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