The alter-ego of Junk's dystopia is a struggling satire characterized by unfortunately one-dimensional humor. The reader is subjected to a relentless assault of puns and wordplays that transform the titles and acronyms of current institutions and products into new incarnations with food-related names. The National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws becomes the National Organization for the Reform of Muffin Laws; the Burning Man Festival becomes Burning Ginger-Bread Man; High Times becomes Pie Times. A few of these might have been cute, even mildly effective. But in Junk, the bombardment is never-ending. The puns quickly become tiresome and then irritating. Their presence even spoils the gravity of what should be the serious or beautiful moments of the plot. What is especially damning about these particular instances is that it is during these moments of gravitas when satire drives home its point, when it drops the clowning and implies that there are serious elements to the jokes as well: the parallels to our own world.
Worse yet, the jokes are frequently sophomoric. Whereas the most prim reader would probably enjoy a couple or even several blue lines, even the least prim reader would find him- or herself quickly exasperated with the ridiculous stream of them in Junk. Similarly, many of the jokes are drug-themed, easter eggs for the drug-using segment of the novel's audience. Those who aren't "in" will simply be perplexed; those who are will probably find them as repetitive as the other jokes. Really, they're a chink in the novel's armor, because they're an excuse for those who oppose drugs to write Junk off as the musings of someone too invested in the illegal side of the drug war, and it is precisely these people on the legal side that Junk needs to reach in order to affect the change it proposes.
At the end of the day, the ceaseless stream of pun-tastic brand names, criminal charges, surnames and et cetera strangle the narrative. I don't mean to imply that humor has no place in literature or satire, they surely do. But they have to be used judiciously and executed near-flawlessly. Much more than serious writing and self-serious writing, humor must be masterful or it falls flat, there is no middle ground.

As I implied above, the characterization in Junk is generally formulaic and often simplistic. Still, while the protagonists are either archetypes or caricatures, depending on how sympathetic the reader is, the dark corners of their personalities are illuminated gradually, giving some illusion of development. One suspects they are intended to walk a fine line here: sometimes sacrificing themselves to the satire and sometimes being fully-actualized individuals. This is a dangerous tightrope, since sympathetic characterization is an important part of successfully conveying themes in most novels. While it may have been intentional, the flattening of the characters damages the story in ways that are difficult to reconcile. By over-simplifying the characters and occasionally making them into buffoons for the sake of a cheap laugh, Junk relinquishes some of the weight their moral epiphanies would otherwise carry as they come to realize the true implications of the war on junk in which they are embroiled.

In terms of narrative, Junk is egregiously jumbled and rusty. The general plot of the novel is basically cohesive and well-paced, but on a page-by-page and line-by-line level the physical movements of the characters and the progress of their dialogue are often contradictory or confusing. To start with, there is no consistent mechanism for the passage of time, and minutes, days, or months could all just as likely pass between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. Exposition, setting, and character description are uniformly attributed to characters' thoughts (A bad guy in a fake beard doesn't look like Santa Claus, Officer Bailey "thinks" he looks like Santa Claus). This has a two-fold effect on the novel. First, it casts doubt on all the descriptions by amplifying their subjectivity. The second effect is that it ruins the diction of the novel by locking it into a repetitive subject-verb-object sentence structure and necessitating the irritatingly frequent use of "thought" and "seemed".

And then there are the political implications of Junk. The point of the novel's satire, that the war on drugs is flawed and misguided, is fairly well laid out by the end of the first chapter, which prepares the concept for digestion throughout the rest of the book. The following pages develop the idea in more depth, working out different angles and perspectives of the various protagonists. The development of this aspect of Junk is the most skilled. However, the idea itself is far from revolutionary. Junk suffers from a premise that is fairly light, which it carries as if it were fairly heavy.

Junk, rather than being a complex idea developed in complex ways, is a simple idea developed at great length, in often repetitive ways. Probably, it is better suited to the screen, where its onslaught of puns could be worked into a background pastiche of sight gags that would be there for the interested fan, but easily ignored by the casual observer. Probably, in that context, the myriad instantiations of what is essentially a single joke could come across as a clever and inventive background atmosphere, full of hidden treats for dedicated repeat-viewers. But that style isn't suited to literature, in which a reader's attention cannot casually be drawn to anything, in which everything is significant, takes time, and is the center of attention during the seconds it takes to read the words that describe it.

Junk hinges on one single idea: current American drug policy doesn't make sense. And it uses one single device to illustrate this: showing how absurd that policy would be if applied to other substances (in this case junk food). The idea is only marginally novel, the device only marginally compelling in its actualization. Ultimately, the book struggles because of the exasperating redundancy of seeing this theme and this device re-hashed over and over ad nauseum. It is mundane, tiresome; it crows about its cleverness, but doesn't come across as terrible clever. It is developed formulaically, and with only superficial respect for the nuances of the dramatic formula.
And all of this is kind of perplexing, because the author comes across as meditative, erudite and capable (actually, there is a passage of a couple pages length near the end that is positively good). One wonders why he struggles so much on this venture. Junk could be a passable satire with some severe and realistic editing. The elements are there, but they need real work on craft and development. In the end, Junk is saddled with some major shortcomings, and the reader is saddled with some major responsibilities, some they may not be willing to take on.