[1] Raised as a clone of El Patrón, the ruler of the land of Opium, the 14-year-old Matt is not entirely ready to fill the shoes of his predecessor.

The daily struggles of ruling are made even more difficult by the desperation of the people living in the lands surrounding his own; an ecological disaster has ravaged them almost to the point of no return.

[2] As a result, she began work on the Trolls Trilogy, but soon found that she wanted to revisit the world of the previous novel in order to resolve problems that remained at the end of Scorpion.

[3] Critical reception of The Lord of Opium has been favorable, with starred reviews in Publishers' Weekly, which hailed it as a "superb novel ...well worth the wait," and Booklist, which described it as "a brilliantly realized world," and "a stellar sequel."

[4][5] Commonsensemedia gave The Lord of Opium four out of five stars, stating that the "Sci-fi sequel is gripping but can't top original.