Heart & Heist in Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto

The cover of Makana Yamamoto’s (they/she/he) Hammajang Luck boldly proclaims its niche as “Sci-fi Heist.” Yamamoto further delineates their novel as a “cyberpunk lesbian space heist,” so it’s safe to say that I was all the way intrigued. 

The first page yanked me in with the phrase, “Mother just grounded me for war crimes.” One unexpected snort-laugh and I was transfixed, racing through the rest of the novel in an evening. I had to know what was going to happen. 

Our set up is thus: skilled thief Edie’s finally leaving prison after eight long years. They landed there after an unthinkable betrayal by the one person they thought they could trust—Angel: childhood crush, friend-turned-found-family, partner-in-cons, source of simmering sexual tension throughout the novel. Edie was sentenced as a streetwise kid at 21, and supposedly they’re out on good behavior as a much more buff and (sort of) wiser adult at 29.

Angel shows up to gloat and offer Edie a job: she pulled the strings that got Edie released early, and she wants them in for one last con—a heist with a payoff large enough to last ten lifetimes or more. It’s the kind of money Edie desperately needs to help their family: their sister, a single mom working double and triple shifts just to make rent and their niece, slowly dying of cancer, in need of astronomically expensive treatments. Even worse, Edie’s entire family group migrated to a lower income ward of Kepler generations ago, and they’re stuck there now without a way back to the homeworld. Kepler’s home now, and everyone’s rapidly being priced out by the giganto-mega-corp Atlas Industries.

When Edie gives up on going clean, they join Angel in recruiting the rest of the ragtag band of (mostly) queer misfits. Speaking of which: the queer and trans representation in Hammajang Luck is seamless, delicious, and unrepentant. It was a joy to read a queer and trans normative world. Another delight: the Hawaiian pidgin dialogue flows easily throughout. 

There was a sweetness and a sense of naïveté that Edie held onto, even after Angel’s catastrophic betrayal. When Angel says she has a plan for everyone to walk away clean and safe, Edie simply believes her. The events in Hammajang Luck flow just as easily. Cynic that I am, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. While there were tense moments, even tearful ones, I always felt safe. 

Don’t get me wrong: there are societal issues aplenty. There’s the looming existential threat of Atlas Industries, exemplified by the storefronts Edie sees replete with “faceless virtual intelligence shopkeeps and stocked with overpriced goods courtesy of Atlas Industries and our harvested data.” There’s overt sexual harassment enacted by various oppressors, confident in their dual shields of wealth and status. There’s the inability of everyday folks to exist in places they’ve always existed, wealth becoming ultra-concentrated into an oligarchian singularity. Nothing new.  

Still. It would be a mistake to call Hammajang Luck grimdark. In fact, it’s the polar opposite. Yamamoto’s novel offers comfort, warmth, and hope in the face of a sci-fi world all too similar to our own. Even more importantly, it’s fun. Raucous and joyous, Hammajang Luck dares to celebrate a future where the queers don’t just survive, they thrive.

Content warnings: Implied sexual assault, drink drugging, non-consensual touching, misogyny

Susanne Salehi (she/they) is a queer Iranian American writer and editor happiest when reading, cross stitching, gardening, or accumulating silly tattoos—they’re particularly proud of the screaming possum. They’re a 2025 fellow of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & they write queer heroes. More at susannesalehi.com.