Reflection's Edge

Book Review: Hammered by Elizabeth Bear

Reviewer: Romie J. Stott

As an experienced author making an early foray into cyberpunk, Elizabeth Bear is careful to adhere to genre conventions; instead of having the confidence to cut to the essence of cyberpunk, she duplicates the manifestations. Cyborgs, street ronin, corporate governments, gangs, hackers, artificial intelligences, drug trafficking, vehicles piloted by thought - if it's in Shadowrun, it's in Hammered. This makes large sections of Hammered feel derivative, even though Bear applies the old ideas in competent and varied ways.

Effectively, Bear uses cyberpunk as a setting for a 17th century court intrigue full of manipulations and divided loyalties. This may be a disappointment to readers who want a simple escape: this book demands attention, and it expects you to be smart. It features a large cast of characters in different places at different times, one of whom may be mentioned in one sentence and then disappear for a hundred pages - only to reappear with the expectation that readers remember who he is.

This is made more difficult by the fact that different people refer to characters by different names; any important character has a first name, a last name, a street name, and three or four nicknames - each denoting a different degree of intimacy and area of relationship. And for complicated reasons, three characters have the same first name. As with certain mysteries and historical epics, it might not be a bad idea to keep a cheat sheet of names on hand.

As a side effect of the large cast list, the story starts out slowly. It jumps from seemingly unconnected character to seemingly unconnected character, disrupting any momentum it accumulates. This gives a reader little incentive to continue forward - why bother to get attached when the storyline you're excited about will disappear for fifty pages? - which is a shame, because things really pick up around page 120, a third of the way through the book.

By then, all the pieces are in place, and Bear can do what she does best - delicately propel the characters toward their inevitable fates. Every character decision in this book feels purposed; at any given time, we know exactly what each character knows and who (s)he trusts. Bear deftly sidesteps the common intrigue problem of who to root for by narrating one character in first person and the rest in third - thus giving us a necessary sense of intimacy with the main character while letting us witness important events outside her sphere of observation.

Hammered's only major weakness is that the style seems forced, as often happens with authors trying to write futuristic street slang - especially authors who are old enough to have fled the slang cutting edge of high schools and college dorms. This problem is compounded because Hammered's main character is not just from the future - she's a French-Canadian Mohawk Indian with a military background, and she lives in the 'hood. That's a lot of jargon, and it doesn't come naturally.

Although it is the first in a trilogy, Hammered is entirely self-contained. Its ending is deeply satisfying in the way of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy; the characters who were marked for death die (some sooner and some later) and all the old grudges and unresolved tensions reach their conclusions, so that those characters who survive are almost reborn. That's an increasingly rare authorial accomplishment, and speaks not only of the talent of the author, but of her tastefulness.

Overall, Hammered is workmanlike. It doesn't strive for transcendence, but it does its job, and it does its job thoroughly. There's a touch of the base and a touch of the epic. Hammered is not a book for everyone, but those who are willing to put in the effort will not be disappointed.

If you liked this book, you may also enjoy:

The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956 by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Titan by John Varley

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Shadowrun, 3rd Ed. by Jordan Weisman



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