Noelle Gubler

“The House of the Scorpion”

Nancy Farmer

Fiction/ Fantasy

 

“The House of the Scorpion”, by Nancy Farmer is an action- packet novel, which is about a boy clone called Matt, who struggles to understand his existence. Not being human, he grows up in a little house in the poppy fields, having Celia, a young woman as his caretaker. But as a change occurred, Matt got to know that he’s the clone of El Patron, a drug lord and the most powerful man in Optium. This isn’t the only major event that took place, since Matt goes on a long journey to find freedom, in a faren land called Aztlan. In Aztlan, he gets to know boys his age, who treat him like one of them. But after an escape with two of his new friends, he meets the girl he grew up with again.

I enjoyed this book. It was well written, in sense of balancing the action and the tragedy. The action parts were very catchy, and made me continue reading. Personally, I don’t like reading, which made it difficult to go over some of the tragedy and the landscape description parts. When an action scene occurred, it mostly turned into a dramatic scene, which took away some of its affection. Overall, I would say I liked the book, but I would’ve appreciated the action parts being a bid deeper.

I recommend this book to people who like action and tragedy. It is a fictional story, which was told in a very realistic way. If you skim through books, you shouldn’t do it with this one, because you’ll most likely get confused with the characters. Reading it at a normal pace, will prevent you from confusions, and will keep you hooked.