Hammered [Mass Market Paperback]

Elizabeth Bear (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 2004

Once Jenny Casey was somebody’s daughter. Once she was somebody’s enemy. Now the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes project and has Jenny in his sights. Suddenly Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half-man-made nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game before a brave new future spins completely out of control.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drugs, gangs and Internet warfare run rampant in Bear's ambitious debut novel, an SF thriller set in 2062. Jenny Casey, a former Canadian special forces warrior who's half-machine as the result of an accident years earlier, is living in Hartford, Conn., when a scientist working in need of the perfect subject for a high-stakes virtual-reality project puts Casey in his sights. Casey becomes a pawn in a furious battle waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities and in the complex wirings of her half-manmade nervous system. As she approaches her 50th birthday, Casey manages to maintain a good sense of humor, a trait unfortunately lacking in the rest of the cast, which includes an old flame, a gangster named Razorface and a female ex-con who befriends the heroine. Bear's often jagged prose ("We disembark in Brazil, which has the distinction of being one of several countries I've been shot at in. Shot down over, even") suits the frequent, at times confusing narrative jumps between the virtual and real worlds. Though readers may have difficulties following this sometimes chaotic story, advance praise from such SF pros as Mike Resnick, Richard Morgan and Peter Watts should ensure a strong start.
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Review

"Drugs, gangs and internet warfare run rampant ... [an] ambitious debut novel."—Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553587501
• ISBN-13: 978-0553587500
• Product Dimensions: 4.1 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,677 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I tell stories. I prefer the mountains to the desert, and rain to sun. My eyes are blue. I like flying on airplanes, but they keep making the seats smaller.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, well-written story, October 30, 2005

By 

K. A. Mayer "she who lives in fantasy worlds" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hammered (Mass Market Paperback)

This was the story of a former soldier, embedded with older tech implants, who agrees to upgrades to end her constant pain, only to find the doctor pressing her to upgrade has ulterior motives.

What worked for me: the storyline was interesting, and I liked the characters. The author's writing style is comfortable, unpretentious and direct. The science and story presented are plausible and the plot elements were well-constructed. I didn't find myself dying to get back to the book, but neither was it a struggle to get through, thus I gave it 3 stars: I liked it, didn't love it.

What didn't work for me: I dislike stories written in present tense, and I dislike leaping from first person to third person narrators. This book had both, so it constantly pushed my buttons. At about the half-way point, two of the characters began speaking French to each other, and my French is too rusty to have made it all out. I believe this was a strategic mistake on the part of the author. It's like forming a special clique of readers who get all of the story, and everyone else is left out.

Still, I'd recommend this book to SF fans, and I'll be buying the sequel.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Maybe my standards are too high, August 18, 2005

By 

C. Glover (Langhorne, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hammered (Mass Market Paperback)

Let me start by saying I am a big fan of women sci-fi writers and women as take charge heroes. I am also over 50 and love it when the characters are mature. But it took forever to get into this book. It was very slow and even boring at times, which is weird because there were so many things going on. I had a hard time focusing on who the characters were and what their relationships were to each other...many of them have more than one alias and AI personalities in virtual games. The flashbacks and recalls of 35 years make it even more confusing as they are in no particular order. It took too long for the story to come together. When I reached the end of the book and realized it was the first of a series I was angry as I was ready for a conclusion and felt that I had been tricked. Hammered is like those manga novels my daughter reads that stop with a shocking clifthanger that is resolved in the next volume which also stops with a shocking clifthanger. I was even upset about the name of the book, we did not even get to the bottom of the drug "Hammer" mystery in part one of this novel.

I like the hero, Jenny, and I will read the next book just to see what happens to her. Plus, I love sci-fi exploration and first contact stories and I hope this is where Bear is going with this saga now that they are capable of long distance space flight and FTL communication. I am not as enamored with the other characters or their motives, maybe the second book will develop the people and the politics better.

Better than Hammered, I recommend Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro. The hero is a 50ish woman who made the choice at 20 to accept into her body cyborg-like enhancements and become a pilot/warrior. Throughout her life (and the series)she struggles with the impact of that decision. I thought of Jenny as another variation on Primary Inversion's Soz.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not just for fanboys anymore, November 9, 2005

By 

Cherie Priest "Cherie Priest" (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hammered (Mass Market Paperback)

It'd been awhile since I'd used my limited leisure reading time for science fiction, but Elizabeth Bear makes me glad I took the chance. _Hammered_ is an engaging romp that stays true to genre tradition without pillaging and reshaping it into a tepid Heinlen or Hubbard clone.

Bear's finest triumph (in this reader's opinion) is the way she creates a woman-as-protagonist without allowing Jenny's "femaleness" to be the sole defining point of importance. Not since Metroid Prime has a character been so thoroughly yet incidentally feminine. It's hard to believe, I know -- but there are billions of us who live every single day as a woman, and who do not find this state to be a point of novelty; so do not dismiss _Hammered_ for using this point-of-view character for the sake of gimmick.

Jenny Casey is tough without being cold, and vulnerable without being weak. Like the future world and the book she inhabits, she is complex but not inaccessibly complicated -- and I could most heartily recommend this story to genre fans and tentative readers alike.

Excellent stuff.