I liked the first one better*, but this one was fine. It wasn't particularly amazing, and I wish I'd reread the first one before reading this, but it wasn't too hard to understand anything.
The plot was a bit disjointed. I thought at first that it was about Matt keeping control of his new empire, but then he starts the whole "free the eejits" campaign, and I felt that everything just spiraled further and further out of control and Matt never actually had to deal with his responsibilities until everything was suddenly magically okay again.
Matt...was just weird. I actually liked his actions- he's a silly idealistic child. But hearing El Patron's voice was unexplained, and keeping pretty girls as pets is just disgusting. And then he doesn't understand why his girlfriend is upset. No wonder he needs to turn everyone into zombies to keep control.
Speaking of his zombie slaves, I think Cienfuegos (I possibly just horribly misspelled that) was my favorite character in the book. He was just a really well done character, although I felt that he could have had a bit more screen time at the end. He was rushed off-stage in a way that made me unhappy with the way his story arc ended.
Listen was also good (although I felt the author went a little bit overboard in trying to clue us in whenever she was right and Matt was wrong; I didn't really need her help on that one. I know full well that Matt's an idiot when it comes to kids). I don't really like Maria, and that didn't change this book. The nun was great. Celia wasn't really an important part of this book. Minor characters were basically minor characters. I felt bad for Marisol and I thought Matt was incredibly creepy toward her (I know he was trying to help, but he took advantage of her, and those kisses were certainly not with her consent).
The drug empire thing has just gotten silly. I don't remember it being silly in the first book, but in this one the whole thing struck me as kind of ridiculous. Maybe it was the list of all the empires that did it. And the biosphere was, um... interesting. I have the feeling there's a failed SF novel in there.
*The House of the Scorpion. I remember it as being really good.
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So, despite my earlier post, I do seem to be updating fairly regularly. No new information about the Hu (well, I suspect he's dead, but we've been there before). I still haven't seen him. I do seem to be reading despite worrying about him. Maybe it's because I'm not getting so much sleep.
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