The House of the Scorpion (Matteo Alacran, #1)

About this book

At his coming-of-age party, Matteo Alacran asks El Patron'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. But for El Patron, lord of a country called Opium--a strip of poppy field lying between the U.S. and what was once called Mexico--Matt is a guarantee of eternal life. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself, for Matt is himself. They share identical DNA. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister, grasping cast of characters, including El Patron's power-hungry family. He is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards and by the mindless slaves of Opium, brain-deadened 'eejits' who toil in the poppy fields. Escape from the Alacran Estate is no guarantee of freedom because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect. Around every turn in this vivid, futuristic adventure is a new, heart-stopping surprise.