PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksOn the surface, Herrera writes about people along the border between Mexico and the United States (inspired, one can guess, by his time spent in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez), but his real subject is a border condition, a state of exile, an existence between two extremes — this side and the other side, narco and gringo, life and death … The book is written as a modern-day fable, self-conscious but restrained, mixing titular names with a studied attention to what Herrera calls the narco-aesthetic — opulent, insular, ultra-violent — drawing connections between ancient stories of royal courts and the kingpin sagas of our time … Kingdom Cons sometimes falters under the strain of the weight of its ambition...But the novel soars in places where legend and fine detail merge into something original and true.
