This may well be the strangest book I've read all year. I had not heard much about this title in the two years since it was released, which I suppose could be linked to the fact that this book was not marketed as an sf book. Reading the blurb on the back of the book it's described as a "satire on globalisation and marketing", although the word "future" does feature to give anyone browsing the shelves a clue.

Thankfully this word seems to have encouraged the staff of Ottakars to place this with the sf books. And that's how I cam to read this. I was searching through the shelves more to pass the time than to make a purchase when I saw this but the description hooked me in, and I had to have it. Before I had left the shopping mall I had read the first few chapters and was completely hooked.

In this satirical future corporations have taken over the world. Everything is privatised, the Government's massively downsized and so the companies have near to a free reign as regards their activities. People are much more (and less) than just employees as today, in this world people are almost branded, taking their employer's name as their own surname sending their children to branded schools.

In this world Hack Nike encounters John Nike, VP for Guerilla Marketing who offers him a job. John has formulated a highly innovative, not to mention slightly illegal, marketing campaign. Hack Nike now has to find ten teenagers wearing the latest, and highly scarce, Nike trainers and kill them. The publicity and dangerous notoriety of the trainers he feel will create a massive demand for them.

So Hack does the only thing he feels he can do and goes to the police to explain everything to them. They listen attentively and then offer to subcontract the killings from him. Told you this was weird.

Oh, and the Jennifer Government of the title is a government agent with a grievance against John Nike who is determined to take him down.

Everything you know about this world has been taken to its extreme in this book, and it is quite an amazing read. It is unlikely just about anything else I've read ever. All the elements within the pages are self-consistent, given the amazing twisted logic of this world. The reactions of the characters feel right in their world.

So if you are looking for something more than another "launch torpedo one", "fire forward laser cannons" then this is a book you should read.