Hammajang Luck

Yamamoto draws on their Hawaiian background while giving Ocean’s 8 a space opera twist in their entertaining debut. After a heist gone wrong, Angel Huang took a deal and sold out her partner in crime, Edie Morikawa, resulting in an eight-year stint at the Kepler System Penitentiary for Edie, and a job as chief of security to multitrillionaire Joyce Atlas for Angel. Now out on parole, Edie wants nothing to do with Angel, but Angel needs Edie’s skills as a runner and their knowledge of Kepler Space Station’s catacombs to pull off her biggest heist ever: stealing Atlas’s top secret tech prototypes from his vault and holding them for a one trillion credit ransom. Edie’s share of the money could mean life or death for their niece, Paige, who has cancer, and so they reluctantly agree to one last job. Yamamoto keeps the fun plot moving while hitting all the expected heist story beats, complete with a crew of ragtag misfits, each with a special skill. They handle a diverse cast of races, genders, and sexualities with remarkable sensitivity, especially Edie and crew member Cy, who both identify as “not women, but not men either.... Dad called us Māhū—in the middle.” This is a blast. Agent: Keir Alekseii, Azantian Literary. (Jan.)