It is Fight Club franchised. Gone national. Sick with all of our current ills and darkest, weirdest desires ... Chuck Palahniuk just wants to see how far he can push you before you get offended, throw the book down, walk away from it for good. He wants to see how thin of a tightrope he can walk between satire and slur, provocation and revulsion ... And I gotta tell you, watching him try it? It's fun. It's fun like watching NASCAR but only for the crashes ... He's masterful at making readers feel and understand the desperate, grasping needs of his underdogs, and maybe too good sometimes at making us cheer for them when they achieve their violent catharsis. And in Adjustment Day, he's at the top of his game. At least for most of the book.

Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, has added a unique but rather distasteful novel to the dystopian canon ... The narrative of the novel jumps from person to person and detailing how each person contributes, copes, or fights against the events of Adjustment Day and its aftermath. The result is a novel which is not told in chronological order and difficult to follow ... Palahniuk’s commentary is stifled by the lack of chronology, random scenes which appear to have no other purpose than to disgust the reader, and an abrupt ending that leaves many questions unanswered.

Palahniuk’s critique of masculinity works best when it manages to be homoerotic at the same time. Here there’s a sense of visceral romanticism to his writing, that he has some skin in the game ... But about 100 pages in there’s a plot twist ... Suddenly we’re caught up in a very long-winded satire on race and sexual identity. You can’t fault Palahniuk’s ambition in wanting to create a grand dystopia for his nation, but he spends too much time and effort on the detail of how these subdivisions come into being and how they function, all confusingly depicted by multiple narrative strands ... he clearly wants to shock. There are copious amount of sex and violence in Adjustment Day, presented in such a detached manner that the effect is more numbing than disturbing ... Part of the problem could be that he already feels he’s passed judgment on millennials ... What’s lacking in Adjustment Day is his heart.

One of our most visionary and fearless literary “equal opportunity offenders” is back with what is perhaps his darkest, most biting satire to date ... Palahniuk’s razor-sharp insights and boundless imagination are matched only by his ability to make even the most stomach-churning scenes somehow vividly entertaining.

Chuck Palahniuk takes the United States' divided politics to their extreme conclusion and proves along the way that his gift for social satire has only sharpened with time ... This pitch-black comedy achieves the aim of any great satirical work: it amuses, unsettles and leaves the reader slightly less sure of the boundaries of reality.

... a characteristically compelling, shocking, amusing, and insightful journey that, at times, also seems too disjointed, preachy, and inconsequential ... As expected, the plot is inherently provocative, imaginative, and multifaceted ... Another highpoint comes from its characters, as just about every one of them is distinctly fleshed out and convincing ... Palahniuk's usual knack for arresting detail and dialogue is in full force here, and while the novel is filled with idiosyncratic style in terms of conversations, inner thoughts, and scene setting, it's the desensitized violence of Adjustment Day that stuns most ... the gimmick of jumping from person-to-person in brief sections is, to an extent, quite clever and gripping; however, it simultaneously prevents some set-ups from landing because their placements are so fragmented and brief. In fact, it's commonly difficult to remember who's who and what's happened last with them, because the narrative is so jumbled ... may not be peak Palahniuk, but that's really more of a testament to the greats before it than it is a denouncement of the book itself ... does what all great satire should do: offer an exaggerated yet troublingly poignant reflection on the society that inspired it.

The over-the-top premise is classic Palahniuk, but he stumbles in its delivery, focusing more on the farcical aspects of these societies rather than on the characters living in them, resulting in a thin story.