Flashback Friday is a weekly event, hosted here, that highlights a past released that we're dying to get our hands on...
See something you like here?
Click the book title to add it to your Goodreads TBR List!
Title: The House of the Scorpion
Author: Nancy Farmer
Release Date: February 22nd, 2011
At his coming-of-age party, Matteo Alacrán asks El Patrón's bodyguard, "How old am I? ... I know I don't have a birthday like humans, but I was born."
"You were harvested," Tam Lin reminds him. "You were grown in that poor cow for nine months and then you were cut out of her."
To most people around him, Matt is not a boy, but a beast. But for El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium--a strip of poppy field lying between the U.S. and what was once called Mexico--Matt is a guarantee of eternal life. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, for Matt is himself. They share identical DNA.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister, grasping cast of characters, including El Patrón's power-hungry family. He is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards and by the mindless slaves of Opium, brain-deadened 'eejits' who toil in the poppy fields.
Escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect. Around every turn in this vivid, futuristic adventure is a new, heart-stopping surprise.
"You were harvested," Tam Lin reminds him. "You were grown in that poor cow for nine months and then you were cut out of her."
To most people around him, Matt is not a boy, but a beast. But for El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium--a strip of poppy field lying between the U.S. and what was once called Mexico--Matt is a guarantee of eternal life. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, for Matt is himself. They share identical DNA.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister, grasping cast of characters, including El Patrón's power-hungry family. He is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards and by the mindless slaves of Opium, brain-deadened 'eejits' who toil in the poppy fields.
Escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect. Around every turn in this vivid, futuristic adventure is a new, heart-stopping surprise.
My Stance:
This sounds like an unique book to add to my ever growing collection of books, but I feel it needs to be there. First a book where cloning is part of reality, and being told the tale through the clone. I enjoy the idea, I mean it gives you perspective that because we can grow a clone doesn't mean it'd be right to kill them and use them for personal gain or to prolong your life. The clone is human, no matter which way you want to look at it.
This is a great fresh look at what it would be like, to be thought of as a product and not a person. For Matt that's a daily thing, and I get the feeling he doesn't quite see it that he's thought of as someone else's property and not a person. Even the people around the community believes he's less than human, and he struggles with that reality, and to make it worst is the family he is "bred" into is extremely power-hungry.
Okay I understand that I haven't been great with telling my stance on this book off the bat, but frankly, it's won three great awards and the synopsis tells the story and the introduction better than I could do. The only stance that I am curious on, is there someone he CAN trust? There is so much going against him, that there would be a good relief to see something that helps and benefits him. And I'm not just talking about getting off the estate.
This is a great fresh look at what it would be like, to be thought of as a product and not a person. For Matt that's a daily thing, and I get the feeling he doesn't quite see it that he's thought of as someone else's property and not a person. Even the people around the community believes he's less than human, and he struggles with that reality, and to make it worst is the family he is "bred" into is extremely power-hungry.
Okay I understand that I haven't been great with telling my stance on this book off the bat, but frankly, it's won three great awards and the synopsis tells the story and the introduction better than I could do. The only stance that I am curious on, is there someone he CAN trust? There is so much going against him, that there would be a good relief to see something that helps and benefits him. And I'm not just talking about getting off the estate.
