Teen Pick of the Week: The Lord of Opium

The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer

Until recently, Matt, the hero of Nancy Farmer's award-winning The House of the Scorpion, was a clone grown from a strip of old El Patron's skin.  Now he is lord of an army of eejits, zombielike workers who are harnessed to old El Patron's sinister system of drug growing.  His country?  The Land of Opium, on the one-time US-Mexican border. Opium is the largest territory of the Dope Confederacy, which ranges on the map like an intestine, from the ruins of San Diego to the ruins of Matamoros.  The rest of the world has been devastated by ecological disaster and is now known as God's Ashtray.  But hidden in Opium is the cure.

Who is and who isn't an eejit, who is and who isn't microchipped, who is and who isn't an enemy or friend make for a tantalizing puzzle Matt must solve in his own unforgettable story of survival.

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

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