O Brave New World...

The House of the Scorpion was quite good, though IMO not nearly as good as The Ear, the Eye and the Arm--repeated some of the latter's set pieces less successfully, too self-consciously set itself up for a sequel at the end and the protagonist took forever to catch on to a highly important plot point that was obvious to the reader from chapter one. All that said, it was still worth reading and I almost laughed out loud when one character said to another, in complete disbelief, "Narcotics used to be illegal?"