Weirdly, this is almost exactly the same novel, with a less fraught tension and it takes places in Mexico, and the Americans are less invasive, as Teeth of the Dog. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose. Here’s that review again, but some of the ideas are different. But almost the same: “This book has some blurbs on it that might speak to its influences, but not to its successes. We meet a couple [in Mexico], an island divided into three very different principalities. […]