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A review by naomilangston
The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer
4.0
It is SO HARD to write a sequel to such an amazing book as “House of the Scorpion,” but Nancy Farmer accomplished this feat well. Here’s the breakdown with my rating system:
1. Is the writing style professional, understandable, and entertaining? Yes. It’s such an interesting/entertaining read that keeps you captivated for the entire ride. It’s HARD to write about complicated social, moral, and political matters in a way that doesn’t bore readers to death, but somehow, she made this book so hard to put down!
2. Are the characters relatable, round, deep, and interesting? Although there was more Nancy Farmer could have done to develop her characters stronger, I’ll still say yes. She is wonderful at showing us their personalities and uniqueness, even just within their dialogue with one another. For example, Listen’s responses in conversation are usually childish, arrogant, and fiery and so I get that about her character without the author having to explain this about her. That is GOOD WRITING. Other reviews say that Matt’s character is inconsistent and not well developed, however, I strongly disagree. Yes, he is the evil drug lord El Patron’s clone, but the difference between Matt, El Patron, and even The Bug is this: El Patron’s family died when he was young and he fended for himself with no one to love him or love. The Bug was basically raised in a lab also with no family or loved ones. Matt is different because he was raised by wonderful loving people like Celia, Tam Lin, and even in a crooked way, El Patron. I believe this has a critical role in Matt becoming a noble character unlike the one he’s cloned after. He still hears the voice of El Patron inside of him telling him evil things, yet he’s become his own person. Life experiences shape you more than your DNA.
3. Are there important and interesting themes, motifs, subtext, and lessons learned, whether obvious or subtle?
YES! There’s so much here about social problems, politics, ect. This book covers a lot and is a wonderful sequel to House of the Scorpion because it provides even more explanation of the problems that the first book introduced. My only complaint was that the author CONSTANTLY had Matt in these internal battles between trying to do the moral thing and not the evil thing. It just wasn’t written well honestly. I felt like he just kept repeating the same conversation in his brain: do I sacrifice this small group of people to free this big group of people from slavery? Do I continue the drug trade to provide work? Will I become like El Patron? On and on and on throughout the whole book is the same moral quandaries. There’s such a thing as trying being SUBTLE about your moral lessons, which would have helped A TON!
4. Is the plot creative, interesting, well-developed, and unpredictable? I guess I’d have to say no. Although the premises were awesome and the world was creative and wonderful, the plot didn’t have a lot of excitement that it could have until the very end. It’s a lot of exploring El Patron’s empire and Matt figuring out how to manage it all and solve all of this mess that El Patron created. There’s too much in there just for the horror/interesting factor and not enough for a well-developed plot. It was still a fascinating read but..... It could have been better.
5. Is this a book I would want to own or read again? Yes, I did love it!
1. Is the writing style professional, understandable, and entertaining? Yes. It’s such an interesting/entertaining read that keeps you captivated for the entire ride. It’s HARD to write about complicated social, moral, and political matters in a way that doesn’t bore readers to death, but somehow, she made this book so hard to put down!
2. Are the characters relatable, round, deep, and interesting? Although there was more Nancy Farmer could have done to develop her characters stronger, I’ll still say yes. She is wonderful at showing us their personalities and uniqueness, even just within their dialogue with one another. For example, Listen’s responses in conversation are usually childish, arrogant, and fiery and so I get that about her character without the author having to explain this about her. That is GOOD WRITING. Other reviews say that Matt’s character is inconsistent and not well developed, however, I strongly disagree. Yes, he is the evil drug lord El Patron’s clone, but the difference between Matt, El Patron, and even The Bug is this: El Patron’s family died when he was young and he fended for himself with no one to love him or love. The Bug was basically raised in a lab also with no family or loved ones. Matt is different because he was raised by wonderful loving people like Celia, Tam Lin, and even in a crooked way, El Patron. I believe this has a critical role in Matt becoming a noble character unlike the one he’s cloned after. He still hears the voice of El Patron inside of him telling him evil things, yet he’s become his own person. Life experiences shape you more than your DNA.
3. Are there important and interesting themes, motifs, subtext, and lessons learned, whether obvious or subtle?
YES! There’s so much here about social problems, politics, ect. This book covers a lot and is a wonderful sequel to House of the Scorpion because it provides even more explanation of the problems that the first book introduced. My only complaint was that the author CONSTANTLY had Matt in these internal battles between trying to do the moral thing and not the evil thing. It just wasn’t written well honestly. I felt like he just kept repeating the same conversation in his brain: do I sacrifice this small group of people to free this big group of people from slavery? Do I continue the drug trade to provide work? Will I become like El Patron? On and on and on throughout the whole book is the same moral quandaries. There’s such a thing as trying being SUBTLE about your moral lessons, which would have helped A TON!
4. Is the plot creative, interesting, well-developed, and unpredictable? I guess I’d have to say no. Although the premises were awesome and the world was creative and wonderful, the plot didn’t have a lot of excitement that it could have until the very end. It’s a lot of exploring El Patron’s empire and Matt figuring out how to manage it all and solve all of this mess that El Patron created. There’s too much in there just for the horror/interesting factor and not enough for a well-developed plot. It was still a fascinating read but..... It could have been better.
5. Is this a book I would want to own or read again? Yes, I did love it!