The Lord of Opium

The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer, 411 pages

In this sequel to The House of the Scorpion, Matt returns to Opium after the death of El Patrón and all his family. As the last living copy of El Patrón, Matt is now legally human and, more importantly, recognized as El Patrón himself. With opium shipments piling up and a rival drug lord at his door, what is a fourteen-year-old boy in charge of a drug empire to do? Matt wants to do the right thing by fixing the eejits, those who tried to cross Opium to go to either the US or Aztlán and were instead captured and turned into mindless slaves, and pulling up the opium to plant real crops, but those around him, like Cienfuegos, the head of the Farm Patrol, are determined to turn him into El Patrón Junior. So Matt sets about learning about his kingdom, including the hospital in the mountains where he and other drug lord clones were grown, the biome where all the habitats of the world have been preserved, and the observatory linked to the Scorpion Star, El Patrón's space station. As he digs deeper into the life he has inherited, he learns more and more about the lengths El Patrón went to build and protect his kingdom. Can he figure out how to do the right thing while keeping the power El Patrón left him? Or will he turn into El Patrón, living out his ninth life as the old man would have wanted?

Like The House of the Scorpion, I enjoyed this one, but I probably would have enjoyed it more had it come out more quickly after the first one. There is a focus on the ethics of altering people without their consent, and Nancy Farmer allows the reader to wrestle with that issue along with Matt without presenting one right answer. She has also managed to create a world that's just futuristic enough that it feels like it could still be our own. The ending is open enough for another sequel, but it's also satisfying in case she doesn't. This is a good one if you enjoy your YA dystopias free of love triangles or romance in general and with less of an emphasis on chosen-one-saves-the-world narratives.

The House of the Scorpion

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, 380 pages

Matteo Alacrán wasn't born, but cloned. The copy of the notorious drug lord who rules the land of Opium, a strip of land that exists between the United States and Mexico (now called Aztlán), The House of the Scorpion chronicles Matt's life, from his isolated existence at the edge of the poppy fields with Celia, to the years spent alone in a cell under the cruel Rosa, to his life in the big house as the treasured guest of the real Matteo Alacrán (known as El Patrón). Tutored and pampered, Matt believes that he's destined for something more, but he quickly learns the real reason why El Patrón needs him. A dystopia written for young people before dystopia was the hot thing, The House of the Scorpion is written more in the vein of 1984 or The Giver than any of the more popular dystopias since. Nancy Farmer provides a critical look at the ethical issues surrounding cloning, as well as issues like the drug trade and slavery through the scope of Matt's life, making a compelling case for nurture over nature in the raising of a child. I first read this way back when it first came out, and I remember it blowing my young mind, but the second time around, not so much. It's still a fantastic story, so if you like your dystopias more sci fi based, you'll like this one.