Series: Matteo Alacran #1
Author: Nancy Farmer
Genre: Dystopian, Sci-Fi
Publication date: 2002
Book description (from book cover): With undertones of vampires, Frankenstein, dragons' hoards, and killing fields, Matt's story turns out to be an inspiring tale of friendship, survival, hope, and transcendence. A must-read for teenage fantasy fans.
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. A room full of chicken litter with roaches for friends and old chicken bones for toys is considered good enough for him. But for El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium—a strip of poppy fields 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.
Review:
The target audience is teens, but it can be enjoyed by adults as well. It's exciting and it grasps your attention since the start. It does provide a very good conversation starter into our society and what our medical and technological advances could look in the near future.
It starts with Matt, a 12 year old boy who has lived all his life with Celia, a nice woman who insists that she is not his mother. But he is not allowed to leave their cabin and has never seen any other people. He spends his time listening to Celia and her old fashioned ghost stories like the chupacabra, and the like.
By chance, a group of children come across the cabin and discover the boy living there. They manage to start a conversation with him and the story takes off. They take him towards the big house where Matt comes across the other adult figures for the first time. There is where discovers that he's different. People are scandelized when he is taken inside the house to be treated, as he got hurt while escaping the cabin he had spent his whole life in.
In Opium, clones have one purpose, to extend the lives of those whose DNA they possess by providing them with a source for spare parts. The brains of most other clones are destroyed at birth, but Matt’s is left intact on the orders of El Patron. El Patron, is a dictator, his decisions are law, and everyone walks over themselves to try to look goo in his eyes.
Matt is educated and lives in luxury, but is looked on with disgust by most of the estate’s inhabitants. The exceptions are Celia, El Patron’s bodyguard Tam Lin, and Maria, one of the children who discovered him. These three people see the humanity in him and teach him to be a good person. But the world he lives is is still very limited, as a close, he has ero rights and the information he receives is limited. He continues to believe that El Patron is a good man who has been force to take harsh decisions and therefore the fear was planted in everyone's heart. Matt, sweet summer child, believes that he is loved by El Patron, especially because the man is making the 'humans' who see him as nothing more than scum to grovel at his feet to follow his wimps; of course after people always being surrounded by people who mistreat him a man being kind would be seen as a hero.
The reader’s interest is sustained by discovering along with Matt and from his point of view, the workings Opium, his purpose in life, and his ultimate fate. The information is limited as we only know what Matt is aware of, even if you can guess where the story is leading. Matt refuses to see the truth of his creation, everyone around him knows it and in a way surely he suspects it, he goes out of his way to try to convince himself that he will grow up and ule the Opium Empire, we all know that was never going to happen.
With the help of Celia and Tam Lin, he escapes to Aztlan where he is no longer treated as subhuman (no one knows he is a clone), but is captured and forced to labor with other orphans under the control of guards called “keepers” who relentlessly practice behavioral control methods to keep the young workers at the plankton factory in line.
This is a coming of age story with a twist. It is scary to think about but we are not too far off; Clonning is possible. Heck, fabricating babies is possible, engineering it to the parents design, as long as you are willing to invest a good amount of money to it. The world is not indictadorships, yet but some countries are already taking that step- the people, economy and government are heavily influenced by those with the most acquisitive ability.
This was used for the challenges:
Rereads
Continue/finish series. I want to read the second book in the duology so I needed a refresher on the story. Now I'm very eager to pick up the next one.
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