The House Of The Scorpion:

Another Book Report by Raven Galel,

for a book by 

(really, remember Doctor Illuminatus?)

  I recently read a book called The House of The Scorpion, which is about a clone, named Matt, and his experience in the opium empire run by the original Matteo Alacrán. He grows up but faces countless perils due to the reaction he gets from the other humans, who think he is simply like a cow, or a dog.

The list of characters includes:

El Patrón (Matteo I)

Matteo Alacrán (The clone, Matteo II)

Rosa (A servant)

Cynthia (Matt’s caretaker)

The children: Tom, Maria, Steven

Tam Lin (A bodyguard)

Mr. Ortega (Matt’s teacher)

Matt’s friends: Chacho, Ton-Ton, Felipito.

Maria’s Mom

Senator Sanchez

And there are a lot of other secondary characters.

The Setting:

The Setting for The House of The Scorpion is quite interesting and has a large backstory. It is what was once northern Mexico and Texas, which, to stop the flow of immigration, were united into a country known as Opium. Opium controls most of the world’s drug industry and is about as powerful as the US is today.

The Story:

Matt was created from a skin cell taken from El Patrón. The fetus eventually was planted in a cow and was born. He grew up in a small house. One day a group of kids came and convinced him to come out of his hut. He broke the window (since the door was bolted) and got hurt. They brought him to ‘The big house’ and there he was helped, but when the house doctor realized he was a clone he threw him out. Then he was healed and thrown in a room with sawdust. He lived like and animal for 6 months, until one day El Patrón sent for him. Matt lived like a semi-normal kid until he was 10. He and Maria were best friends, but one day, while trying to get Maria to stay at the Big House, he fed her dog a poisoned hamburger, (which was poisoned by Tom so that Matt would die) and accidentally killed the dog. Maria left for 4 years. And when Matt was 14, El Patron ordered Matt’s heart for a transplant. Cynthia then unveiled her idea of putting light poisons in Matt’s blood, thus making Matt’s blood & heart useless for a transplant. El Patron dies and Matt escapes for Aztlán, the country where Maria lives and he is welcomed by a plankton factory where he lives in slavery for a few months before he escapes to Maria’s Mom’s home, a large hospital/church where Matt lives for a while before being given the mission to go to Opium and destroy the empire.

The House of the Scorpion is a VERY complicated and long book that plays with pretty interesting ideas. It’s so catching that I read 500 pages in only 3 days!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, and while I wait for the sequel, I am reading George R.R. Martin’s A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Hmm, wonder what that book’s report is going to be like…

Afterthought:

Hey guys! I know I haven't written in a really REALLY long time, and I'm sorry, also, I really have no excuse. I will be writing a blog post on Subnautica, eventually.

- Raven