Max Barry's JENNIFER GOVERNMENT

Reading like an updated Snow Crash from the point of view from the point of view of characters who actually live in our future instead of one with made-up names for corporations (and minus all the pseudo-Sumerian hive mind stuff), Max Barry's Jennifer Government is a good old-fashioned page-turner dressed up in an ultramodern (well, circa 2003, but its satire hits as hard now as it did then) "suit so cheap that it shines."

Our title character, Jennifer, wasn't always Jennifer Government. Once she was Jennifer Maher, when she worked for a marketing firm called Maher, because in this version of Next Sunday, AD, instead of corporations buying naming rights to years, they instead bestow their names on their employees in lieu of surnames. This extends even to little kids, who take on the name of the school they attend, which school is itself named for the corporation that owns and operates it; hence a character we meet even before we meet Jennifer is a school girl who rejoices in the name of Hayley McDonald's. Because of course she does. And Jennifer's own daughter (she is a single mom in addition to being a stupendous badass with a gun or judo moves) is Kate Mattel, because she goes to a Mattel school. They're really good schools, you guys. Just ask all the Barbie dolls. Which, we later learn, is one of Jennifer's nicknames, but that's not important right now.

If you can't guess already, I really kind of love Jennifer Government, you guys. She's deadly with any number of weapons or her own killer gams or fists, and her catch phrase is an all-purpose conversation stopper that works as well on her offspring as on the bad guys protesting their innocence as she hauls them in: "And yet."

And yet.

Jennifer lives in a world in which the Neoliberal dream came true beyond its dreamers' wildest desires. The United States itself has become a sort of supercorporation, and has franchised out its (heavily revised) Constitution and power structures to huge swathes of territory around the world, including, most recently, Australia (author Max Barry's own home), where most of the action of this novel takes place. There is still a cold war of sorts, but it's between competing customer loyalty clubs. Etc.

As the story begins, a hapless boob named Hack Nike (tah-wang! Bullseye), an unhappy Marketing Operative for the sneaker and sportswear giant who owns his last name, blunders into a conversation between some high powered sociopaths on another floor of Nike's Australia headquarters, and the sociopaths offer him an on the spot promotion if he'll take on a very special assignment for them. They've got a dynamite campaign to capitalize on the success of the company's Cartmanesque strategy of not letting anyone buy their newest sneaker line, then only letting a very few buy it, driving demand to a fever pitch. The company has chosen to next announce that each of its Niketown stores around the USA (which, remember, includes lots more territory than just the original 50 states) is getting four pairs of the new shoes to sell, but they're actually shipping many more. The plan is to just fool their deranged fans into paying too much for sneakers they still think are totally exclusive, but the two Johns Nike whom Hack has met want to go this one better. Actually, many more better. And instead of "better" they really mean "worse." As in, they want Hack to stake out the Sydney mall where their local Niketown is and shoot up to ten customers or would-be customers outside of the store. As in with an actual gun. Because remember how once upon a time people were killing each other in "the ghettos" for coveted shoes? That was such good buzz, man. That drove everybody crazy. Let's do that, but more!

But Hack deserves his first name, and cocks it all up, partly out of queasiness, partly out of naivete, and the ensuing bloodbath draws the attention of the legendary Jennifer Government, who, for reasons we don't learn until much later in the novel, already had her barcode-tattooed eye on the Johns Nike and was ready to pounce.

Caught in the crossfire of the Niketown Incident is the aforementioned Haley McDonald's, who was there at the store hoping to make an investment in these shoes to sell later for much more than she paid, except none of the ATMs at the mall are willing to loan her the cash to do it (because of course ATMs in this world can also issue loans; since they have offered cash "advances" on credit cards for yoinks in the real world, it's really not that weird, if you think about it*). "Lucky" for her, a young stockbroker Buy Mitsui, who's been down on his luck until a friend tempted him into some insider trading that saved his bacon, witnessed her distress and decided, what the hell, he's kind of celebrating, and just gives her the money outright.

Not long after, Buy is desperately administering first aid to a bleeding out Haley and Jennifer Government is in a gun battle with mercenaries from the NRA in the background. Because of course the National Rifle Association has become a mercenary corps.

The whole novel goes at this blistering pace as we also meet the hapless-but-really-good-with-guns Billy, who kind of by accident becomes Billy NRA and is quickly mistaken for another guy named Bill NRA and gets swept up into a series of NRA operations in the wake of the Niketown Incident; Hack Nike's girlfriend Violet No Last Name until she becomes Violet ExxonMobil when the petroleum giant agrees to purchase her bespoke intrusion software for three million dollars that she has trouble collecting on; and even get a bit of goodness from the point of the view of one of the Johns Nike. The one whom Jennifer Government knew back in the day when both of them shared a last name.

For all that its milieu echos that of Snow Crash, what Jennifer Government wound up feeling the most like was a Bruce Sterling novel. Jennifer is an action hero par excellance but Kate keeps her grounded and gives her a vulnerability that makes her a more interesting and well-rounded character. By the time she and Buy Mitsui get around to getting to know each other, well, what you want to happen, happens, in much the way Greta and Oscar come together in Sterling's greatest novel, Distraction** but almost before the reader realizes what is taking place, she is off, gun in hand, to hunt her quarries in London and Los Angeles while the aforementioned Loyalty Club Cold War starts heating up. There are gun battles and chases and bizarre confrontations and the John Nike that is still standing delivers a seriously whackadoo speech in Parliament (yeah, that Parliament) that writes more checks than 75 asses could cash, let alone his.

Can Jennifer Government and her fellow operatives save the day? Will she get a chance to give John Nike a piece of her mind and/or put some holes in his hide? Will Corporate American finally once and for all achieve the entirely unregulated marketplace of its dreams? Gotta read to find out.

It's almost obscene how much fun this book is, you guys.

*Lots about this book are going to make you need a shower. Many showers.

**Which, why is that still not available as an ebook, man? It's so good! I've worn out my original mass market paperback of it even though my hands can't freaking handle paper books anymore.