“Bear is talented.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Moves at warp speed, with terse ‘n' tough dialogue laced with irony, larger-than-life characters and the intrigue of a 3-D chess match. It's a sharp critique of the military-industrial complex and geopolitics—with our normally nice neighbors to the north as the villains, to boot . . . a compelling, disquieting look at a future none of us ever wants to see.” —Hartford Courant
“Bear skillfully constructs the ingredients for an exciting, futuristic, high-tech book.” —Dallas Morning News
“Hammered is hard-boiled hard-hitting science fiction—but it has a very human heart. The reader will care what happens to these characters.” —Winston-Salem Journal
“Bear posits a violent, frightening future . . . Hammered is a hard-edged, intriguing look at a near-future Earth that paints technology in some quite unique ways.”—The Davis Enterprise
“With Jenny Casey, author Elizabeth Bear delivers a kick-butt fighter who could easily hold her own against Kristine Smith's Jani Killian or Elizabeth Moon's Heris Serrano. Jenny is deadly but likeable, someone readers can both relate to and root for. As she and her appealing cast of sidekicks skate close to the edge of disaster, the suspense of Hammered rises.” —SciFi.com
“Hammered is a tough, gritty novel sure to appeal to fans of Elizabeth Moon and David Weber. . . . In Jenny Casey, Bear has created an admirably Chandler-esque character, street-smart and battle-scarred, tough talking and quick on the trigger. . . . Bear shuttles effortlessly back and forth across time to weave her disparate cast of characters together in a tightly plotted page-turner. The noir universe she creates is as hard-edged as the people who inhabit it. The dialogue and descriptions are suitably spartan, but every one of her characters has their own recognizable voice. It takes no effort at all to imagine Hammered on the big screen.” —SFRevu
“Although a careless reader might be lulled by the presence of drugs, the hard-edged narration, and the rundown setting of the opening scene into thinking this novel is dystopian or even cyberpunk in nature, such expectations are quickly undercut by Bear . . . Every character in Hammered, even the villainous, have their own powerful motives for their actions; and conversely, the hands of the ‘good' characters are never entirely clean, and they make fearful moral bargains and compromises simply because they can't see any better way to do what they must. They all try to salvage what they can . . . [which] embodies the novel's central theme of how what we would choose to preserve and what we wish to discard are sometimes inextricable.”—Green Man Reviews
“It's rare to find a book with so many characters you genuinely care about. It's a roller coaster of a good thriller, too. There's plenty of intrigue and a few climactic gunfights and an intriguing love triangle involving Jenny and an old friend. Everyone involved seems to have genuine motives for all the things they do and aren't just pawns in the author's game . . . Elizabeth Bear has carved herself out a fantastic little world with this first novel. Long may it continue.” —SF Crow's Nest
“An enthralling roller-coaster ride through a dark and possible near future.” —Starlog
“Bear has done a bang-up job re-arranging a few squares of the here-and-now into a future that's guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of readers in the present. Sure, we all want heart-pounding suspense, and Bear offers that in spades. But she also provides the kind of pressurizing prescience that doesn't exactly see the future so much as it re-paints the most unpleasant parts of the present into a portrait of a world that knows and loathes itself all too well . . . Having set the readers' expectations on earthly matters such as bad drugs and rundown prostheses, she shows no hesitation to go a good deal beyond them. And the gritty underpinnings she establishes make her flights of fancy all the more believable.” —Agony Column
“The language is taut, the characters deep and the scenes positively crackle with energy. Not to mention that this is real science fiction, with rescues from crippled starships and exploration of mysterious alien artifacts and international diplomatic brinksmanship between spacefaring powers China and Canada. Yes, Canada!”—James Patrick Kelly, author of Strange but Not a Stranger and Think Like a Dinosaur
“Packed with a colorful panoply of characters, a memorable and likeable anti-heroine, and plenty of action and intrigue, Hammered is a superbly written novel that combines high tech, military-industrial politics, and complex morality. There is much to look forward to in new writer Elizabeth Bear.”—Karin Lowachee, Campbell Award–nominated author of Warchild
“Even in scenes where there is no violent action, or even much physical action at all, the thoughts and emotions of Ms. Bear's characters, as well as the dynamic tensions of their relationships, create an impression of feverish activity going on below the surface and liable to erupt into plain view at any moment. . . . The language is terse and vivid, punctuated by ironic asides whose casual brutality—sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking—speaks volumes about these people and their world. . . . This is a superior piece of work by a writer of enviable talents. I look forward to reading more!”—Paul Witcover, author of Waking Beauty
“Hammered is one helluva good novel! Elizabeth Bear writes tight and tough and tender about grittily real people caught up in a highly inventive story of a wild and wooly tomorrow that grabs the reader from the get-go and will not let go. Excitement, intrigue, intelligence—and a sense of wonder, too!Who could ask for anything more?”—James Stevens-Arce, author of Soulsaver,Best First Novel 2000 (Rocky Mountain News)
“In this promising debut novel, Elizabeth Bear deftly weaves thought-provoking ideas into an entertaining and tight narrative.”—Dena Landon, author of Shapeshifter's Quest
How much will it change mankind to assimilate a truly alien culture? How much will it alter our modes of being . . . and thinking?
Centuries hence, an ecoterrorist revolution has reduced the population of Earth to a few hundred thousand. Remnants of humanity survive under the control of artificial intelligences known as the Governors and under the constant threat of Assessment—or culling. A fascist Colonial Coalition rules the government, and their desperate goal is to prevent the extermination of the species—by any means necessary.
But before humanity was Assessed for its crimes against the planet, a few ships escaped. . . .
A century has passed, and old lovers Michelangelo Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen have been reunited for one last mission. Once the finest team of ambassador-spies old Earth possessed, they are now outcasts of their own society. But only their talents can unlock the secrets of New Amazonia.
Of the original colonies, New Amazonia alone possesses an alien technology that seems to provide a clean, environmentally sound source of power. It's the key to freeing humanity from the rule of the Governors—and Michelangelo and Vincent are dispatched to steal it, under the guise of a diplomatic mission. But what they uncover in that distant jungle may transform them—and their fragile culture—beyond recognition.
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