in the last hundred pages that had me gripping the pages with excitement. With its well-plotted and heartfelt ending, Hammajang Luck left me grinning and satisfied, and was a bright highlight of how I spent the New Year.
As a writer, Yamamoto makes great use of each word, saying so much with a modest selection of words. From a craft standpoint, Hammajang Luck is a master class on the “tempo” of writing compelling scenes. With its enticing plot, lovable protagonist, and excellent pacing, I happily gobbled up each page and finished the book in no time. Hammajang Luck is a wildly fun book that’s easy to pick up and read without any of the heavy barriers with which sci-fi is often associated. I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a story of queer minorities triumphing over evil capitalists, and doing so in style.
Sinclair Adams (she/they) is a writer interested in speculative and science fiction narratives. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Las Vegas and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University. She was an editor for Ouroboros Magazine, Chapman’s journal of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other speculative fiction. Follow her on Instagram @sinclairwrites.