The Lord of Opium

by Nancy Farmer Narrated by Raul Esparza

Overview

In the riveting sequel to the acclaimed bestseller The House of the Scorpion, Matt reels from the change in status quo and struggles to do the right thing; find out his story's end in this new edition with a reimagined cover!

Matt Alacrán is a fourteen-year-old drug lord.

Until recently, Matt was just a clone grown from a strip of El Patrón's skin. Now he is lord of the land of Opium, on the one-time US-Mexico border, and rules over an army of microchipped, zombielike workers who are programmed to produce the drugs that are Opium's main export. El Patrón kept the air and water in Opium clean, but the rest of the world is a polluted wasteland.

Matt is sure that, in his new position, he can find a way to break the cycle of violence and destruction-but it will only be possible if he chooses the right people to trust.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

This highly anticipated sequel to Farmer’s National Book Award–winning The House of the Scorpion (2002) begins soon after the funeral of the drug lord El Patrón and the murder of nearly everyone who attended the event. Fourteen-year-old Matt, the dead drug lord’s clone, was originally created to provide spare parts for El Patrón, but is now the Lord of Opium. Surrounded by people who have been surgically conditioned to satisfy his every whim, many of them mindless and virtually helpless eejits, Matt must come to terms with the deep immorality upon which his wealth is based, while fending off another drug lord, the rapacious Glass Eye Dabengwa, and a fanatical U.N. representative, Esperanza Mendoza. Complicating matters further are Matt’s involvement with the beautiful eejit Waitress; his lifelong relationship with Mendoza’s strong-willed daughter María; and the machinations of the mad physician, Dr. Rivas, who created Matt. Once again, Farmer’s near-future world offers an electric blend of horrors and beauty. Lyrically written and filled with well-rounded, sometimes thorny characters, this superb novel is well worth the wait. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

* "Farmer’s near-future world offers an electric blend of horrors and beauty. Lyrically written and filled with well-rounded, sometimes thorny characters. . . . [a] superb novel." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

* "A stellar sequel worth the wait.” - Booklist, starred review

starred review Booklist

* "A stellar sequel worth the wait.

Booklist

* "Most young readers who loved The House of the Scorpion (2002) when it was first released are now adults, and today’s teen audience will need to read the first title in order to fully understand Farmer’s brilliantly realized world…. A stellar sequel worth the wait.

Booklist

* "Most young readers who loved The House of the Scorpion (2002) when it was first released are now adults, and today’s teen audience will need to read the first title in order to fully understand Farmer’s brilliantly realized world.... A stellar sequel worth the wait.

School Library Journal - Audio

02/01/2014
Gr 7 Up—This long-awaited sequel (2013) to The House of the Scorpion (2002, both S & S) begins with Matt becoming El Patrón and no longer a clone. With El Patrón's death and the death of all his relatives, Matt is the new Lord of Opium and his plan is to cure the eejits, the microchipped workers of Opium, and prevent a takeover of the country. He must learn to be a tough drug lord and deal with his new status as a person, not a dispensable clone. Dangers surround the boy, and he must learn who to trust in order to save the eejits and the lives of his friends. Matt must also struggle for his own soul as he assumes power. Addressing many ethical issues such as cloning, the drug trade, human rights, and ecological concerns, Farmer shines a light on issues facing our society today and provides a fascinating look at how people deal with these concerns in Opium. Raúl Esparza shows Matt's internal struggles and brings to life the emotions and personalities of all the characters. They are well created and complex, from the jefe Cienfuegos, who destroyed people's lives while wanting to save the environment, to Listen, who struggles with emotions, religion, and friendship when she only knows science, abandonment, and terror. Farmer's novel is a reminder to stay vigilant to the problems of the world and not become indifferent. This is a well-written work with an important message for teens.—Sarah Flood, Breckinridge County Public Library, Hardinsburg, KY

DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

Narrator Raúl Esparza performs this sequel to HOUSE OF THE SCORPION. He gives life to the story of Matt, a clone in an imagined near future. Here, Matt’s “original,” a powerful drug lord, has died, and the teenaged Matt has inherited his empire. Esparza moves fluidly between English and Spanish, as Matt does, and he creates distinct, appropriately accented voices for the multicultural cast of characters who help and oppose Matt as he tries to change his country from a slave economy based on the production of opium to one filled with free people producing crops and goods that sustain life. Ethical dilemmas, action, science, and even romance combine for riveting listening. A.F. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

In the much-anticipated sequel to The House of the Scorpion (2002), 14-year-old Matteo Alacrán returns home as the new Lord of Opium. Matt was a clone of El Patrón, drug lord of Opium, but with El Patrón dead, Matt is now considered by international law to be fully human and El Patrón's rightful heir. But it's a corrupt land, now part of a larger Dope Confederacy carved out of the southeastern United States and northern Mexico, ruled over by drug lords and worked by armies of Illegals turned into "eejits," or zombies. Matt wants to bring reform: cure the eejits, disband the evil Farm Patrol, uproot the opium, shut down the drug distribution network, plant new crops and, if that's not enough, heal the planet, since the outside world is in the midst of an ecological disaster. But how can an innocent 14-year-old do all of this and keep warring drug lords at bay? If this volume lacks the mystery and deft plotting of its predecessor (and sometimes feels like an extended epilogue to it), it has an imagined world that will keep readers marveling at the sheer weirdness of it all--the zombies and clones, drug lord Glass Eye Dabengwa, a ghost army, the Mushroom Master, biospheres and a space station. A vividly imagined tale of a future world full of fascinating characters and moral themes--a tremendous backdrop for one young man's search for identity. (cast of characters, map, chronology, appendix) (Science fiction. 12 & up)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170858408
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Oasis 1 THE OASIS
Matt woke in darkness to the sound of something moving past him. The air stirred slightly with the smell of warm, musky fur. The boy jumped to his feet, but the sleeping bag entangled him and he fell. His hands collided with sharp thorns. He flailed around for a rock, a knife, any sort of weapon.

