Hammered Trilogy

Hammered

by Elizabeth Bear
Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
Published on April 30th 2015
Pages: 320
Amazon

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.
Wracked 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.

It is 2062.

  • The United States is no longer a world power after being taken over by the Christian Fascist Party.
  • Canada and China are the newest superpowers
  • Wars in the 2030s destroyed countries.
  • Rising oceans destroyed many more and the collapse of the Gulf Stream was the final blow for England.

Jenny Casey is a veteran of many of Canada’s wars in the 2030s.  She was horrifically injured and was rebuilt using at the time state of the art cybernetics.  Now her tech is breaking down and everything hurts.  She is living in Hartford Connecticut, a gang run city.  She works as a mechanic and helps patch up kids in her neighborhood caught up in gang violence.  There are rumors of her past but no one pays much attention to an old lady minding her own business.

The Chinese have sent spaceships towards a potentially habitable moon.  It will take them hundreds of years to get there.  Now Canada wants to catch up.  Both Canada and China are building ships that travel faster than light but no one is able to pilot them.  They keep crashing into planets.  They need pilots with superhuman reflexes.  They can be made using nanotechnology found in ships left crashed on Mars by unknown aliens.  Already that tech is being used to reverse engineer new human technology.  Jenny could be rebuilt and augmented to see if she could fly the ships.  She was an amazing pilot even as a regular human.  She isn’t interested in getting involved with the Canadian Army again but they aren’t giving her a choice.

 

I heard about this series on a Book Riot list about books with protagonists over the age of 40.  In this three book series, Jenny goes from living in Hartford and working with gang leaders to living and working on the spaceship Montreal and working with politicians and officers.  She wouldn’t necessarily say that it was an improvement.

She sees people that she loves pulled into the deadly political games being played with her future and the future of the space program and even the future of life on Earth.

What I Liked

  • The world building was very good.  The history that leads the world to the state it is in makes sense and is possible.
  • Canada and China are enemies but individuals of each country are portrayed as complete and complex people who are able to get along one on one.
  • An artificial intelligence is developed.  I loved him.
  • There are drawbacks to enhancing people with nanotechnology.  Most of the pilots develop forms of autism and have to deal with the repercussions of that.
  • There is a complicated polyamorous relationship which is something that you don’t usually see.

What Could Be Better

  • The second book in the series drug for me.  The ending was good but it took a long time to get to the exciting parts.

scardownworldwired

three-half-stars