#REVIEW: Hammajang Luck, by Makana Yamamoto

On February 16, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

This was a hell of a lot of fun.

My Illumicrate subscription has been kinda hit or miss, if I’m being honest, and I keep almost cancelling it. I think their version of this book is the best-looking of any of their books that I’ve yet received, but upon seeing what the cover of the paperback looks like, I may have to order that too. One way or another, though, the books are always pretty, but it’s only about 50/50 whether I’m going to like the book, and so far I think I’ve only gotten one book from them that I’d heard of prior to it showing up in my mailbox.

Hammajang appears to be Hawaiian Pidgin for cattywampus, and if you’re not white enough to know that word then we’ll go with “messy” or “chaotic.” The book is sort of an outer space Hawaiian diaspora Ocean’s 11 mixed with cyberpunk and lesbians(*) and a dash of The Fast and the Furious. That sentence has either sold you the book or caused you to keep scrolling, and I would encourage you to follow that impulse either way. It’s directly up my alley, though, and it gave me everything I might want from such a book– a great, character-centered heist story with a whole bunch of personal betrayal and criss-crossing loyalties and an ending that genuinely took me by surprise. Let me just say that I’ve read a whole lot of heist books and there is a certain way that they never, ever end, and if you’ve also read enough heist books that that counts as a spoiler, trust me, you’ll enjoy the hell out of this book. It’s on the short side; 340 pages in the Illumicrate edition with big print, and I think it took me maybe 3-4 hours in two sittings to get through, but I’m absolutely in for more of this world and more of these characters. (I haven’t mentioned Edie, the MC, by name yet; there is no reason this book has to have a sequel and it’s written as a one-shot, but I want more Edie, and I want it soon.).

(*) I have also seen this book compared by official publicity people to Gideon the Ninth, and the presence of lesbians is the only similarity to Gideon. Do not go into this book thinking you’re getting Gideon beyond the very, very loose plot descriptor of “lesbians in space.”(**)

(**) Actually, okay, this is another similarity, as there isn’t a lot of space in either book. Hammajang doesn’t take place on Earth, and to be quite honest I can’t quite describe how Kepler works. I think it’s a space station somewhere Out There but the book doesn’t dwell on it much other than one part involving a less-than-optimal oxygen supply. This is, effectively, urban sci-fi, which is not a bad thing.)

REVIEW: Michael J. Martinez’ THE VENUSIAN GAMBIT, plus an awesome thing

On September 13, 2015September 13, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews2 Comments

Let’s start this with a careful look at the cover of The Venusian Gambit:

The following are all present:

A nineteenth-century British redcoat;
A French soldier, or possibly a British soldier in a naval uniform, I’m not completely certain;
A zombie;
A lizard thing;
A person in power armor, all in what appears to be
A jungle, which in reading you will discover is located
on Venus.

You already know whether you need to read this book. There is no point to discussing the plot. That cover tells you everything you need to know and you should absolutely judge this book by its cover.

The Venusian Gambit is book three of the Daedalus series, following The Daedalus Incident and The Enceladus Crisis. I did not review The Daedalus Incident, but I loved the hell out of Enceladus. Gambit concludes the series, in a rather final way, although I’d love to see future books set in either of the universes established in this series. Honestly, if you read the review of Enceladus you already know what I’m going to write here, with the caveat that this book officially makes Martinez my favorite adventure writer currently working. Yes, adventure; the series has science-fictional trappings, of course, especially since half of each book is set in the 2300s, but these, to me, are old-school adventure stories, and I think they owe more to Tarzan or, especially, Indiana Jones than to, say, Philip K. Dick.

You will read this series if you like fun. A brief digression: The Flash is either my favorite or second-favorite show on TV right now depending on whether the last episode of The Walking Dead aggravated me or not. Why? Because it is immediately and constantly apparent that each and every actor on screen is enjoying the hell out of themselves while they’re at work. The Daedalus books have that same feel to them; Gambit is stuffed with enough fun for any four normal books of similar length, and I have the feeling that Martinez was cackling to himself as he devised some of the things that happen to his characters at the end of the book.

(Also, on a personal note, I love that Gambit and The Sanctum of the Sphere both have their big climactic scenes set underneath giant pyramids, and… well, you’re going to have to wait for Starlight to come out to see the similarity to that book that entertained me.)

I finished the book today. I don’t always read afterwords to books, but for some reason this one kept me going, and about a third of the way through it, I thought to myself Man, it would be neat to see my name in one of these someday. I swear to God that is exactly and truly what happened.

And then this happened:

So… I need a disclaimer now, I guess? This book was totally getting a rave review before I found my name in it. And now I need to stalk Michael J. Martinez and find him at a convention somewhere so I can get this thing signed.

Go to Worldcon next year, dude. I’ll see you there. 🙂

On numerology

On September 30, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

Luckily for me, I ended up having a fair amount of work to do (and a couple of meetings) today, which meant that I wasn’t sitting at my desk playing Luther Go Crazy and reloading Amazon’s website over and over and over again. Sales are… about what I’d expect, which is to say they’re not burning up the universe just yet, but they exist. If I have a decent evening, I’m on track to have more sales on my first day than any single day of sales on Benevolence Archives, which I’m going to take as a good thing. I’m keeping an eye on sales of BA, too– we shall see if the existence of Book Two juices the sales of Book One at all.

Currently, I’m into the five figures on sales rank. BA peaked at #24,355 as a paid ebook (and did much better, if temporarily, when I made it free for a while). Skylights is at #91,958 right now, and the difference between the two ranks is a startlingly low number of sales. I’m hoping to crack a four-digit rank today. We’ll see.

(Buy the book so I can crow about my sales, is what I’m saying here.)

(I love you guys, by the way. Even those of you who haven’t bought the book yet. I love you slightly less than the ones who have, but I still love you.)