Hammered
Elizabeth Bear
Bantam, Jan 2005, $6.99, 324 pages, ISBN: 0553587501
reviewed by Harriet Klausner.

In 2062 Hartford, Connecticut, former Canadian soldier Jenny Casey is feeling the impact of several decades of military service as her reconstructed artificial body parts show their age with the technology wearing out. The last of the fully wired warriors still living, Jenny, though only one month shy of turning fifty, feels death stalks her. Physically hurting and mentally weary, Jenny hides on the means streets from her former employers, calling herself the Maker.

Razorface, carrying a HAMMERED teen, kicks at Jenny’s door at just past three in the morning. Hyperex, a special drug made exclusively for the American and Canadian armies, has made it to the streets. Kids are dying and though Jenny would prefer to remain in hiding, she reluctantly makes inquiries on the mean streets and on the Internet. This brings her to the attention of those who want her dead and others who want to lab rat her. She has no hope of learning the truth, but Jenny has lived for decades without hope. Soon the investigation turns deadlier and seemingly reaches the higher levels of her government.

This is a dark urban noir science fiction starring a fabulous anti-heroine who has no hopes, no dreams, and no future. The cast and the future Internet make readers believe that they are in the latter half of the twenty-first century. The exposing of the conspiracy is fun to follow although readers will have difficulty accepting how relatively easy Jenny obtains information since the highest levels of Canadian government is involved (who was on Cheney’s energy taskforce?). Still fans of deep character driven dark futuristic investigative tales along the lines of Philip K. Dick will want to be HAMMERED by Elizabeth Bear.