Imagine, if you can, a world run purely to satisfy the interests of commercial conglomerates, where people are slaves to corporations and their identities are subsumed by the companies they work for.
In this nightmare world of rampant deregulation, we meet Hack Nike, a low-level wage drone working for the overpriced shoe conglomerate whose name he bears. After a chance encounter with two senior marketing execs (both called, confusingly enough, John Nike), Hack finds himself involved in a brilliant new marketing strategy cooked up by the two execs: manufacture interest in their latest shoe by murdering people while they’re queuing to buy the trainers. All they need is a fall guy to carry out the plan.
Needless to say, it doesn’t go smoothly, and Hack finds himself looking at multiple homicide charges. But he’s not alone. Jennifer Government has history with one of the Johns, and she’s determined to bring him to justice.
Okay, this book was right up my street. It was well-written, engaging, and even provided the occasional belly laugh, once you get through the general unpleasant nature of the main antagonists. Max Barry, once again, delivers — in spades. And I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t committed the cardinal sin of the avid reader: reading two books by the same author, back to back. However, that’s on me.
The other problem was timing: if I’d read this five or six years ago, I would have been suitably astonished by the sheer disregard for the lives of their staff or the public that the featured conglomerates seemed to have.
Now, it sort of felt like a reading the CEO’s end of year report. Which I guess just shows how bad things have gotten.
Still, it’s an excellent book, though perhaps a little dated, which, as I said, is more about the upside-down we’re currently living in, rather than the quality of the book.