The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

From the Publisher
Fields of white opium poppies stretch away over the hills, and uniformed workers bend over the rows, harvesting the juice. This is the empire of Matteo Alacran, a feudal drug lord in the country of Opium, which lies between the United States and Aztlan, formerly Mexico. Field work, or any menial tasks, are done by "eejits," humans in whose brains computer chips have been installed to insure docility. Alacran, or El Patron, has lived 140 years with the help of transplants from a series of clones, a common practice among rich men in this world. The intelligence of clones is usually destroyed at birth, but Matt, the latest of Alacran's doubles, has been spared because he belongs to El Patron. He grows up in the family's mansion, alternately caged and despised as an animal and pampered and educated as El Patron's favorite. Gradually he realizes the fate that is in store for him, and with the help of Tam Lin, his bluff and kind Scottish bodyguard, he escapes to Aztlan. There he and other "lost children" are trapped in a more subtle kind of slavery before Matt can return to Opium to take his rightful place and transform his country.

My Opinion
What an excellent book. This should be a must read for all high school students as it tackles some very interesting and scary ethics questions that our society could be facing one day soon.

We meet Matt who lives in a small house on the outskirts of Poppy fields owned by the biggest drug lord around. We soon discover that this story takes place about 100 years in our future and that Matt is a clone. In a world where medical breakthroughs have allowed people to live into their hundreds with the harvesting of clones for spare body parts, we meet one of these 'creatures'. Matt is a special case though as he is the clone of the richest and most powerful man in the world and thus was saved from a procedure that all other clones have done to them, when they are 'harvested'. Their brains are destroyed so that they have no intelligence. But Matt is raised like most other children by a servant who treats him like her own son.

Matt does not know that he is a clone until one day when he is 6 years old and some children wander up to the little shack where Matt has been hidden away and raised. It is with interaction with these children that Matt soon learns what he is. We then follow Matt through the next 8 years of his life as he faces many difficult times and tries to come to terms with his own existence. With the love of the woman who has raised him, a bodyguard given to him by the man that had him created him, and one of the young girls that first saw him in that shack, Matt grows to be a very intelligent and talented young man.

The book touches upon some very real and scary subjects such as cloning, longevity through the use of clones, slavery, and abuse. It even touches on some problems that we face in the world now days, like illegal immigrants.

It is quite a scary picture of what our world could one day face as a reality, but it is also the story of love and how it can triumph over evil.

I totally enjoyed this book and recommend it to all!