Booklog 17/2025: Elizabeth Bear: Hammered – Jenny Casey #1 - Audiobook

[jacey]

Narrated by Carolina Hoyos.

This is Elizabeth Bear's debut novel from 2004. It's 2062 and Jenny Casey, ex Canadian Special Forces,  ekes out a living at the dangerous end of Hartford Connecticut, her only friends a crimelord and a rogue cop. She's in constant pain from the artificial body parts she acquired after a heli-crash when she was twenty five. She's almost double that, now, and, despite being engineered for combat, her body is breaking down. She's hiding from the government in general and Colonel Vallance in particular, but he's tracking her to use her special skills for a new high-stakes project. The story moves from Hartford to Toronto and there are things afoot that Jenny hadn't ever dreamed of, but the people running the project have let her down before and Jenny daren't let herself trust them again - but there are a couple of people she might be able to trust, one, in particular, from her past. Carolina Hoyos's narration is decent, if not sparkling, but I was sorry to realise this book doesn't really resolve. I don't mind reading series books, but I like a reasonable resolution at the end of each book. This seems to just stop on the point of something interesting, and there are unanswered questions about characters left behind that i feel should have been addressed here instead of (hopefully) in future books. Though I enjoyed this for what it is, I'm disappointed about the loose ends.