Book Review: The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto

Official Synopsis: How do you follow the greatest crime of all time?

It's been three years since the Atlas heist. Malia, aka the Obake, the greatest hacker of all time, was set for life. But being set for life turns out to be pretty boring.

But when her new hobby of rigging underground fights lands her in trouble with one of the most dangerous gangs on Kepler Space Station, she's offered a deal: take down the corrupt politician interfering with the gang's business, or it's the end of the road for Malia.

Hastily assembling her own crew, it should be easy after the impossible heist of Atlas Industries. But this time the person she's working for is just as bad as the person she's taking down, and there are darker things lurking in the shadows.

Things tied to Malia's past. Things that could decide her future.

Following the events in Hammajang Luck, this story follows Malia, or Obake, as they find themselves in another high stakes situation that could end with them either arrested or killed. Malia needs to put together a team and get the plans from one of the most famous men in Keplar, and not get caught in the process. The problems start when they start to feel like someone is hacking them. They will randomly fall into moments they can't explain to the rest of the group, with someone talking to them like they know Malia, even more than she knows herself. When she starts to learn that these intrusions mean this other entity is spying on them, and ruining their chances of success, they now realize they have two enemies to fight.

Malia is definitely a different type of protagonist than Edie was in the other book. Malia is more locked in with technology and has a lot more mods and connections to the Ghostnet than Edie did. Malia also lacks some of the human connections that makes Edie make the choices they do within the book. Malia is mostly machine, or at least sees herself that way, so having her have to make those connections, or even find love, becomes a part of the story in this book. Malia is also, seemingly, fighting a version of herself in the story, with the program that is trying to take over based on experiments that happened to Malia when she was younger.

Similarly to Hammajang Luck, this story is an adult science fiction with connections to native Hawaiian culture and a lot of the slang. The story brings a fun connection between a future where humans aren't living on Earth and the culture of the island together. I also really liked the world in this story and the 1st book, though I am under the impression you don't need to read them in order, they do stand alone pretty well. Both are full of culture as well as queer characters in a world that is run by technology and the people that make it. I really liked how some of the story showed how culture from the 'old' world made its way through the technology and carried on. This book also has some slang terms and words I definitely had to look up, being a Midwestern kid with little to no knowledge of Native Hawaiian culture, but it doesn't remove you from the story any, at least for me. I liked seeing how the culture could be mixed into something so futuristic.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and the story that it told. It was definitely painted to have a bit more of a heist that turned into something more overall. I like that it is a ragtag group that comes together and how Malia seemed to evolve throughout the text.

I rated this book a 3.5 out of 5 stars!

The Obake Code comes out February 17, 2026!

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