The Lord of Opium (Matteo Alacran #2)
Author: Nancy Farmer
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date: September 2013
Format: HC
Summary
The new book continues the story of Matt, the boy who was cloned from evil drug lord El Patrón in The House of the Scorpion. Now 14 years old, Matt rules his own country, the Land of Opium, the only thriving place in a world ravaged by ecological disaster. Though he knows that the cure for ending the suffering is hidden in Opium, Matt faces obstacles and enemies at every turn when he tries to use his power to help.
Review
Following El Patrón’s death, fourteen-year-old Matt is now the ruler of Opium. With Opium’s borders shut down and isolating the country from the rest of the world, Matt sets about righting El Patrón’s wrongs. Having previously been a clone, Matt knows what it feels like to not be human, and his first mission is to free the eejits, brainwashed workers who behave and are treated like machines. Matt enlists the help of Dr. Rivas, the one doctor left in Opium who was not murdered during El Patrón’s funeral banquet, to work on finding a way to free the eejits. Matt’s other goal is to discover the secret of the biosphere to revitalize the over depleted soil and in doing so save the overused fields of Opium and the world.
I loved The House of the Scorpion when I was younger, and when I learned there was a sequel, I was excited to read The Lord of Opium, but this is one of the cases where the sequel simply did not live up to the original. To start, the pacing in the book was very slow. There was a lot of world building—which I really liked—but the details sometimes became excessive. The beginning of the book really dragged on for me as nothing seemed to be happening. Matt and Cienfuegos traveled around trying to get Opium under control while concealing El Patrón’s death from the other drug lords, who would try to seize Opium if they learned El Patrón was dead.
Then there was the romance. Matt meet Waitress, an eejit, and took a liking to her. He renamed her Mirasol and tried to restore her humanity, but he had little success. Instead, Matt ends up developing a fascination for her and takes advantage of her brainwashed state, which was very creepy and disturbing. While Matt is focused on Mirasol, he is still in love with/obsessing over Marìa. While Marìa is in New York and under her mother’s, Esparanza’s, control she wants to return to Matt and Opium. Their relationship is just plain weird. They are strangely obsessed with each other for being two fifteen-year-olds, and while Matt spends a lot of time thinking about Marìa, she barely appears in the book.
There were quite a few new characters. Matt meets Listen, a clone of Glass Eye Dabengwa’s, another drug lord, dead wife, who Dr. Rivas has created to be his future wife. There is also Bug, a child with no impulse control who, like Matt, is one of El Patrón’s clones. Matt takes a liking to Listen and takes her with him, but I found her one dimensional and uninteresting. Her character was not well developed despite the fact that she was one of the main characters.
The one part of the book that I really liked was Matt’s inner struggle against his inner El Patrón. As a clone, Matt still hears echo’s of El Patrón and his struggle to find himself, despite being a part of El Patrón, was interesting and well developed.
I think I would have really liked this book had I not had such high expectation for it. Though there were a lot of parts I did not like, the book overall was quite good, but it just doesn’t compare to The House of the Scorpion.
Cover: 5/5
Writing style: 5/5
Characters/character development: 3/5
Plot: 3/5
Overall: 3.8/5
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