The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

One of the downsides of keeping a book blog is that occasionally I have to write a review for a book that was given to me as a gift, but that I just didn't enjoy as much as I think the giver did.

So I'll start off by saying that I didn't dislike this book. It won several awards (as you can tell from the book image) and it's a novel idea. Mat, the main character, is the clone of El Patron, the dictator of a small country called Opium lying between the United States and Mexico in a dystopic future. That in and of itself immediately introduces a number interesting themes about identity, and that's the books' strength...

...except that I don't think these themes were really explored to the extent they could have been. Instead the novel became a story about escape and rebellion and change. Glimmers of a typical dystopia novel...

...except that it felt like the novel didn't know that's what it wanted to be from the beginning, and so the climax and resolution to the dystopia story came almost like an afterthought. And the world itself was hard for me to buy into. A lot of dystopia novels don't fully explain how the world became what it is, even if they allude to it. While that often leaves the reader wanting to know more, it's probably a good strategy. Best to keep some mystery and some distance from real life, for the sake of believability. Here, Nancy Farmer explains it all. The explanation is part of the plot, in fact - Mat acquires a written history of the nation of Opium and we read bits and pieces of it along with him. It's set up as though it were a plausible future, but to me it just didn't feel plausible. (Also, I found the world rather depressing. I mean, I guess that's how dystopias are supposed to be, but this was a particularly depressing dystopia.)

Okay, here's another problem with writing book reviews. When the balance tips even slightly in favor of my liking the book, I feel like what I want to do is articulate why, and so I just end up talking about the good things. When the balance tips slightly in favor of my not liking the books, I also want to articulate why, because there obviously must have been something, even if I don't see it immediately. But then the review comes off as overly negative. So I don't mean this to be a scathing review, but I do have to be honest and say that as far as YA fiction goes, there have simply been many books that I've liked better.

(And in spite of my feeling that I'm just not all that in to YA fiction right now, I also seem not to be able to break my streak right now - stay tuned in a few weeks for when I finish Catching Fire. Which means I will probably then have to read Mockingjay. I'm a little behind the bandwagon on this one.)