House of the Scorpion: Final Review

The House of the Scorpion was a very eye-opening book, and I think that it explained that we still are discriminating people, and if we don't put a stop to it, then it will continue into the future. We should learn to put aside our differences and figure out a way to bring peace to our collapsing world. The House of the Scorpion was a book about a young clone named Matteo (Matt) Alacran who is raised by a drug lord, and struggles to be treated equally among others. The story is set in a little strip of land named Opium, a drug country that borders the US and Mexico. The country is controlled by a powerful drug lord, it acts as border control for the two countries and in return is allowed to produce and distribute drugs all over the world, except to the US and Mexico. Matt the clone of El Patron (powerful drug lord) is discriminated, looked down upon and treated like an animal. Matt strives for excellence, academically so that he prove that he is just as intelligent as any other human being. I think that the book was very well written, and I really enjoyed it. The book U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and was named a Newbery Honour Book. It has received many other honours. This book I think really was aimed toward the young adult audience, and I think that it did a really good job at empowering them and helping them understand the issues in today's world. This book is a science fiction book and is set in the future, and so you might also like to read, City of Ember or the Giver if you have not read them already. Overall, a very interesting and fun book to read. I would give this book a rating of 4/5.

House of the Scorpion: Yay, or Nay?

I honestly wasn't interested in reading HOS, but after I got into it, it was pretty good. I think that the worst part of the book was the ending. One of the biggest pet peeves of mine is a book or movie that ends really badly. It seemed like Farmer was in a hurry and rushed the ending. The beginning of the book was also a bit slow. Once you got into the middle of the book, it was quite drawing and made you want to read more. If I could improve this book I would put more action into it. Throughout the book it is more quite and there is no real conflict, making it somewhat boring at times. Other than the lack of action, and the odd boring spot. I think that the book was well written with a strong story line, and I would recommend this book to many of my friends!

[CLEVER TITLE FOR REVIEW OF BOOK]

This is a book about a boy, Matteo Alacrán, who finds out he is the clone of the real Matteo Alacrán, and learns that he has an entire family; or at least he is a clone of someone who does. This happens only after he escapes his cabin, where he lived the first at least 7 years of his life, for the first time ever, but he also finds that clones are loathed by everyone and not thought of as human, or as having a soul. María was the only one who ever really appreciated him for who he was. This book was written well: everything was described well without wasting space on the pages. The plot of this story was good and had a lot of twists, but it could have still been improved in some ways, for example Farmer could have gone into more detail about what happens at the end, and even though her ending worked OK, it would have been better to actually include some of his adult life. Another thing in this book that bothered me was how many characters there were that were not explained enough except for a sentence about them before the first chapter. This made the entire book very confusing and I found myself looking back to the page of characters constantly to find who Farmer was talking about. The problem was not having the character page there, it was the fact that the character page actually needed to be there to understand the story. This story was not a very fast paced one, as most of the time Matt was in the Big House either learning to play the piano or studying hard to prove to everyone that a clone is just as capable of doing anything as everyone else. The story's pace seemed to speed up nearing the end of the novel, although still not quite as fast as action and adventure novels. Overall this was a pretty good book and was written OK, but it was not the type of book I would usually read, so I would give it a 7/10 if I had to rate this novel.