THE HOUSE OF SCORPION by Nancy Farmer

Matteo is a clone. An identical copy of El Patron, a powerful drug lord and self appointed dictator of a country called Opium, located between the Mexican and U.S. border. Whereas clones are normally reviled, their intelligence removed at birth, Matt has been given the rare gift of his mind intact and the life of a prince. But behind his back the people who serve him can barely stand to touch him. Matt is not a “real” person. He has no legal status, no protection, and is only alive at the whim of the capricious El Patron. Why has El Patron, the original Matteo Alacrán, created Matt and why is Matt still alive? Matt knows his home is flawed; “eejits”, slaves who have had their brains chemically destroyed work the opium fields, but surely the rest of the world cannot be better. More importantly, what is the rotten secret hidden in the country of Opium that everybody seems to be hiding from Matt and what is it going to cost to uncover the truth?

If dystopias are your thing, then The House of Scorpion is for you. In true dystopian tradition, Scorpion explores what it is exactly that makes us human, and how thin the line is between people seeing others as living or as objects. It also asks the reader to think about how empire creates the very things it claims to combat— oppression, crime, etc. Scorpion is very much in conversation with the current issue of the drug trafficking between the US-Mexican border and the politics therein. But these are all themes that lurk under the surface, what jumps out immediately is the plight of a boy who has been raised into circumstances he doesn’t understand, simultaneously revered and reviled, and ultimately betrayed in the most brutal way by the people he loved best. Which leaves Matt with a choice: either submit to the purpose he was raised for or resist everything he was raised to believe was right. 

This is a brilliant book from the mind of Nancy Farmer and duly deserves the Newbery Honor, Michael L. Printz Award, and National Book Award, all of which prizes it has won. If you like Farmer, I highly suggest checking out her other books, including The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm and A Sea of Trolls. 

FOR THE WIN by Cory Doctorow

Mala and Yasmin, brilliant strategists, are gaming from an Internet cafe in the poor streets of Dharavi. Wei-dong, known to his Orange County family as Leonard, is addicted to online gaming with friends on the opposite side of the world. Matthew and Lu are trying to establish their own freelance gold-farming operation in the rough city of Shenzhen. Guided from Singapore by the secretive Big Sister Nor, these young people are slowly coming together and forming a union to demand basic working conditions and protection from organized crime rackets. In order to prove their strength, these Webblies take over the three games owned by the Coca-Cola Company. Battling for real-world rights in a virtual environment, they must overcome corrupt cops, determined sys ops, and social indifference to beat the game.

Like most Doctorow books For the Win is full of so many twists that it’s almost impossible to describe. It’s about what the future of the web might be. It’s about US corporations exploiting the labor of people, mostly children, for pennies. It’s about labor unions and global financial markets. It’s about rebels and protesters. And it’s even sometimes about gaming. 

Doctorow weaves together an incredibly complex plot and explains a lot of complex concepts. But he also writes about genuine human beings all over the world, China, India, Malaysia, who are the victims of a system based on exploitation and what it might look like if they finally revolted. I loved that this isn’t a fantasy allegory. It’s a plausible scenario set in our very near future in real countries where very similar scenarios to the ones described in For the Win are happening right now. 

This is a long, dense read; Doctorow will sometimes include some very technical explanations or metaphors to explain the difficult concepts he is tackling. But it’s also an incredibly page turner. I read it in a day without stopping (and then had to spend the rest of the day thinking very hard about what I had just read). 

This is a smart book. This is a thrilling book. And it’s an important book. 

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie

Arnold Spirit Jr, or Junior, has spent his whole life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. To say that life is hard on the Spokane rez doesn’t even begin to cover it, and that’s not counting that Junior is a disabled 14 year-old with a lisp and a stutter. Poor, beaten down, and often alcoholic, there isn’t much hope for anybody on the rez. Until one day Junior gets fed up with getting the short end of the stick and throws his textbook at his teacher. Junior is suspended, but his teacher pays him a visit to give him some advice: Get off the rez while you still have some fight in you. “The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up,” Mr. P says.

