House Of The Scorpion book review Glenn

HOUSE OF THE SCORPION BOOK REVIEW

To start off you start this book with a sort of prolog were it talks about the people that clone it is interesting but I do not thing that it is needed because it never talks about  the characters in that chapter again.  After that you go through a kind of story that is filled with mystery, deception, death, betrayal and even a little romance.  The main characters are Matt, El Patròn, and Maria these are the most important characters in plot development.  In the book Matt is a clone of of El Patròn the leader of a massive country called Opium and guess what the main and mostly only businesses in that country is selling drugs who knew.  I do not want to go into to much depth because then that will make to many spoilers.

In my opinion this book is rather boring it has to much plot development which is good but when you have the massive amount that House of the Scorpion does it is hard to keep track of the many developments in the book.  The story is good but I think that they way the author (Nancy Farmer) set up the book she could have made the one book into 5 or more books.  The ending of the book is something that you can predict to an extent there are somethings that you can not predict and because of that I will not mention simply because I want to prevent spoilers.  There also seams to be only two or three main settings which for a book this big I find is really surprising.  Through out the whole book I kept on thinking about Dolly the sheep which is the first mammal to be cloned.  All in all this is a fairly good book and if you like the kind of book that is set in the not to distant future this if for you.  I give this book a 4/5.

Cole: House of the Scorpion Review

The house of the scorpion follows the storey of Matt, a clone of the powerful drug lord El Patron. The book covers matts journey from being treated like an animal to a pampered rich boy.  Still this is only a small bit of the book as the main plot deals with Matts slow increase of knowledge about El Patron and the eventual realization El Patron merely wants to use him for Organs.  Interestingly after Matt's escape form El Patron he is sent into an entirely new part of the book, one dealing with how he is dealt with after his escape from El patrons nation, Opium.  This new chapter progresses him through a plankton factory and being forced to work and to his escape from that facility, it is an almost opposite circumstance from the rest of the book, being pampered but waiting for your death or being forced to work but kept alive.

My opinions on the book are many, i really do feel like the setting was good however i felt it went widely unexplored.  The book talks of a new socialist mexico but only touches on this in the end.  Even in the end it is barely mentioned.  Along with this the book states people are going across the border from the US, but the situation in the US that is causing this is never fully explained, along with the way Niger suddenly became a rich country.  I left the book with a feeling that a brilliant setting was barely explored, and with that detracted much from the book.  However as a polar opposite the book excels in character development, but only in characters that the book deems necessary to develop, creating some holes that could have been easily filled.  Still when characters are developed they are developed gradually with a very clear and concise change.  This area of the book was OK but not amazing, another reason why i feel the book could have been better.  The storey was told well for most of the book but after Matts escape the writing style changes and it feels like an entirely new book.  This was such a drastic change that i felt it killed much of the quality attained by the book.  It took a good storey chopped the end of it off and then crudely glued it back on, leaving much to be desired.

All in all the book was OK but poor management and lack of development in some areas dragged the quality down, 6/10

Cole: Matt vs Vincent

Matt:

Matt is a rather interesting character in House of the Scorpion.  As the main protagonist he is clearly the most developed character.  Matt is a clone, separated from the rest of humanity by genetics, shunned by the religious and looked down upon as dirty by the rest.  Matt cannot hide what he is, so instead he has used it to his advantage, and eventually by being a clone Matt finds salvation through genetics and imperfect laws.  Matt is both gifted and disadvantaged by his genetics, Matt was bred for slaughter and often decimated against and hurt, but eventually the reason he was bred became invalid and his escape lead to him taking the place of the one he was meant to keep alive with his very organs.

Vincent:

Vincent is similar to Matt is some ways, Vincent is also discriminated upon for his genetics, but while Matt is created and modified and discriminated against because of that Vincent is discriminated against for being natural.  One could say its the comparison of a scientific world to a religious one, one where no babies are natural and those who are mean less to one where no babied are artificial and those who are will be discriminated against.  Vincent is running from his nature, a natural birth, Matt is also running from his, an artificial one.  Vincent however was never meant for slaughter and only discriminated against for being less than perfect while Matt was meant for slaughter and discriminated against for existing.  Vincent had to work to shed his own self and never fully would, while Matt merely had to outlive his creator.  Vincent had it better from the start but worse in the long run and Matt had it worse in the start and better in the long run.

This is my comparison.