Dan+W.

 The House of the Scorpionmedia type="custom" key="7999994" align="right" By:Nancy Farmer  Nancy Farmer does it again by creating an outstanding book titled The House of the Scorpion. The House of the Scorpion is a stunning book that grabs you in and never let’s go. The setting takes place in the United States of America, Aztlan, Opium and a plankton factory. The part of the U.S. the book takes place in is the southwest. Aztlan represents the same country as Mexico only with a different name and the plankton factory is a forced labor camp in Aztlan. Opium is a country on the boarder of the U.S. and Aztlan. The story takes place in a mountainous desert within Opium.

I really liked the author's writing style. It showed adventure with a semi-funny, semi-serious style. I also liked how she made me like some characters and dislike other characters. For example, Matteo Alcaran (main character/clone) I liked because I sort of felt bad for him and he stood up for what he wanted. This is the opposite with El Patron (drug dealer/leader of Opium/"Matteo's owner") who tries to live as long as he can by using clone's to do transplants. Some of the other characters in the book are: Celia, Maria, the Alacrans, Donald, Tam Lin, the eejits. Celia is Matteo's caretaker who always looked out for him, and a cook for El Patron. Maria is one of Matteo's few friends and is very moody. The Alacrans are relatives of El Patron and live in the same house as him. Donald is one of El Patron's bodyguards. Tam Lin is Matteo's bodyguard and friend. The eejits are zombie slaves programmed to do simple tasks.

The plot of The House of the Scorpion starts off rather confusing. The story begins at a house in the middle of a field where Celia has been taking care of Matteo. Then some of the Alacran children go for a walk and come upon the house. Matteo wants to be with them so badly he breaks through a window to go outside and play with them. Unfortunately he cuts his feet really bad and the Alacran children bring him back to their huge house to care for him. That leads to him being put in a solitary confinement cage due to him having “property of Alacran estate” tattooed on his foot meaning he's a clone. Eventually he gets out because El Patron heard about it and wanted all his clones to live at least a partial childhood. Quite a few years later, Matteo figures out El Patron is going to use him for some sort of transplant in the near future. That's when the games begin.

The House of the Scorpion is a book about two scientific topics: Cloning and DNA reading. El Patron wants to live an extremely long life so he decides to make doctors use his DNA to make eight clones. They make the clones by inserting the DNA into a pig embryo. He then let's each clone live out a small childhood before using them for transplants. When the last clone is trying to escape by using the secret passageways made by El Patron, he uses DNA reading. The secret passageways make you put your hand on a scorpion so it can see if the DNA you have is the same as El Patron’s. Of course nobody but El Patron and his clones would be able to use them then.

I would most definitely recommend this book. It was an interesting topic and was well written.