So Junior transfers to Rearden, a rich school in a nearby town where he is the only Indian* on campus. Little by little Junior earns the respect of his peers, but back home he is branded a traitor and his home life begins to crumble…

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Sherman Alexie’s semi-autobiographical novel based on his childhood growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Told in a stunningly witty voice, the story is made only better by budding cartoonist Junior’s illustrations and doodles. Alexie does not soften the blows of the hardships that Native Americans on reservations face. This is a novel that is painful in its sincerity and truth. But even the painful parts are written with a certain light-hearted spirit and if you didn’t think it was possible for a book that is so full of pain to be so funny, then Alexie is about to prove you wrong.

I don’t want to scare anybody off. I wouldn’t say this book is not a tear-jerker. But it is definitely eye-opening and drop dead hilarious. 

But we reservation Indians don’t get to realise our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that somehow one deserves to be poor. You start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

*Many Native Americans take issue with being called Indians as it is a misnomer and I only use it here as it is how the main character refers to himself. I do not encourage anybody else to use the word Indian in this way.

THE THIEF by Megan Whalen Turner

The most powerful advisor to the King of Sounis is the magus. He’s not a wizard, he’s a scholar, an aging solider, not a thief. When he needs something stolen, he pulls a young thief from the King’s prison to do the job for him.

Gen is a thief and proud of it. When his bragging lands him behind bars he has one chance to win his freedom— journey to a neighboring kingdom with the magus, find a legendary stone called Hamiathes’s Gift and steal it.

The magus has plans for his King and his country. Gen has plans of his own. (Pulled from Megan Whalen Turner’s website.) 1997 Newbery Honor Book

Megan Whalen Turner is the master of great first-person narratives. She’s also the master of lying brazenly to her readers until she pulls the rug out from under their feet. Put them together and you get a fantastic plot twist.

Gen is a hilarious narrator. He’s cranky, annoying, self-absorbed, spiteful and somehow this makes him the most fun character to read about that I’ve encountered in the last year. What could have been a generic children’s fantasy story about a journey and a magical artifact becomes something new and exciting when told in Gen’s voice.

The supporting characters are well-written and have great chemistry with Gen, regardless of whether or not they are good people. (Another thing I like about this series: it is rife with people who do bad things who are still sympathetic.)

The story is set in a vaguely Mediterranean landscape and culture and relies heavily on the mythology of the world, which is also Greco-Roman based. It’s a nice change of pace from most fantasy. Less Percy Jackson bastardized Olympians and more arid mountains with twisted trees and eating yogurt and cucumbers.  

If you like lying liars who lie, this is the book for you. I recommend all three books that follow as well: The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings. 

bookzombie asked: Have you heard of the book Incarceron? I'm currently reading the sequel and its a wonderful story. http://www.catherine-fisher.com/pages/books/incarceron/synopsis.asp I'm terrible at explaining things.

I have not, but I will certainly pick it up and read it. I can’t promise to review it here, as that will depend entirely on how I feel about it. Thanks for the suggestion.

ASH by Malinda Lo

When Ash’s father passes away, Ash’s step-mother forces Ash to act as a serving girl to pay off her father’s debts. Consumed by grief for her recently deceased mother and father, and tormented daily by her step-family, Ash’s only solace become fairy tales. She dreams of being stolen away to fairy land one day, away from the dull misery of her life. But when she finally meets a fairy, the mysterious Sidhean, he refuses to take her with him. Ash desperately seeks him out again and again, but to no avail.

Instead she meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress. Kaisa brings new joy to Ash’s life. Together they wander the forest and trade stories day after day. Kaisa awakens a new love of life and perhaps something more in Ash… 

When Ash is invited to attend the royal hunt with Kaisa, Ash must go to desperate measures to find the means to go. She turns to her neglected companion Sidhean for help, but with every fairy gift comes a price and the price he demands may destroy all of the delicate ties to the human world that Ash has formed.

Ash is, to vastly oversimplify it, a retelling of Cinderella. It’s a beautiful reimagining of an old story. Lo captures the hurt and loneliness of rejection and destitution. Even when things are happening all around Ash, the book feels as if it is slowed down and Ash is caught in molasses. Ash has the vague dreamy quality of a fairy tale or the British fae on which the fairies in Ash are based. It is painful, but beautiful, entrancing, but wickedly cutting. 

Ash is also not what you expect. Lo will lead you down one path, a path you have come to expect and predict from your fairy tales, and then psyche you out and veer off somewhere completely (and excitingly) different.

And plus, it’s a queer retelling of Cinderella, who doesn’t want that?