Something huffed. The musky odor became stronger. Matt’s hand felt a metal bar, and for an instant he didn’t know what it was. Then he realized it was a flashlight and turned it on.

The beam illuminated a large, doglike face at the other end of the sleeping bag. The boy’s heart almost stopped. He remembered, long ago, a note Tam Lin had written him about the hazards of this place: Ratlesnakes heer. Saw bare under tree.

This was definitely a bare. Matt had only seen them on TV, where they did amusing tricks and begged for treats. The bear’s eyes glinted as it contemplated the treat holding the flashlight. Matt tried to remember what to do. Look bigger? Play dead? Run?

The flashlight! It was a special one used by the Farm Patrol. One button was for ordinary use, the other shone with ten times the brightness of the sun. Flashed into the eyes of an Illegal, it would blind the person for at least half an hour. Matt jammed his thumb on the second button, and the bear’s face turned perfectly white. The animal screamed. It hurled itself away, falling over bushes, moaning with terror, breaking branches as it fled.

Matt struggled to his feet. Where was he? Why was he alone? After a minute he remembered to switch the beam off to save the battery. Darkness enveloped him, and for a few minutes he was as blind as the bear. He sat down again, shivering. Gradually, the night settled back into a normal pattern, and he realized that he was at the oasis. He cradled the flashlight. Tam Lin had given it to him, to protect him from animals when he was camping. You don’t need a gun, lad, the bodyguard had said. You don’t want to kill a poor beastie that’s only walking through its backyard. You’re the one who’s trespassing. Matt could hear Tam Lin’s warm Scottish voice in his mind. The man loved animals and knew a lot about them, even though he’d been poorly educated.

Matt found the campfire he’d banked the night before and blew the coals into life. The flaring light made him feel better. In all the years of camping here, he’d never seen a bear, though there had been many raccoons, chipmunks, and coyotes. A skunk had once burrowed into Matt’s sleeping bag in the middle of the night to steal a candy bar. Tam Lin had burned the sleeping bag and scolded the boy for foolishness. Leave food about and you might as well put a sign on yourself saying “Eat me.” Matt had been scrubbed head to toe with tomato juice when they got back to the hacienda.

Matt heaped the fire with dry wood from the supply Tam Lin had always maintained. He could see the familiar outlines of an old cabin and a collapsed grapevine.

Tam Lin wasn’t with him. He would never come here again. He was lying in a tomb beneath the mountain with El Patrón and all of El Patrón’s family and friends, if you could say the old drug lord had friends. The funeral, three months before, had been attended by fifty bodyguards dressed in black suits, with guns hidden under their arms and strapped to their legs. The floor of the tomb had been covered with drifts of gold coins. The bodyguards had filled their pockets with gold, probably thinking their fortunes were made, but that was before they drank the poisoned wine. Now they would lie at their master’s feet for all eternity, to guard him at whatever fiestas were conducted by the dead. Matt drew the sleeping bag around himself, trembling with grief and nerves.

He would not sleep again. To distract himself, he looked for the constellations Tam Lin had shown him. It was early spring, and Orion the Hunter was still in the sky. Heed the stars of his belt, said Tam Lin. Where they set is true west. Remember that, lad. You never know when you’ll need it. They had been roasting hot dogs over a fire and drinking cider from a bottle Tam Lin had cooled by submerging it in the lake.

What a grand existence it must be, mused the bodyguard, turning his battered face to the sky, to roam the heavens like Orion with his faithful dogs at heel. The dogs, Sirius and Procyon, were two of the brightest stars in the summer sky. Pinning Orion’s tunic to his shoulder was ruby-red Betelgeuse. As fine a jewel as you’ll find anywhere, Tam Lin had declared.

Matt hoped Tam Lin was roaming now in whatever afterlife he inhabited. The dead in Aztlán came home once a year to celebrate the Day of the Dead with their relatives. They must be somewhere the rest of the time, Matt reasoned. Why shouldn’t they do what made them happiest on earth, and why shouldn’t Tam Lin?

Matt found Polaris, around which the other stars circled, and the Scorpion Star (but that was so easy even an eejit could do it). The Scorpion Star was always in the south and, like Polaris, never moved. Its real name was Alacrán. Matt was proud of this, for it was his name too. The Alacráns were so important, they could lay claim to an actual star.

Matt didn’t think he could fall asleep again, and so he was surprised when he woke up in the sleeping bag just before dawn. A breeze was stirring, and a pale rosy border outlined the eastern mountains. Gray-green juniper trees darkened valleys high up in the rocks, and the oasis was dull silver under a gray sky. A crow called, making Matt jump at the sudden noise.

After breakfast and a short, sharp swim in the lake, Matt hiked along the trail to the boulder that blocked the entrance to the valley. In this rock, if you looked at just the right angle, was a shadow that turned out to be a smooth, round opening like the hole in a donut. Beyond was a steep path covered with dry pebbles that slid beneath your feet. The air changed from the fresh breeze of the mountain to something slightly sweet, with a hint of corruption. The scent of opium poppies.

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