The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

Reviewed by Zoey H.
Grade 8

Mateo Alacran (Matt) is just your typical fourteen-year-old boy, growing up in a land called Opium (once present day Mexico). He plays piano and enjoys school. There’s just one thing that sets him apart from the other children. Matt Alacran is a clone.

Matt Alacran is a clone of the powerful drug lord of the land, El Patron. El Patron rules the land of Opium. Matt was harvested in a lab and sent as an infant to live with the kitchen maid of the Big House, Celia. Six years later children of high officials in the Big House, Amelia, Steven and Maria, stumble upon Matt’s home. Matt is curious to see other kids and follows them. But once realizing Matt is a clone, the children treat him like an animal and lock him up. Matt lives in a sawdust-filled room for six months till Celia finds him again. When El Patron learns about Matt’s condition, he becomes outraged. The rule around the Big House is NO ONE ticks off El Patron. With Matt’s standard of living increased he now begins to live a fairly normal life. But one burning question in Matt still remains. Why does the all-powerful El Patron need Matt so desperately?

The setting of the book is very interesting. In the land of Opium the workers of the fields and Big House are very different from normal people. They are called eejits. The eejits are almost like mindless zombies who do a certain job for the rest of their lives. They can’t stop working until someone tells them to stop. Imagine doing the same boring job for the rest of your life without any breaks over and over again.

The House of the Scorpion is a very interesting book. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes science fiction or fantasy. It was extremely interesting to enter a world so different from what we know today! I couldn’t put it down!